Free A Conversation with the Mann by John Ridley

land of every tree that stood. Nothing fancy about it. The sweat was ordinary.
     The muscle ache was the same that came with any other grind. The only thing special about logging was that you learned to
     respect the boss. The boss
was
the trees. Douglas firs, Sitka spruces, western red cedars, Port Orford cedars. Some three hundred feet tall and over a thousand
     pounds. When the boss got felled, when it was being skidded, you learned to get out of its way. Get out or get hurt. Hurt
     if you were lucky. Otherwise all you got was dead for your twenty-five dollars a week.
    Twenty-five dollars that we didn't really get anyway. Every worker had a passbook, and at the end of each week a company man
     would write in it what we earned to be settled up at summer's end. We never got cash. The company men figured if you didn't
     have cash you couldn't get into any trouble. You couldn't go into town and get drunk. You also couldn't take what you earned
     and run off in the middle of the night. All you could do was keep working. Keep up your respect for the boss six days out
     of seven.
    On the seventh day we rested. We spent the mornings gathered in various worship groups praying or singing or whatever. Once
     religion was out of the way we sat around playing cards, smoking, paging through mail-order skin magazines. For lack of booze,
     a few guys shook up a cocktail of Aqua Velva and Kool-Aid. Some got high off the mix. Some got a free ride to the hospital.
    Almost always we stayed segregated. You might see the occasional white with blacks, or the rarer black with a bunch of whites.
     Mostly the races kept to themselves and the whites—generally the southern whites—made it plain they wanted things that way.
     You could hear them talking together about something or other—the weather, a story about back home, how somebody earlier in
     the day, not paying attention, almost got taken out by the boss. They'd be talking about nothing in particular; then you'd
     hear it from them, the word: nigger. Nigger or coon or jig or darkie. You'd hear the word in a sentence, not spoken in anger,
     but used as if it were just another part of the language. Apple. Sky. Boat. Nigger. That was the frightening thing, how easy
     it came to them. How commonplace their hate was. How rooted racism was in them. They were good whites, and we were black dogs
     and that's all there was to it.
    Race mixing was not encouraged. Race mixing was not tolerated.
    There was one young fellow from Michigan, white boy, who didn't much seem to care if someone was white or black or otherwise.
     He'd sit and talk and spend time with one person as equally as he would another. One night he got taken—got dragged—out into
     the woods by some other whites. He was found the next morning naked, freezing, and spilling blood from where he'd had a fat,
     coarse tree branch repeatedly, violently shoved into his butt-hole. All the management had to say about things was: “Should've
     known better than stir up race trouble,” then sent the fellow back to Michigan.
    Race mixing was not encouraged. Race mixing was not tolerated.
    After spending most the day resting up from the week that'd passed, getting ready for the week to come, we'd all go to the
     main hall for dinner, eat segregated, then go back to our same color-correct groups and spend the evening entertaining ourselves
     with songs and music from guitars and harmonicas and Jew's harps. I couldn't play any of those. I couldn't sing. I could tell
     jokes, though. That I could do. I would bust up the boys with some bits I'd heard from comics on
Toast of the Town
and observations about working at the camp. It was enough to give everyone a fair laugh. I guess I was funny. Anyway, I was
     funny enough to get some notice. One Sunday after joking around, Dax pulled me aside. He told me he was putting together an
     amateur show for the following Sunday, a chance for the guys with talent to entertain the ones without. He'd heard me