Read Celia's Song for Free Online

drinking a lot, and harassing Steve, the only white man in the crew. “You’re letting all the dust in.” Steve shuts his window. He hates Amos, but he is right. No sense spitting until the truck stops.
    I am no fan of Amos, either, but I get his anger. I don’t get Steve’s quandary — if clearcutting is wrong, then you stop .
    The truck pulls to a stop at the foot of a nameless mountain that has been primed for clearcutting. The men spill out and head up the incline as soon as the truck stops. This is Steve’s sixth season. He is a choker man for Amos, a faller. The spacers have already been through, cutting everything down that isn’t going to be logged; others loaded the refuse, hauled it out, and consigned it to a funeral pyre some twenty miles south. The forest is thin now; only big trees dot the hill.
    Steve chokes off a tree, George tops it and marks it for Amos. Amos jerks the rope on his chainsaw. The saw’s whine and whir sound decisive, mean, and tough. Amos likes the meanness of the saw’s sound.
    To tell the truth, I like the toughness of the whine of a chainsaw too, even though I don’t like what it’s for .
    The first cut slows the whine to a groan and the tree leans into it like she wants to be harvested. Even through the earmuffs the husky whine hurts Steve’s ears. The air is now full of the crackling and snapping of branches as the tree lunges to the ground. Branches pop and fly as she hits the dirt, two hundred feet of building timber crashed to the hill floor. The men stand still, watching for spikes flying in their direction .
    One spike can kill you .
    The men move on to harvest another tree while Joey and Sam whip up their saws and go into action, skinning her of her branches. Steve thinks he can hear the tree scream.
    From seven in the morning to noon the crew chokes, fells, and skins. They fell a truckload’s worth by morning’s end.
    Steve looks at the bald patch on the mountain and feels the selfloathing rising again. It isn’t just the dust, the camp, the company, or the rain he hates. He hates the wasting of the hillside that their handiwork contributes to; the melancholy he feels after seeing the devastation they have inflicted gnaws at his nerves. He hates knowing that he helped strip this mountain bare. He knows the dirt will be caught by the rain and dragged to the sea to be lost in her depths. Alternating flood and drought plague the thin valley floors of clearcut mountains; drought in the rainforest poses a danger to the water table. Exposed by the absence of trees, the mammals leave, the land becomes a ludicrous desert in the middle of a rainforest, and summer temperatures rise — not just here, but everywhere. He feels like a criminal held hostage by his dreams.
    Hostages first trap themselves, but Steve has no way of knowing this. He is a newcomer and they have a whole different way of seeing things. I want to sleep this story off, but I can’t.

V
    THE BONES IN THE longhouse are not very old. The ones under the house are older. They are the ones who fell from the sky when this world first began. The oldest bones buried deeper in the soil rattle and sing the oldest songs they know as they work their way to the surface. They call out to the other bones, hoping the younger ones will join them in the song. The newer bones answer and the echo is magnificent. The ancient dead roll over, keep wiggling and singing their way to the surface. The song gains volume and Steve thinks he hears it.
    Something is going to happen here.
    â€œThere are consequences for negligence,” the newer bones sigh to the old bones. Steve shakes his head, thinking he must be dehydrated, and reaches for his Thermos. As he sits on a log eating his lunch, he wonders about the things he thinks he’s heard. A murder of crows lands on the trees not yet harvested and they caw. Steve jerks his head in the sound’s direction. Amos