On his off weeks Skwisgaar likes to indulge himself. The first indulgence is always a long, hot bath in his house, steam curling off the water, all of the stress and tension of weeks of hard work seeping from his muscles. The second indulgence is always a good night's sleep, often around fourteen or fifteen hours, every bone in his body thanking him for being allowed to rest in quiet and peace When he wakes up in the morning he fixes himself a good, proper breakfast, one of meat and eggs and milk and even an orange if he finds himself with the money to buy one. He might walk down the main street and go to the bar, drinking with his work friends and congratulating themselves on a job well done, or he might go to the whorehouse. Sometimes he manages to pick a loose woman up at the bar or on the streets. Skwisgaar has several bastard children, all with his classic Swedish coloring and good looks, that he chooses to ignore. Every woman so far has moved out of town due to shame, anyway.
Today is no different. He steps back into town feeling wrung out, the heavy weight of the axe lingering between his fingers. He walks through the roads until he finds his house, a squat cabin sandwiched between other squat cabins, and walks through the door. Though his mind is elsewhere, thinking solely of the bath, his body manages to direct itself to boiling the water and cracking into the apple he had bought on the way home. He collapses onto the chair he built himself that sits in the kitchen, biting into the apple and closing his eyes. Sometimes he thinks this relief is better than sex. He strips before the water finishes boiling, depositing his dirty clothes in a neat pile in his bedroom. He'll wash them tomorrow. He takes the water and dumps it into the bathtub, immerses himself. His skin reddens. He sighs.
He soaks for an hour, his head resting against the rim of the tub. It is fall, the days long and the air crisp, his house musty. He loves this time of year, loves the pleasure that he gives himself for working. He decides, while soaking in the tub, that he will visit the whorehouse tomorrow. His favorite is a new girl, young and inexperienced but still with a childlike innocence and full lips. Her name is Dory and she's to be married to the local town clown and it always makes Skwisgaar laugh to imagine the two wed, the whore and the scoundrel. It is fitting.
He rises from the tub and takes his towel, rinsing himself. Even the rough material feels like a luxury. He tosses it onto the floor, no longer caring of neatness and thinking only of sleep. He trudges onward to bed, naked but obscured by the heavy curtains draped over his windows that the breeze fails to move. He folds himself into bed, laying on his back underneath a thick blanket, his arms straight at his sides. His eyes flutter closed and it is not long before sleep seizes him. He does not dream—he never does when he sleeps as deep as this, returning from a long stretch of work.
He rises in the morning and dresses in trousers and a button-down with the sleeves pushed towards his elbows, suspenders over his shoulders. He lets his hair hang free around his shoulders, glad not to have to tie it behind him as he does during work. He whistles a tune and drums his fingers against his thighs as he exits his house after preparing and consuming a hearty meal. He walks to the whorehouse, which is a white two-story building in the middle of town with velvet curtains hanging in the windows that doesn't pretend to be anything else. A woman stands in front, wearing a dress with an indecent neckline and taking puffs from a pipe. She smiles at Skwisgaar as he passes her and though he doesn't recognize her he smiles back. She's not to his tastes, anyway, an unpleasantness around her face, something unfeminine in the way she carries herself.
Inside the whorehouse he approaches the reception area, drapes himself over the table in front of the owner, a German immigrant named Lavona that loves him for the business, hates him for his personality. Because of this he finds it necessary to attempt to charm her, to smile at her and fold his hands underneath his chin.
"Hello, Skwisgaar," she says, accent rich and dripping off her words.
"Hello, Lavonas," he says. "Ams Dory in today?" His own accent, a relic from his recent emigration from Sweden, coats his words as well.
"Yes," she says. She crosses her arms underneath her breasts, exposed in the shirt she's wearing. Lavona favors men's clothes, a controversy amongst the town. "Of course she is. You know where to find her."
"Dat I does," Skwisgaar says. He winks at her and straights up, untucks his shirt from his pants just to rile her up, and walks off.
Because Dory is new she works downstairs, the first room on the right of the hallway. He enters already feeling the stir of arousal in his loins and is not disappointed to see Dory sitting on the sparse bed, her legs crossed and her skirt hitched up to her hips. "Skwisgaar," she says, his name but a wispy breath of a word, and Skwisgaar walks over to her. He wastes no time in connecting their mouths, entangling his hands in her short—almost boyish—hair and pulling her up. He fucks her on her back on the bed, chest to chest, quick and efficient. He takes the time to pleasure her, something he knows will be a treat, and then he pays her and leaves.
He stops at the general store and stocks up on a few items, returning them to his house before going to the bar. He should chop some wood but considering he's just gotten back from a job the idea makes him sort of sick. Instead he shrugs in the general direction of the forest and turns around to head to the bar. He knows his work friends will be there—those no-life drunkards—waiting to discuss work or the weather or whores. He's looking forward more to getting drunk than he is to the actual part of socialization. It's not a bad life.
The bar is a few buildings down from the whorehouse, low and leaking smells of booze and smoke, the inside poorly lit and overcrowded. He finds his friends at their usual table, shoved in a corner and shoved too close together. They're sporting huge mugs of frothy beer, their voices raucous and breath rancid already. Skwisgaar slides in next to Murderface, flags down a waitress to order some beer for himself. He looks across the table to see Nathan with a fat cigar between his teeth, holding a fistful of bills and Pickles with his head dropped to the surface. He raises it and looks with sleepy and unfocused eyes at Skwisgaar, offers a greeting tinted with an Irish accent before releasing his head back down in a way that looks almost painful.
"Hey," Nathan says. He takes the cigar from between his teeth and sucks on the end of it. "We were just talking about you, weren't we, Murderface?"
Skwisgaar tracks the conversation to look at Murderface nodding his head. "Yeah, juscht schaying you were probably with your whoresch," Murderface says. Skwisgaar can tell that Murderface's trying to sound spiteful but instead he sounds envious, his eyes narrowed.
"Were you?" Nathan punctuates the question with a hearty mouthful of beer.
Skwisgaar nods and relaxes in his seat. "Ja," he says. The waitress appears with his beer and he takes it, throwing money at her and winking. She receives the money and raises a hand to her chest, looking flattered, a blush rising high on her cheeks and winking back at him. He knows it's for show to get tips, but he enjoys the show, so he flings an extra dollar her way.
"How do you do it?" Murderface asks to Skwisgaar's left. Skwisgaar doesn't even bother looking at Murderface, just shrugs and brings the beer to his mouth.
"By not being fuckin' hideous ike you," Nathan says. Skwisgaar snorts and Murderface protests—Pickles appears to have fallen asleep.
They drink together and shoot the shit until Skwisgaar's starting to feel a little lightheaded from the copious amounts of beer, warm around the edges. Pickles wakes up and pulls a deck of cards from his pocket and they start to play, getting a pot going. Nathan wins, Murderface losing miserably and storming off afterwards. Nathan collects the money in his arms and grins with the cigar stub between his teeth, Pickles laughing and clapping him on the back. Skwisgaar excuses himself after that, having reached his threshold of these people after living with them over the past month on the job, and returns to the whorehouse. Dory's out so he shacks up with one of his other favorites, a portly middle-aged woman with two kids of questionable parentage, a veteran with a room upstairs. She declines payment, smiles at him with yellowed teeth.
He goes home and does his laundry then shaves, because while his friends may prefer that rugged outdoorsman look, he does not. He likes to marvel at himself in the mirror hanging above his sink, one of the first things he bought after coming to America two years ago. The day moves by slowly without his job to occupy his mind but he progresses, going to his bedroom next to take his guitar out and sit on the porch outside to play. He attracts a crowd as always but ignores them, loses himself in his music. He has a few songs he's written and memorized and he works through them. His skill at guitar is something useless in the long run but wonderful as a hobby, his deft fingers working the strings faster than anybody he's ever encountered, swelling the air with the sound. Children come and play near him just to mooch off the melody, their mothers watching him more than they watch them, but Skwisgaar keeps his eyes on the strings.
He plays until the sun sinks in the sky and the children and their mothers return home, the fathers trickling in from their own wimpier jobs. Skwisgaar stands up and stretches, feels his back crack. He watches the sunset and feels the same feelings he does every time he watches the sunset after coming back from the logging camp—overall satisfaction but with a lingering boredom, restlessness. Skwisgaar is a man of improvement, and when there is no way to show off or improve himself he starts to feel antsy, uneasy. It's why he moved to America in the first place, abandoning his own whore mother in their poverty-stricken Swedish town. It's why he took the job at the logging camp, to prove himself a man, and now he's done that. He tries not to dwell on it too long, putting his guitar inside his house and making his way back to the bar for the evening.
The day after that follows much the same pattern, although instead of visiting the whorehouse he finds a woman on the street and drags her by the wrist into an alley on the way home from the bar that night. The days following that, however, are methodical, almost meaningless, though not necessarily negative. He rises in the morning and eats breakfast, shaves, collects anything he might need from the general store or elsewhere, visits the bar, plays his guitar, fucks some women. It's growing cold in Wisconsin, the days short and nights long, and the last job of the year before the snowfall sets in and becomes unbearable is nearing. At the bar with the guys they talk mostly of work, of complaints. They all preform pretty much the same job, chopping down trees and transporting them to the river or train, and tended to sleep in the same building at camp, but something about being off the job gives them the ability to talk about it in more abstract terms. Free from physical exhaustion and discomfort their minds are sharper, more alert, quicker to make connections and analyze. For this crowd it is admittedly not much, but it is something, and they raise their beers and bitch about the coldness that seeps inside of their clothes and bones, of the hardass foreman of Woodpecker Lumber Company, a man by the name of Charles Foster Ofdensen.
The day before he returns to work Skwisgaar gets up early in the morning, easing his body into the schedule, and packs his things. He makes sure that he has enough wood and other nonperishable supplies for when he gets back, knowing he'll be tired, cold and reluctant. He goes to the whorehouse afterwards, drapes himself over Lavona's counter and smiles at her, asks if Dory is in.
"Of course she is," Lavona says, her voice clipped as ever and her nose turned up at him. "Nathan was around here the other day and said that you guys are heading back up, is that true?"
Skwisgaar nods. "You ams goingks to miss me, rights?" he says, tilting his head sideways and batting his eyelashes at him.
"You, no. Nathan, yes, obviously. Go see Dory now, you pig." She waves him off, looks to the side, as frigid and as much of a bitch as ever.
He goes into Dory's room and finds her sitting on the bed, her legs crossed over each other. She looks at him as he unbuttons his shirt and undoes his suspenders, speaks. "Lavona told me you're going away again," she says, her voice still with the petulance of a young child's.
"Dat ams correct," Skwisgaar says. He rolls his trousers down over his hips and steps out of them, along with his shoes, before walking to the bed and crouching over her.
"I think I'll be married by the time you're back," she says, furrowing her eyebrows. He kisses the ridge that forms between them. "This is our last time together, then. I'll be a wife."
Skwisgaar nods and kisses down the bridge of her nose, the tip, her philtrum, her mouth. He breaks away and whispers, "Then let us makes dis specials," and joins their mouths together again, knots one of his hands in her skirts.
But Skwisgaar has had his fair share of woman, has planted his seed in a fair number of fertile wombs, and what he does that day with Dory on a threadbare mattress is nothing special. He tucks his shirt back into his pants and slips his suspenders over his shoulders, muses that perhaps he's become immune to the pleasures of the feminine flesh as Dory adjusts her skirts and her hairs in the vanity. He gives her a pleasant goodbye and exits the whorehouse, waving at Lavona on the way out. If he has indeed become immune, the weeks he's about to spend on the job will surely fix that, and he's not too worried.
He slides himself into place at his table in the bar. His friends are rowdy, Nathan's arms slung around Pickles's shoulder and moving him back and forth while they sing some tired old song, Murderface snorting and banging his fists on the table, more than usual. Skwisgaar accepts a mug of beer from the waitress and brings it to his lips, propping a single eyebrow up at Nathan and Pickles while they finish the song in a long, drawn-out note, Pickles as high as he can go and Nathan as low.
"Skwisgaar!" Pickles says, his eyes popping open. "Welcome, buddy. Excited, eh? 'Nother six weeks with the Woodpeckers."
"Ja," Skwisgaar says, humorless. He throws back some beer, puts his mug on the table, punctuation.
"We're getting a new one," Pickles continues. There's three empty mugs in front of him, a few shot glasses scattered about, and he's smiling hugely but unequally. "A baby. A greenhorn. Just moved here, just got the job, did you hear?"
Skwisgaar shakes his head, his hair bouncing around his face. To his side Murderface shakes his head as well.
"I did," Nathan says, looking at Pickles, then at Skwisgaar. "Heard he's from Norway, too. Isn't that close to where you came from? Some place in Europe?"
"It's right next to it, you idiot," Pickles says, and he punches Nathan in the arm, retaining that ridiculous smile of his. Then, addressing Skwisgaar: "Right?"
"Ja," Skwisgaar repeats, bringing the beer to his mouth and hiding his own bemused grin.
"Well," Pickles says. He produces the deck of cards he has on him and shuffles them as he speaks. "He's a real young'un, this kid. I think his name is Loki, or Toki, somethin' like that. Wartooth is the last name, ain't that the most brutal shit you've heard in your life? Anyways." He deals the cards, one to himself, one to Nathan, one to Skwisgaar, one to Murderface, and over again. "He's like, seventeen, or somethin'. Real young."
"He lives here?" Skwisgaar asks, collecting his cards in his hands as he's given them. An Ace of Hearts, a Five of Hearts, a Two of Spades, cards sliding across the tabletop faster than he can make them out.
"That," Pickles says, dealing the last set of cards, "I don't know. Let's play, boys. Poker. Place your bets, come on." He swoops his own cards into his hand, teeters in his seat.
They play the game three times, Skwisgaar winning, then Nathan, then Pickles, Murderface growing gradually more frustrated until he takes all the cards for himself and throws them to the floor of the bar. Skwisgaar puts his head in his hand out of embarrassment before it occurs to him that he could just leave and proceeds to do so. The sun has set in the sky by then and he's feeling loose and light, his limbs jangling, certain that he could do anything, take on anybody. This type of mood is the one that leads to bar fights and nights with less desirable women but tonight he's not so lucky. Tonight he makes it home without any sort of altercation.
He's not tired and he's not looking forward to returning to work so soon, making the idea of going to bed and speeding up that inevitability even more unappealing. To remedy this he scoops his guitar into his hands and sits on the bed, the tired mattress sinking and the old bedframe squeaking. He plays slow and soft, a little sad, telling himself that it's late and he doesn't want to wake up the whole town and have them on his ass. He normally doesn't bring his guitar with him to work—it's too precious, a relic from his time in Sweden—but he thinks that maybe this time he will. Last time without it he had gotten annoyed, stuck in that cabin with Nathan, Murderface and Pickles and their rambunctiousness. Yes, he'll definitely bring his guitar, he decides, and he stands up to settle it in its stand against the wall before stripping and tucking himself into bed.
He wakes up before the sun rises and collects his things, folds his guitar into its case and slings it over his back. It's four in the morning, maybe a little bit earlier, a Sunday. The men won't be going to church, but he never cared for church anyway, doesn't believe in God. He exits his house and makes way to the train station. They take the train from town to the camp but he's heard from Pickles, the oldest in the group that's been on this job for twenty years, his parents having migrated out of Ireland during the Famine when he was a toddler, that they used to have to walk the distance. Murderface, who's been on the job for about five years less than Pickles and was the son of a Confederate General that moved north after defeat, affirms this whenever the conversation comes up. Nathan, who's a quarter Indian from a tryst his grandmother had with a chief and started just three years back like Skwisgaar, is ambivalent about the issue and glad to have the trains.
He sees his usual ragtag group and walks over to them. They've got a burlap sack of clothes between the three of them, currently settling on Pickles's back, but Skwisgaar's vanity impedes him from not bringing his grooming supplies and an ample amount of clothes in a considerably sized sack for himself.
"Schuch a girl," Murderface says, nodding his head at Skwisgaar's bag as he places it on the ground. Skwisgaar looks up to sneer at him, not justifying it with a response. It's a tired insult, along with Murderface calling him inverted.
"Back on the job, boys," Pickles says. He's smoking something from a pipe, pulls it away to grin around the cloud that's forming from his mouth. "You excited?"
"Yeah," Nathan says. He looks around at the relatively empty platform and then sits on the ground, his knees up but spread wide. "Excited."
"Well, you could try and look it," Pickles says, looking at Nathan and nudging him in the hip with his foot.
They stand around in silence after that, watching men flock to the platform. Some of them are accompanied by wives, a few by children, that they kiss goodbye. They recognize the majority of the faces, a few new men appearing among the usual and looking sort of nervous, including a young guy that seems to fit Pickles's description from the night before. He's standing on the opposite end of the platform as them with his hands clasped in front of him, running his fingers over each other, and his head down. Something compels Skwisgaar to go and make nice with him, but it's early in the morning, dark and he's too tired to move. The train chugs up and they begin to board, the boy disappearing from Skwisgaar's thoughts.
The ride isn't too long, just from town to the forest, the train there only for their convenience. The sun comes up on the way, throwing oranges and blues across a landscape of white from the light snowfall last night. Skwisgaar sits in a row of three seats by himself, his legs spread out over the other two and his head on the window. The first time he'd made this trip he'd been fascinated by the unexpected beauty of untamed wilderness, having been a city boy in Sweden, and somewhat excited by the prosperous and manly job he had been about to take on. Now he's bored of the landscape, though its grand beauty socks him in the stomach on occasion, and more up to rest his eyes a bit before taking on the more often than not tedious and straining job. The others on the train seem to share his sentiment, a sleepiness settling in on them like one huge, communal blanket.
There are always between eighty-five and ninety men on the job and twenty men to a cabin, means meant that Skwisgaar, Nathan, Murderface and Pickles usually get a cabin to themselves with a couple of stragglers. Filing into the camp and heading towards the last cabin on purpose, Skwisgaar spots that guy from before, alone and looking at the ground all nervously. That same something that had grasped him before pushes Skwisgaar to walk over to the guy and put a hand on his shoulder to get his attention. The guy has hair that just hits the nape of his neck and is in need of a good trim, and when he turns around Skwisgaar sees blue eyes with pinprick pupils that dilate into a frightened expression.
"Heys," Skwisgaar said, now awkward. He hates feeling awkward. He retracts his hand and clears his throat. "You's new, ja?"
"Yes," the guy says. He has a deeper voice than Skwisgaar thought he would, but it's sort of shaky.
"Wells, uh." Skwisgaar clears his throat again and looks to see his friends walking into their cabin. He puts his hand on the guy's shoulder again and steers him towards the cabin. "Rooms with us, ja? We's shows you the ropes and all dat shit."
"Why are you doing this?" the guy asks. He doesn't stop walking, though, instead picking up his pace to match Skwisgaar's longer stride. Like most everybody else he's half a head taller than the guy.
Skwisgaar shrugs. "I heards from a guy—his name am Pickle, you'll meets him ins a few seconds—dat dere's a young guy dat's from Norway. Wells, ams a Swede. Camaraderie." They're at the door now, a diagonal line of footprints left in the light layer of snow behind them. Skwisgaar opens the door for the guy and only then remembers to ask his name.
"Um, Toki. Toki Warooth." The kid looks at Skwisgaar like he's unaccustomed to common gestures of politeness and walks through the doorway.
"I ams Skwisgaar Skwigelf," Skwisgaar says, pulling the door to the cabin shut as he follows Toki inside.
Skwisgaar goes to his usual bed and throws his stuff on the top bunk and lays his guitar on the bottom before reaching behind him to tie his hair back. He watches Toki from the corner of his eye as he claims the bed in the corner, away from the main cluster of guys, and proceeds to linger there. If Skwisgaar had felt awkward before Toki was the very definition, standing there and playing with the hem of his untucked shirt.
"New guy, eh?" Pickles says. He rises from where he'd been sitting on the bottom bunk of the bed across from Skwisgaar's, smoking. "Welcome 'board. What's your name? Something 'oki, right?"
"Toki," Toki says, his fingers still on the hem and his eyes cast downward.
"Well, hell, Toki, don't be shy. C'mere." Pickles extends the hand holding his pipe, pointing it in Toki's direction. As if a cat coaxed by treats Toki creeps forward, coming into the main circle. Pickles smiles and nods at him, returning the pipe to his mouth.
The foreman reaches the cabin then, opening the door and poking his head in. "Ah, welcome, gentleman," he says, opening the door wider but not coming inside. "I want you all out in front of the cabins in half an hour."
"Sure thing, boss," Nathan says, the slightest bite of sarcasm on the boss. Toki, who has now come to stand beside Skwisgaar, turns to look at him, and Skwisgaar shakes his head. He attempts to communicate with eyebrow twitches and lip twists that it's not that Nathan dislikes the foreman, it's that Nathan dislikes rigid authority, and Ofdensen is as rigid and authoritative as they come.
Ofdensen nods and steps back, pulling the door with him. Pickles bursts out laughing, whatever is in that pipe getting to his head. Toki regards him with a suspicious look and Skwisgaar smiles, biting back a chuckle. He's going to enjoy Toki, he thinks, if only for his naivety.
They settle themselves in the cabin, Skwisgaar fitting his nice flannel blanket over the top bunk and organizing his supplies around his guitar on the bottom one. Murderface, who has been asleep since the second his ass hit his bed, snores on. Pickles shares his pipe with Nathan. Toki drifts back to his corner and loiters there until Skwisgaar rolls his eyes and calls him over, makes small talk about the weather, the job, Toki's journey to America. Toki provides only the tiniest of details, talking in vague terms about his past, and Skwisgaar learns nothing of substance, not even Toki's arrival date. When the half hour is over Nathan wakes Murderface up and they, along with their other three cabin mates that they have been ignoring (and probably will ignore in the future) leave the cabin.
The five cabins and main mess hall and supply sheds flank the forest, a medium-sized clearing littered with pine and snow a buffer between the two. Ofdensen is standing at the mouth of the forest, symmetrical between two trees, and facing the influx of men from the cabins. When the eighty-eight men collect themselves before them he clears his throat, his voice surprisingly loud and booming for the slight, bookish man he is.
"Welcome back, Woodpeckers," he says. The first time Skwisgaar heard this speech it had invigorated him, made him feel an important part of a greater whole, but now it feels stale. Toki's standing beside him, Nathan, Pickles and Murderface in front of them, and he steals a glance at Toki to gauge his reaction as Charles keeps talking. "It is imperative that we do a good job this time around, for profits and because lumbering is important to America. Without us we wouldn't have buildings or carts or beautiful woodworks. Last year our production increased by five percent—let's try to make it ten percent this year. We can do this, men. I have faith in you." This speech that Skwisgaar knows Ofdensen to be reciting from memory is the only time he hears the man speak with such confidence and command, and Toki looks even more nervous.
"I don't think—" Toki whispers, looking up at Skwisgaar.
Skwisgaar shakes his head. "Amns't bad. Dis speech is de same every time. Doesn't gets on his bad side by beingks an idiot and you'll be fine."
Toki nods and turns his attention back to Ofdensen, though he doesn't seem fully reassured. In the dramatic pause the men begin to talk among themselves much like Skwisgaar and Toki just had, the buzz of deep voices in conversation rising, until Ofdensen once more clears his throat to get their attention.
"You have the rest of the day to get situated but remember, we begin work before sunrise tomorrow morning. You are dismissed."