hat, like he’s orating on the floor of the Senate.
“We can send you to prison for three years for criminal trespass.”
“That’s why we’re not coming down.”
“The losses we’re incurring. Huge fines.”
“This tree is worth it.”
The next day, the white-hatted VP is back. “If you two come down by five p.m. this evening, we’ll drop all charges. If you don’t, we can’t guarantee what’ll happen to you. Come down. We’ll let you walk. Your records will be clean.”
Maidenhair leans out over the edge of the Grand Ballroom. “We’re not worried about our records. We’re worried about yours.”
THE NEXT MORNING, she’s debating one of the loggers again when he stops in midsentence.
“Hey! Take your cap off for a second.” She does. His shock is obvious from two-thirds of a football field away. “Shit! You’re gorgeous.”
“You should see me up close! When I’m not frozen and have taken a bath in the last month or two.”
“The hell you doing, sitting up in a tree? You could have any guy you want.”
“Who wants guys when you can have Mimas?”
“Mimas?”
It’s a small victory, just getting him to use the name.
WATCHMAN RELEASES A SALVO of paper bombs onto the loggers below. Unfolded, the sheets reveal pencil sketches of life at two hundred feet. The loggers are impressed. “You drew these?”
“Guilty.”
“For real? You got huckleberries up there?”
“Thickets!”
“And a pool with little fish in it?”
“There’s more.”
DAYS PASS, wet and icy, each more miserable than the last. The sitters that were to relieve Watchman and Maidenhair never show. The standoff enters week two, and the ring of workers at the foot of Mimas turns angry.
“You’re out in the middle of nowhere. Four miles from the nearest person. Things could happen. Nobody would know.”
Maidenhair beams down on them, beatific. “You guys are too decent. You can’t even make a credible threat!”
“You’re killing our livelihood.”
“Your bosses are doing that.”
“Bullshit!”
“One-third of forest jobs lost to machines in the last fifteen years. More trees cut, fewer people working.”
Stumped, the loggers wander into other tactics. “For Christ’s sake. It’s a crop. It grows back! Have you seen the forests south of here?”
“It’s a onetime jackpot,” Watchman shouts down. “A thousand years before the systems are back in place.”
“What’s the matter with you two? Why do you hate people?”
“What are you talking about? We’re doing this for people!”
“These trees are going to die and fall over. They should be harvested while they’re ripe, not wasted.”
“Great. Let’s grind up your grandfather for dinner, while he still has some meat on him.”
“You’re insane. Why are we even talking to you?”
“We have to learn to love this place. We need to become natives.”
One of the loggers revs up his chain saw and whacks the branches of one of Mimas’s largest basal sprouts. He steps back and looks up, brandishing a limb like a sailboat mast. “We feed people. What do you do?”
They shout at Maidenhair, tag team. “We know these forests. We respect these trees. These trees have killed our friends.”
Maidenhair holds still. The idea of a tree killing a person is too much for her to think about.
The men below press their advantage. “You can’t stop growth! People need wood.”
Watchman has seen the numbers. Hundreds of board feet of timber, half a ton of paper and cardboard per person per year. “We need to get smarter about what we need.”
“I need to feed my kids. How about you?”
Watchman sets to shout some things he knows he’ll regret. Maidenhair’s hand on his arm stops him. She’s gazing downward, trying to hear these men, attacked for doing what they’ve been asked to do. For doing something dangerous and vital that they’ve learned to do so well.
“We’re not saying don’t cut anything.” She dangles her arm, reaching out to the men from two hundred feet away. “We’re saying, cut like it’s a gift, not like you’ve earned it. Nobody likes to take more gift than they need. And this tree? This tree would be a gift so big, it would be like Jesus coming down and . . .”
She trickles off on a thought that Watchman has at the same moment. Been there. Felled that, too.
THERE ARE DAYS despondent with sleet. Afternoons that rise into muggy chill. Still the replacement sitters don’t show. Watchman improves the rain catchment system. Maidenhair builds a urinal that works for women. Late in week three, the loggers set up to do some nearby cutting. But they’re stymied after a couple of hours. It’s hard to drop trees the size of skyscrapers when a pop