The Drip, a novel by Michael Gullo
“Goodness, kids, you got some work done! Cody, that whole bench is in. It’s way up there, ain’t it?”
“Yeah, why you want me cut so high up and so far back? This way more than fifty feet across.”
“We gotta cut in the high bench first. At least four feet wide by four feet high, step down, cut another bench, step down, cut another bench, and I never surpass the engineering limit for retaining walls. Higher than four feet requires an engineered stamped plan and a permit.”
“So you’re building a house without a permit?”
“No. I’m building a legal retaining wall before I ever have to beg the forgiveness so that my workers can work while I choose the mama duck.”
“Mama duck, the hell you talking?”
“It’s ducks in a row, Cody. Out of order.”
“You’re out of order, Rusty.”
“Seriously? Did you just, I’m rubber, you’re glue a mountainside? Listen up…”
“Where’s Tanner?”
“Key term there, Cody, was listen up. If you’re looking for the any-questions department, it’s over at the shed with the suggestion box.”
“Bro, you’re relentless.”
“That’s my POV too.”
“He said, POV.”
“Fuck me, Rusty! Did you just pivot to a porn category from inside of a pay-attention?”
“Bro lives in the gutter. I can’t even take him to my Granny’s.”
“Kids --- There’s simply too much there for me to unpack it all. But, that, my friend, that is an image cloud. Rusty such a pervert that you can’t take him to the Granny’s house that you stole a car from.”
“Ya, it’s bad.”
“You have a top bench in. Is it stable?”
“Machine’s up there, ain’t it?”
“One more time. Is it stable?”
“It’s stable.”
“Any rock yet?”
“There’s some on the east end, you can see that outcrop just a hundred feet past the end.”
“But nothing inside the bench? Have you hit any shale tops yet?”
“Nope, all topsoil.”
“So, if I have you stay on the ledge you just created, is the ground stable enough to reach down and cut in the bench that will be below you – without you pulling yourself over the edge?”
“No problem.”
“Did we just have a full and complete serious safety conversation?”
“Looks like. Whoa! There’s one.”
“A bear? Where?”
“On the ridge. There he is.”
“It’s like a cartoon with him just ambling toward only God knows what.”
“Headin’ toward that clearing up thar.”
“How’d you hit this tree over here? It’s like two hundred-fifty years old, and you smashed the shit out of it.”
“I slipped.”
“Three times I’ve put you in the machine, and all three times you’ve killed a tree. This time a Beechnut. Do I need to drug test you?”
“You can’t fire me…”
“Hey.”
“Hey, Tanner.”
“Don’t you answer your texts? Where do you want this trailer parked?”
“Forget that for now and come here.”
“Hey, Tanner.”
“Sup, Rus.”
“So Cody here just proved his worth in one smart mouth assertion. He reminded me of that old boot camp adage that I meant to mention the other day. He told me I can’t fire him anymore because he works for himself now. And that reminded me, I never did finish that sentence --- you ready big mouth? You ready to hear the back side of your punk ass ideas? I cannot fire you anymore – not without firing your whole damned crew. So, go ahead act like a little asshole all you like, but know that no matter what you do, your partners did it too, and they will pay right along with you.”
“That ain’t right.”
“It’s exactly right, Rusty. This job is yours, but that means all of you. If I fire Servepro, all the company trucks leave like it never even happened – unlike this tree. It stood sentinel here for at least two hundred and fifty years. Generation after generation of squirrel and raccoon and every manner of flying thing worked hand in hand with it, numbers of living things rivaled only by the stars in the sky, and one day Cody slipped.”
“What do you want me to do with this trailer?”
“Not yet, Tanner. This is important. The interjection helps though, because it allows me to reset from mounting aggression to the tone I really want. I want you to hear me, Cody. That tree was here at the Battle of Boyd’s Creek, Dumplin Creek, Treaty of Holston, Indian Removal Act. That tree is our history here. It withstood it all, and one day you slipped.”
“It was an accident.”
“Accidents come with lessons learned, so listen up. Look around you. What do you see here in this snow-melted land?”
“It’s the woods.”
“You see more than that. Do you see one thing at a time, or everything all as one?”
“Look, it’s a tree. I scalped it a little.”
“No, Cody, that tree is dead as sure as you stand here. You scraped it deep and long across the trunk. You half girdled the poor thing.”
“Poor thing? It’s a tree.”
“No, Cody it’s an organism. Look around you. Do you see all those brown leaves floating all about?”
“The hell are you talking about?”
“The saplings, the only trees with leaves clinging to the branches. Do you see them? Do you hear them rattle in the breeze?”
“Yeah, they’s Beechnuts, just like this one, and that tree ain’t dead, but even if it was, these will come up in place.”
“They’s Beechnuts, sure ’nuff, Cody, but you don’t know they’re called clonal root sprouts. They are this tree’s children, at once part of it and apart, and many will die if they cannot find enough nutrients from their dead mother’s roots.”
“That tree’s not dead.”
“The tree knows it’s dead. This spring it will grow a thousand sucker sprouts from its trunk, and this Summer it will bloom more than ever, and in September it will drop the heaviest mast it ever dropped. It will spend all of its starch in this one year, and it will start dying next Winter. It will suffer. It will struggle. It will wither while it tries to heal itself, but it’s as good as dead sure as you stand here.”
“What about all them trees – this one over here – with scars in them, them burls, all them broke limbs up thar in the Poplar..?”
“Don’t miss this one, Cody, over here on the other side of the bridge, another Beechnut, not so old, but you can see the bear claws down the trunk. Or hey, look at this poplar with the clean level line of woodpecker holes evenly spaced all the way around the trunk. Or this one, Buckeye. It clearly survived this Hickory falling against it and ripping its skin - ten feet of bark tearing as it fell against the trunk. You’re right, trees survive stuff. But they don’t survive being girdled by heavy equipment, and they don’t all survive damage. Look around you. There are dozens, if not a hundred trunks on this hillside floor. And this Beechnut would join them over the next five or ten years if our next order of business wasn’t what it is.”
“What’s that?”
“We’ll cut this tree down, put it out of my misery.”
“Why not let it stand and see if…”
“My misery, Rusty. Good question though.”
“So do you want me to get the chainsaw out of the trailer?”
“Not yet, Tanner, this tree is protecting the Maple from Cody’s accidents. It stands until we’re done digging over here.”
“Where do you want the trailer?”
“Let me get these guys set up, and I’ll come down in a minute.”
“Okay. Meet you down there.”
“Cody. It’s not the end of the world. Like you said, it’s just a tree. The bench looks good. Start the next bench. Rusty, once you have a good two feet of dirt on this culvert pipe, and you can drive over it with the skid, come meet me at the dam.”
“Yeah, you want only the waterway covered up? I thought we were building a level land bridge.”
“We are, but Cody is digging down, and that’s dangerous, so my thought is that this dig starts, and that gives him a pile of spoils down here that he can build up enough to stand the machine on the pile and dig up rather than down. Do you see it?”
“Yeah, I like that.”
“Then, that’s the plan. Go.”