Rudy whooped, and I whooped back. That was to tell each other we were alive. Then I unhooked the come-along and hiked back up, pulling the bull rope out with me.
“You didn’t kill me,” Rudy said, stepping out of his spurs. “Maybe you really do know your knots.” He went to the cab of his truck and came back with a gallon jug of water and a bag of super-spicy red-hot Cheetos, the bold hue of artificial cinnamon. He passed me the bag.
“What about you?” I asked.
“What about me?” he said.
“Where did you learn your knots?” I asked.
“My dad,” he said. “That motherfucking cocksucking piece of shit. He taught me everything I know about tree work.”
“Are you from around here?” I asked.
“What is it with you fucking anthropologists, you want me to speak into the mic? Of course I grew up around here. My family’s been here since 1840. Basically stole their land directly from the Shawnee.” He teased some Cheetos from his beard, tipped them into his mouth. “But that’s over now,” he said. “No family. No land. Lost it all to the coal company.” He took a long drink, then stretched out on the ground with his head resting on his hard hat. He reached into his tool bag and brought out a thick book, opened it to a folded page. When he caught me looking he waved the cover at me. The Count of Monte Cristo.
“You want to say something to me, college girl?” he said.
“I’ve never read it,” I said.
“Philistine,” he said. “It’s the classic tale of revenge. I read it at least once a year. Come on, English major.”
“Liberal studies,” I said.
“Well, mind your own fucking business,” he said. “I’m taking a break. And I’m not paying you to ogle the locals.”
* * *
I worked for Rudy most days twelve hours. Each morning, he waited for me in his truck at the bottom of the driveway. At dark, he paid me in cash and dropped me off at home. According to Rudy, the big-animal vet only called him up to work if her husband wasn’t home if you get my meaning, and according to Rudy, a group of sorority sisters from the college had asked him in for a beer after he dragged a maple out of their yard with no shirt on if you catch my drift. He’d had a steady girlfriend, he said, but things had ended poorly between them because she had two-timed him. When I asked why she had two-timed him, he told me he didn’t know but she sure liked to talk about her feelings a lot, and one day she found someone else to talk about them to.
From what I could see, most women wanted nothing to do with Rudy, yet I noticed that he maintained something of an association with a couple who lived on the Women’s Land Trust out near Scupper Ridge. Lily worked at the hardware and salvage store, and her partner Karen was a nurse at Community Health. I had seen Karen giving people spinal adjustments in the IGA parking lot, so that they cried out in pain, tears of gratitude running down their faces.
Rudy was one of those men whose feelings were hurt by the very existence of lesbians. He was furious because Lily was pregnant, which Rudy insisted just wasn’t fair. Still, Lily and Karen sent him on all manner of errands, and requested numerous favors of him, which I never knew him to resist. Once, we dropped off a trailer load of wood chips at the top of their driveway. “For their fucking new moon garden or some shit, you expect me to know?” said Rudy. Another time, he put an extra bar on his Bailey’s order. “The one with the mustache says her saw finally bit the dust. You think that’s my problem? Jesus. I should give her shaving tips,” he said, dialing in the order from the front seat of his truck.
One morning, as I untangled Rudy’s throw line, he said, “We’ve got to knock off early today. One of those dykes needs a ride home. She gets off at five.”
All day he talked about it, continuing to check his watch. “Don’t know how it’s even possible for me to give her a ride home, seeing as men aren’t allowed on her piece-of-shit land. Of course I wouldn’t set foot there even if they expressly invited me. Which they have. Oh, it was rich when they