But by the time Jack was a boy, the white pines were almost exhausted. Some of the lumber mills were adapting to process hemlock. Though it was not as straight and strong as the white pine, hemlock had bark that was used in tanning leather, and was becoming more and more in demand. According to what Jack’s mother had told him, Jack’s uncle Gust, seeing the supply of white pine dwindling, had been adamant that the Pine Rapids mill had to move toward hemlock. John and his father had hesitated, not certain of the comparable profitability of such a venture. They wanted to stay with the white pine as long as possible, or diversify into other hardwoods. They were looking toward acquiring new land in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Gust argued that they were already sitting on a gold mine of hemlock, and they were foolish not to cash in.

After Gust was killed, Wilma had told Jack, Knute began to see merit in the hemlock idea, especially now that the rough lumber itself was in some demand. John dragged his feet, but eventually gave in. The mill was adapted for processing hemlock.

Jack had little but a vague recollection of his grandfather Knute, who had died when Jack was only five, but he did distinctly remember the springs and early summers of his boyhood, going out to the mill with his father and Chase. The boys would scamper away when their father wasn’t looking, Chase always trailing a little behind, and together they would climb the slabs of bark that were piled to cure. The delicate edges sometimes gave way beneath their toeholds, sacrificed to the boys’ ascent, falling like clods of earth to the ground.

When they reached the pile’s top, the brothers would settle on the rough surface, watching the men at work below them peeling the logs, inhaling the heady smells of the bark, while spring burgeoned brightly green around them. Later, when Jack saw the bodies of men decaying on the battlefield, or stacked along the trenches like sandbags, he would think of the trees at the mill, of those piles of bark, of the discussions he and his brother had had. (“Don’t the sun and the moon like each other, Jack?” “Of course not, Chasey. The sun is the boss and the moon works for him. The moon works the night shift because the sun doesn’t want to.”) There were points, Jack had realized, at which life and death commingled.