Read Online The Mountain Can Wait by Sarah Leipciger - Free Book Online

his boots, then looked up at her. “First day today. They need a little time to settle.”
    She put her thermos in the cup holder and rubbed her hands together, started the ignition.
    Sweet pulled into the landing on his quad bike and sat idle, the engine sputtering.
    “I’ll follow you to the next block,” she said. “I’d like to see all three of them today.”
    “We’ll make Matt’s, but Roland’s is a good hour and a half drive out. It’ll be getting dark.”
    “We’ll fit it in.”
    Tom drummed his hands against the window frame and stood back and watched her pull the truck around. He walked to the edge of the landing where Sweet sat on his bike, his arms hung loosely over the handlebars.
    “That one’s going to be trouble,” Tom said.
    “Who, Camel Toes?”
    “What?”
    “Have you seen her camel toes?” Sweet smiled, rolling his tongue against his cheek.
    “Don’t let your guys get lazy.”
      
    The planters had all left the block and were back in camp while Tom followed a few meters behind the checker, watching her dig up seedlings, testing to see whether the root plugs had been bent into J shapes when they were planted. She was tall and had legs like a newborn calf but somehow moved with efficiency over the terrain, as if she’d already studied the placement of every log and rock.
    They were on high ground and the land dropped away to the northeast, where the clear-cut ended in swamp. Beyond that, mountains. The sky was clearing up now and the clouds that remained were low, ragged swipes of pink across the white. It was cold and he was chilled, and hoped this would be over soon. She had already told him that she would be coming every week, which in his experience was a lot. Her shovel was very clean.
    “You the sole owner of this company?” she asked him, batting at the pall of dusk mosquitoes that hovered around her head.
    “I’ve got a shareholder.”
    “Who’s that, then?”
    “My mother.”
    “You from Prince George?”
    “Yup.”
    “You ever do any logging?” She stopped and leaned against a tall stump. Every second it grew darker.
    “I did one season.”
    “Good. Loggers are pigs.”
    “I don’t know about that.”
    “Well, then why only one season?”
    “You ask a lot of questions.”
    She pulled a pack of cigarettes from her coat pocket and lit one, and jiggled the pack in front of his face. “I’m from a small town,” she said.
    “Well.”
    She held up the pack a moment longer and then put it back in her pocket. She blew smoke out the side of her mouth.
    “You think you’re about done with this block?” he said. “I don’t want to roll into camp too late.”
    “You should smoke,” she said. “It helps keep the critters away.”
    “You about ready to go back?”
    She inhaled deeply and flicked the ash onto the toe of her own boot and looked at him as if she were considering something. “Maybe another hour,” she said.
      
    Curtis was four years old when Tom started his first and only season as a logger. After the thing that happened in the bathtub, when Curt was a baby, Elka had seemed okay. There were doctors who talked sense, and some who didn’t, and different combinations of pills. Then, a few years of relative peace and normality. Five years of working indoors at the mill was about as much as Tom could take, so he signed on for a season up near Smithers. Not too far from home if Elka needed him.
    Two months into the job, the beginning of June, and the lower half of Tom’s face was padded by a thick beard. He was in the canteen, eating a plate of meatballs, when one of the other loggers tapped him on the shoulder and said his mother was on the radio. Something was wrong at home.
    Outside, the sun had dropped behind the mountain and the warmth of the day was receding. Two guys tossed a football in the clearing behind the bunk trailers, and as he walked past, the ball seemed to wobble and spiral through the air in slow motion.
    The radio was kept in