Free Weeds in Bloom by Robert Newton Peck

can close my eyes and smell it. Hard, like the wood. Many a log, settled improperly in the bin, would balk at the blade, hissing, spitting knots like shotgun balls. A lot of good oak ruined, fouled by temper. Even when a log was beyond correction, Yaw would swear, shouldering the log to push it. Yet the planks we were cutting weren’t worthy.
    Yaw’s answer was to turn up the power until the arrow pointed to a speed beyond safety. In the red of the dial.
    He was working closer to the blur of that whirling blade than any man ought.
    “Earnest,” I said, “please take care.”
    A man like Earnest Yaw rarely, if ever, hearkens to a boy of nineteen. He was in no mood for advice. Not from a lad young enough to be his son. Ignoring me, he stretched his wood hook across a butted end, his dusty arm between the log and the blade. He trued the log. But it rolled, pinning his arm beneath its massive moving weight.
    Dropping my hook, I leaped for the switch just as Mr. Ryan arrived.
    In less than a second, Ryan threw his body at the log, knowing that the emergency switch could never cut the power in time. Mr. Ryan and I moved the log just enough to free up Earnest Yaw’s armfrom underneath. But as Ryan yanked the arm up, he lost his own hand against the slowing blade.
    I saw the silver circle painted red all around with specks of blood. The saw blade wore a red belt.
    A pair of heavy iron tongs hung on a nail in the nearby wall.
    Grabbing them in an instant, Earnest applied them to Ryan’s arm to stem the gushering blood. But the sawdust floor was darkening, a blacker and deeper red. The separated hand was draining white. Yaw’s fingers gently picked bloody grains of sawdust from the butt of Mr. Ryan’s arm. Then, striking a match with his thumbnail, he lit a torch to cauterize the wound. By the time, however, that he’d bound it tight with string, Ryan was breathing irregular and hard.
    He fainted on the sawdust floor.
    Later on, Doc Turner said that Mr. Ryan might’ve bled to death, but he lived. Yaw and I left Doc Turner’s place and returned to work the mill. There was no such thing as a spoken “Thank you” by either party. No one said a word.
    Earnest Yaw never touched another drink.

Buck Dillard
    “H OLD HER STEADY,” SAID B UCK .
    A crowd had gathered to watch.
    Nobody I knew had ever seen it done, what we were about to see, but if anybody was strong enough to actual do such a trick, it was Buck Dillard.
    Mr. Dillard was easy to identify. There couldn’t have been two lumberjacks like Buck, even though he appeared to be almost two people. He measured six and a half foot in height and weighed close to three hundred pounds. Across one side of his face ran a wood-hook scar. His right hand was slightly crippled from when it had been crushed beneath a log. A double-bitted ax usual hung from his belt.
    Some local citizens (especially those who worked, drank, and fought with him) said there was little good in Buck.
    Others claimed none at all.
    Years ago, when a boy, I had seen Buck Dillard but never dared to speak to him. Few did. Now I was nineteen, home from my military service and working for Mr. Ryan at his sawmill. Buck showed up there once in a while, bringing logs. I still didn’t say a how-do to him, nor he to me.
    Buck and his wood cords weren’t cordial. But we all had to credit Buck Dillard because whenever he was only half drunk, he could entertain a crowd of fire hydrants. Or even preachers.
    “Hold her,” Buck said again.
    With his big logger boots near to a yard apart, Buck bent himself down to position his shoulders underneath Mildred, the mule. She kicked, but didn’t hurt Buck any. Hooking a mighty arm around a foreleg, his other around a hind, Buck now locked Mildred into a no-struggle hold.
    Buck grunted.
    Yet nothing happened.
    Behind me, I heard another wager being agreed on, in polite whispers. A bet of five dollars against ten that Buck could heft up a full-growed mule.
    Buck’s face was