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who realized too late that their clothes would be snagged and made gummy with oozing sap. Nell went to the wide rail at the end of the deck and put down the Coke for Mikey on it, then opened her own, facing the river.
     
        Below, some men had set up a table and were playing cards; someone had started a smoky fire on one of the grills; a few boys were turning over rocks and staring intently at the exposed ground. The smoke from the grill drifted into Nell's eyes; she turned away as Mikey and Stu Hermann drew close. Stu had a beer in one hand and a string bag filled with books in the other. He was seventy or more, walked like a young man, and read a book a day and had for years.
     
        "
     
        "Lo, Nellie. How's things?" He grinned at her and eased the bag to the deck floor.
     
        "They just get heavier," he said.
     
        "Have to cut back one of these days."
     
        Before Nell could speak, Mikey caught her breath in and expelled it again in a scream.
     
        Farther down on the deck someone yelled, "Someone's in the river!"
     
        Nell twisted around and saw her. For a second or two the river held up the body of a naked woman, head bowed, arms dangling, long hair like seaweed wrapped around the upper torso. Then the figure was drawn back under the water.
     
        The pickup threw gravel as Nell took the curves too fast, but she did not slow down until she suddenly braked hard at her own drive, a continuation of the gravel road that finally dead-ended at her house. She slammed on the brakes and even skidded a little.
     
        Pulled off the road was a truck with a chipper; two men were standing by it, regarding her now, but they had been looking at the tall noble fir tree that marked the beginning of her property.
     
        "What are you doing?" she demanded, her head stuck out the side window.
     
        One of the men grinned at her. It was an insolent smile, the kind of smile some very large men reserve for small women, children, or cute animals.
     
        The other one said, "Going to take out that fir. Any minute now." He looked like a college boy, cheerful and happy.
     
        "What are you talking about? That tree's on private property. My property. You can't touch it!"
     
        "Honey, we got orders to take it down. Reckon that's what we aim to do."
     
        "Wait here," she said, after drawing in a deep breath.
     
        "You're from...." She peered at the truck. Clovis Woods Products.
     
        "There's been a mistake. Just wait a minute."
     
        The one with a grin shrugged, reached inside the truck, and pulled out an open can of beer. He finished the beer and set the can on the hood of the truck, then glanced at his watch.
     
        "Five minutes, honey, then we go to work again."
     
        Again? She looked up at the fir tree and saw that one of them already had been up there. A line dangled from the first branch, fifty feet up. It hadn't been secured yet. She nodded, engaged the gears, threw more gravel, and raced to her house at the end of the driveway, a quarter mile away.
     
        At the house she tore through the living room, upstairs to her bedroom where she unlocked the gun cabinet and yanked out her old Remington. She was loading it as she ran through the house, back to the truck. Then she sped to the end of the drive where the two men were still lounging, gazing up at the fir tree. It was old growth, six feet in diameter, two hundred feet tall, so regular in form it could have served as a model for all other aspiring firs.
     
        When she jumped from the truck, one of the men, the college boy, took several steps toward her.
     
        "Look, lady, here's our work orders, all signed, all in good shape. Mrs.
     
        Kendricks said take that tree down, and we're the guys who do the work. Don't give us a hard time, okay?"
     
        Paying no attention, she walked around the truck and opened the