of it. Marie was right. They planned to aim that high-pressure gas straight down the center of Rudy’s nursery.
13
HELEN
By the big saw, Rudy meant the Husqvarna 394XP, with the bar so long that it pulled him to the ground. To use it, he had to brace it against his thigh. We stood in the early morning cold with Aldi Birch. The three of us gaped up at the ancient white oak dwarfing Aldi’s garage. “We’ll use the big saw when it comes time to fell it,” Rudy said. “But we’ll start small, way up top, limbing. We’ll take it down in sections, take off some of the weight, make it a little shorter. It’ll take us a while. Maybe a week. Maybe more. I’ve been thinking and not thinking about this job. Probably for years now.”
First thing that morning, the judge had rejected Aldi’s motion. Airless with defeat, Aldi had called Rudy’s phone to let us know. I’d gone to tell Lily, fearing what the bad news would do to her. But she’d been different since visitation. She’d been ablaze with industry. She went back to work at the hardware and salvage store, and each day she rushed home to haul truckloads of trash to the dump, to scrap the scrap metal pile, rake up duck shit, scrub the house with vinegar and even bleach, empty mouse traps and re-spring them, throw out unlabeled cans and jars. To say she’d woken up would be an understatement. In fact, she’d stopped so much as sitting down, unless it was to throw herself down onto the sofa and take up her new hobby, knitting. She’d returned from one of her junkyard trips with bright balls of yarn, awful colors, garish pink, chartreuse, royal purple, all of which she turned into scarves, hats, gloves, slippers, but mostly scarves. Small garments, I noticed, garments made to fit a seven-year-old. Not only that, but she’d begun to collect pastel plastic eggs, the kind you pay a dime for and turn the dial on one of those dispensers. The eggs accumulated in her knitting basket, unmentioned, as if she didn’t owe me an explanation, as if she didn’t owe me anything at all. She didn’t talk to me much. She rejected my offers to cook for her, instead ate stewed venison cold from the jar. She sang the raucous shipwreck lullaby under her breath while looking at me with unfocused eyes, the corners of her mouth slightly upturned, a smile that reminded me of Karen’s. When I told her that Aldi’s motion had failed, she nodded. The look on her face said nothing would ever surprise or shock her again, least of all any such thing as a court proceeding. She bent over the scarf she was working on and counted her stitches. Then, with no explanation, she began to unravel the yarn, winding it and winding it back into the ball, so that before my eyes the scarf disappeared.
Rudy and I packed up the chain saws, the pole saw, the ropes, gas and oil, and drove straight out to Aldi’s place. We had to pick the lock on the garage, feel for the light switch. The place smelled like chicken shit, hundreds of birds teeming in their warmed crates along the wall. Rudy peeled Aldi off his cot behind the woodstove. I was getting sick of coercing people out of bed. Rudy wrapped Aldi’s coat around him and pushed him out into the rude winter. It was time to encounter the white oak. This was our way, to get to work. It was the only honest antidote we knew.
“You don’t have to take down that tree,” Aldi said, swaying next to us.
“You’re going to help us get Perley back,” Rudy said.
“Looks like I can’t do much,” Aldi said.
“You’ll do what you can,” Rudy said.
“Sure,” Aldi said. “But what I can do I’ll do for free.”
“Don’t talk like that,” Rudy said.
“I’m the one should fell it if anyone should,” Aldi said.
“You can’t do it. You’re too old and you’d immediately kill yourself,” Rudy said.
“It’s a suicide mission no matter who does it,” Aldi said.
“A trade’s a trade,” Rudy said. “We’ll do it. We’ll do it and you’ll sit out here and keep us company and work on the case.”
“In this fucking cold? You must be crazy,” Aldi said.
“Helen’s going to build you a fire,” Rudy said.
Rudy set his anchor line and clipped into his harness, while I found the woodpile out back. Aldi grumbled, but I