The Walnuts on the Fence Line

“Cyrus,” he said. “Get the loader. Roll me the third stack. And bring me the wand.”

Every veneer mill keeps a metal detector wand for the logs, because a single nail in a walnut log will wreck a slicer blade that costs more than a car. Vance had never once had to use it on a log from Leon Hollander. He had never had a reason.

The loader turned the logs one by one until the cut ends faced us. Vance walked the stack with the wand in one hand and a grease pencil in the other, and I stood by my truck with the photograph of Haley on the tire swing.

He passed the wand slowly down the side of the fourth log from the top. Forty inches up from the butt, on the creek side, it began to scream.

Nobody breathed. Vance bent, which was hard on his knees, and brushed at the bark with his glove. There was a lump the size of a fist where the tree had healed over, and out of the middle of it stuck a half inch of rusted steel.

“Well,” Vance said very quietly. He stood up slowly with one hand on his back. “Well, I’ll be.”

He did not look at me. He looked at the staple, and then he looked at the men standing in his yard, and I understood that he was making a decision that would cost him money.

“Steve,” he said. “Walk it with me. Every one of them.”

We spent the next two hours on that yard. Vance measured the butt of every log with a scale stick and matched it against the stump diameters I read from my photographs. Cyrus wrote the numbers on a clipboard, and Randy sat in his truck with his head against the wheel.

“Nineteen trees,” Vance said, writing on his clipboard. “Twenty-four logs, all off your side of that line, Steve. Every one on this yard under Leon’s name.”

“That sounds right.”

“Nine thousand four hundred and twelve board feet, veneer grade.” He looked at a printed price sheet that Lynette had brought out. “At the rate I’m paying this week, that’s twenty-two thousand and ninety dollars.”

I did not say anything. I could not have. The number sat in the air between us, and I thought about Haley’s hand with a number written on it.

“Randy’s already been paid,” Vance said. “I cut his share Monday morning. Thirty-five percent, seventy-seven hundred and thirty-one dollars. I advanced it against Leon’s account, because Leon’s check was not due until Friday.”

“Vance, I do not want Randy to lose that.”

“He won’t.” Vance shook his head. “He cut what he was told to cut, and he was lied to. He keeps what he earned. I know the difference between a man who made a mistake and a man who made a plan.”

“Then who pays you back?”

“The man who made the plan.” He turned and looked up the hill toward my uncle’s farm, a mile away. “That bill goes to Leon Hollander. I’ll send it in the mail today.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“Yes, I do. It is my yard.” He took his glasses off again. “Come back tomorrow morning at eight, and bring your wife. I’ll have a check written.”

I came back at eight the next morning. Janet came with me, in her church coat, holding her purse with both hands in front of her.