The fire crackled between us, shadows dancing on Nolan's furrowed face as he pulled out that mysterious bottle again. Third time in an hour.
"Gonna tell me what's wrong with you or we just sit here all night?" I prodded, jabbing at the coals with a stick.
He took a swig of his whiskey and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. "You know, that land my daddy left me on Copper Ridge?"
Course I recalled. We'd hunted those woods from the time we were kids, played forts in the venerable growth timber, caught our first trout in Miller Creek that cut right through the middle of it. Two hundred acres of the prettiest country you ever did see.
"What about it?"
"Got an offer yesterday." He stared at the fire as if it might respond. "Development company wants to buy it. Real money, Rafe. Much more than I ever dreamed of seeing."
Something cold coalesced in my stomach. "How much?"
"Eight hundred thousand."
I nearly sucked in my beer. "Jesus, Nolan. That's—"
"Life changing money." He nodded slowly. "Pay off the farm, create college accounts for the kids, maybe even purchase Jenny that cute little house she's always wanted downtown."
We sat for a moment in silence, listening to the night sounds. In the distance, an owl hooted, probably stalking those same woods we had just been talking about.
"But?" I finally ventured, because there had to be a but coming.
"But they want to cut down the whole thing. All the trees, Rafe. And put up some fancy-pants subdivision called—" he extracted a crumpled scrap of paper from his pocket "--Copper Ridge Estates. Forty-seven homes, one on half an acre of what used to be woods."
My chest tightened. They were old trees, some of them probably still standing when my great-grandfather first came to these woods. Big maples and oaks, a couple of hemlocks as thick as truck tires. The kind of forest that will take a hundred years to replace, if that.
"Damn," I said.
"Yeah." He took a swig. "Damn's right."
I watched him struggle with it, this man who'd never had more than five thousand dollars in his checking account at any given time. His farm was barely keeping him afloat, had been for years. Jenny worked double duty at the diner just so they could have dinner on the table and lights in the house. Her oldest, Cassie, was a genius kid but they'd already told her she could forget about attending State and think about community college instead.
"What about Jenny?"
"haven't talked to her yet." He rubbed his face with both hands. "How do I look my wife in the eye and say I'm thinking about turning down enough money to cover all our issues?"
"Perhaps she'd understand—<<"
"Would you?" He stared hard at me. "If you had two kids and a house and a mortgage to pay, would you really say no to that kind of money to save some trees?"
I wanted to blurt out yes without hesitation, but the words caught in my throat. Easy enough to talk of conscience when it's not your choice to make.
"I just keep thinking about my daddy," Nolan said. "He'd take me up there when I was a boy, point out the trees that were good to use for lumber and the ones you had to leave alone. Taught me how to read country, where the deer runs were, where the fish holes were. Promised me—" His voice broke a little. "Promised me I'd take care of it."
"He'd also have wanted you to look after your family."
"That's what I keep saying to myself." He drained the whiskey and dropped the bottle onto the table with a clunk. "But each time I imagine those bulldozers coming up the mountain."
The fire crackled, firing sparks upward into the darkness. I recalled all of the times we'd camped on the property, the early dawns we'd gotten up before daylight to hunt after the big buck that wandered somewhere in the thick timber along the ridge line. That land was more to us than a piece of ground. It was history, memories, something you couldn't label.
Except someone had. Eight hundred thousand dollars' worth.
"You know what gets me?" Nolan said. "They're gonna name the streets after what they wiped out. Oak Lane, Maple Drive, Hemlock Circle. Like that fixes it somehow."
"Perhaps—perhaps there's another solution," I said, though I couldn't think of one. "Perhaps you could sell some of it, hold on to the rest?"
He shook his head. "They have to have it all or nothing. Something to do with the topography, they need the entire ridge for the development to work."
We both understood that there wasn't an option. This was it—accept the money and watch the forest disappear, or cling to the land and get by the way they had always done.
"Jenny's house hunting again," Nolan said quietly. "Saw this small house on Elm Street, not much but there's a wonderful kitchen and a backyard for the kids. She says nothing, leaves the flyer on the kitchen counter where I'll notice it. Been there three weeks now."
That hurt more than anything else he'd ever said to me. I knew Jenny, knew she'd sacrificed a lot of dreams in the last few years without complaining. If she was looking for a house, serious looking for a house, then she'd reached the end of the rope.
"When are they wanting a decision?"
"End of the week."
Four days. Four days to choose whether or not money was worth more than memory, whether the future of his family was more important than his dad's legacy. Shit of a choice to have to make.
"Whatever you choose," I told him, "I've got your back. You know that, don't you?"
He nodded but didn't meet my eyes. Just kept gazing into the flames as if they had the power to incinerate the burden on his shoulders.
"At times, I wonder whether my daddy would have made the same choice," he stated. "Times were different at that time, but money's always money. Family's always family."
"Your daddy never had children to take into account."
"No, but he had his own dreams. His own ambitions for that land." Nolan stood up and walked to stand atop our campsite, looking up at the ridge where his land started. "He used to envision building a cabin up there someday, maybe raising a few herd animals on the cleared meadow. Never did have the chance."
I trailed him to the outer fringes of the firelight. From where we stood, you couldn't see very far into the blackness, but I knew every inch of that mountainside. Knew where the old logging road switchbacked up into the trees, where the creek formed a swimming hole so deep you could jump off the side and into it, where the view broke open and you could see three counties spread out below.
"Remember that time we got lost up there?" I asked. "Had to have been, like, twelve years old?"
"Thirteen." A small smile burst across his face. "We figured for sure we'd die of hunger until we found that old hunting camp."
"And you were so cocky about yourself when you figured.n.—north with that trick your daddy taught me."
"Moss will grow on the north side of trees," he said instinctively, then grinned. "Except when it doesn't."
"Except when it doesn't," I repeated.
We stood there remembering, and I could see him wrestling with it all over again. Past tugging one direction, future tugging another, and him torn in the middle, trying to figure out which one was the priority.
"I have to ask you something," he said finally. "And I want the truth from you."
"Shoot."
"Am I selfish? Holding onto something that's already gone just because I don't want to let it go?"
I thought about it, really thought hard. Then said, "Maybe. But maybe that's the wrong question."
"What do you mean?"
"Perhaps the question is whether you can sleep at night knowing you sold it, or whether you can sleep at night knowing you kept it and your family went without."
He was silent for a very long time. When he finally did speak, his voice was different. More placid, perhaps. Like he'd discovered something he'd been searching for.
"Jenny and I, we talked about a whole lot of things when we were married. Never talked about this, though. Never thought we'd have to choose between security and. and all that other nonsense."
"Maybe you should talk to her."
"Maybe I should." He turned back to the fire. "Maybe it's not my decision to make alone."
We went back to our chairs and I watched him stare into the flames once more. Tomorrow he'd ride back home and sit with his wife at their kitchen table and lay it all out there—the offer, the choice, the weight of it all. And somehow, between the two of them, they'd decide what came first.
But tonight the forest remained. The trees remained upright, the creek remained flowing, and the land his daddy left him was still his to guard or relinquish.
The fire burned down lower, and neither of us spoke much after that. Some choices don't require an audience, and some words better get spoken in silence.
When morning came, we'd break the tents and depart, and things would proceed irrespective of what Nolan had chosen. But now, sitting in a circle by that dying fire with eight hundred thousand dollars hanging over our heads like a storm cloud, we could do nothing but sit and listen to the darkness and hope that whatever lay ahead would be something we could all live with.
