On Their Own Heads | Jill Witty
The thicket of spruces clinging to the side of the mountain did not intimidate Jeffords. Their trunks shot up toward heaven like spires, bare and pointed and piercing, yearning for their creator, but soon, like the defiled and unrepentant souls below him, they’d be rebuffed, sacrificed, and lain to rest on the sodden earth. Over the next few weeks, he’d fell hundreds of them.
The steep-slope dozer’s tracks had gotten stuck the week before, so the boss had directed Jeffords to proceed without heavy equipment. His new partner Rawlings, inexpert in the old ways, had agreed to follow his lead. Jeffords would scale each tree, a lanyard tied around his waist, spurs on his boots, chainsaw strapped to his back. Once in the trees, he could forget that sinner Rawlings, could instead lay hands on God’s perfection, prick his fingers on sharp, resin-laced needles, invite the beetles, ants, and wood wasps to ravage him, stinging or biting him if they chose, according to His will. Jeffords welcomed pain, his penance for past sins.
He began his climb to eighty feet, moving first the lanyard, then each spur. Squirrels froze, startled by his presence, like Rawlings when Jeffords walked in on him the night before, his hairy, muscled chest soaring above a just-ravished body, face down on the sheet. Jeffords shook the image from his mind. On the forest floor, Rawlings scurried about, his brown skicap just visible as he hauled off the limbs that Jeffords felled with his chainsaw. That morning at the camp, Rawlings hadn’t been able to find his orange hardhat.
The most dangerous job in the world, they said, but for thirty-seven years Jeffords had never suffered more than scrapes and sore muscles. He was doing the Lord’s work, falling the trees when it was their time, separating the deserving from the unfit, so the Lord looked out for him.
A thick blanket of fog slogged in from the east, threatening to unfurl overhead. The night before, Rawlings had rolled off, then cowered naked in front of Jeffords. He had begged for mercy, and Jeffords, soft, had turned away. Mercy wasn’t Jeffords’ to dole out, for it had been decided in Leviticus. Their blood will be on their own heads. Jeffords had known that lust, but he’d changed, become a good shepherd. Now the fog was descending; in minutes, it enveloped Jeffords in a cloud. He could no longer see the spruce’s crown or the base of its trunk.
Accidents happened in the forest. Limbs fell in unexpected directions. Acts of God, they called them.
Rustling at the base of the tree—Rawlings was down there. The fog entered Jeffords’ nostrils like speed, a potent rush straight from the heavens. Without warning, Jeffords fired up the chainsaw and made a backwards cut, sending the limb straight down. He severed limbs in a fury, descending quick as a snake, falling ten-foot sections of the trunk without stopping. God only knew what he’d find when he reached bottom.
Jill is writing her second novel and raising kids in Richmond, Virginia. Her work can be found in Catapult, Atlas & Alice, and New Flash Fiction Review. Connect with her at jillwitty.com or on Twitter @jwitty.