Read Online FrostLine by Justin Scott - Free Book Online Page B

of a bitch.”
    He reached for his ear protectors.
    â€œWait!” King yelled. “What are you doing?”
    â€œCutting timber.”
    â€œYou’re destroying beautiful trees.”
    â€œYou’re lucky I’m not spraying Agent Orange.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œOr napalm.”
    â€œAre you crazy?”
    â€œNope. My head’s fine. Memory, too.” He covered his ears and yanked the starter cord.
    â€œListen to me. We had a deal.”
    Butler crouched beside the thick trunk of another tulip poplar. Of the original four in the corner clump, the three still standing were an awesome sight. In the summer, crowned green, they would touch the clouds. On this late winter afternoon, they were taller than anything in sight, even King’s house.
    Mr. Butler revved the saw and scored the bark to mark the wedge he would cut to direct where it dropped.
    King ran after him and grabbed his shoulder. Butler turned—real anger in his face, and something more, something a little crazy. I moved toward them, thinking, Boy I don’t want to get into this.
    â€œGet away from him, Henry.”
    I reached for Henry King and tried to pry him loose from Butler’s shirt. There was a slurry underfoot of mud and sawdust from the first cut, and all three of us were slipping in it. Mr. Butler whipped the saw around.
    A chainsaw—for the uninitiated—consists of a motor-driven chain that spins around a flat metal bar. The chain is studded every inch and a half with sharp hooked teeth. You can get a nasty cut just brushing by it with the motor off. Running, it’s a circle of moving razors. A plastic surgeon once told me that they “didn’t leave much to work with,” and strongly recommended cutting wood in a motorcycle helmet and face shield.
    I yanked King out of the way. I didn’t know if Butler had slipped or whether he had deliberately aimed for King’s face. My problem was, having yanked King aside the saw was now wheeling at my face.
    It wasn’t the kind of thing you wanted to block with your hand. I tried to fall away from it.
    Butler tried to arrest his swing.
    But it was Henry King who saved me, inadvertently, or not, swinging his gloved hand between us. His cry mingled with his wife’s scream.
    He and I tumbled to the ground. Butler choked the motor, and the sudden silence was almost touchable.
    King stared in disbelief at the shredded fingertips of his glove. Slowly, fearfully, he pulled it off his hand. “Oh, God,” cried Mrs. King, creeping closer. I braced for the blood. But the chain teeth had miraculously pulled the glove away from his fingers and only cut the leather. A single bright drop balanced like a red BB on the tip of his index finger.
    Mr. Butler laughed. Veins were popping in his forehead. “You’re a lucky bastard.”
    King’s face was white as snow. “You tried to cut my hand off.”
    â€œYou tried to grab a chainsaw,” Mr. Butler retorted. “Damned fool.”
    â€œI’m going to sue you.”
    â€œGet off my land.”
    â€œIt’s my land.”
    â€œGet. Off. My. Land.”
    â€œYou f—”
    â€œDaNang!”
    â€œWe’re outta here,” I said, throwing a firm arm around King and marching him toward the fence. Just as Josh Wiggens came running down the lawn and vaulted the fence with remarkable ease for a man his age. The automatic pistol in his hand didn’t seem to unbalance him at all. “Call off the dog,” he yelled at Butler, “Or I’ll shoot him.”
    Great. We’d just gone from chainsaws to guns.
    I finished pushing King through the strands. “You want to put that away before someone gets hurt?”
    Wiggens wasted no words. Without warning, and without taking his eyes from the dog, he flicked the gun at my temple as if he were swatting a fly.
    I was still wired from dodging the chainsaw and not in a charitable mood.
    I