After my boyfriend left, I packed up, too. But I’d spent all the money from my uncle on that infernal slope. I couldn’t even pay for a bus ticket home. I went to the bar and stood under the air vent. I charged my phone and called my aunt, ended the call before she picked up. I didn’t want to admit defeat. I knew she’d made some outlandish equation that if I would just get married all her struggles would be worth it. But now I was alone with a leaky camper, a flock of ducks, twenty acres to care for, little firewood, and no income to speak of. My aunt’s number blazed up on my phone’s screen. She was calling me back. I canceled it. The air vent blared. I went through my contacts, the guys my boyfriend had known, who’d been up north with him, or worked construction in town. Called Frank. “You know I can’t hire you onto my crew,” he said. “Why don’t you try Rudy? I hear he’s desperate. Your man left him high and dry.”

“Why can’t you hire me?” I asked.

“I’ve never seen a woman could work a full day like one of my men,” Frank said. “The economy’s too hard right now to do it out of sympathy. Besides, what would my wife think?” To be helpful, I told him that his crew was primarily made up of pill heads and drunks, that I could work circles around them, and that, as far as I could tell, he had never asked his wife what she thought about anything before, so why start now? These people believed strongly that the world was coming to an end soon because of solar flares and the shifting of the poles, not that they ever mentioned climate change, relentless war, or industrial capitalism, but he had hung up.

So I shifted my bike down to its lowest gear and I rode up to Tanner’s Corner, where Rudy was clearing a half acre of yellow pine. Tangled red ponytail sticking out from underneath his hard hat, pink safety goggles, hairy face so full of sawdust it looked like he’d been breaded. He had his Husqvarna 362XP gnawing out the hinge on a fifteen-foot stub when I leaned my bike up against his truck, but he let it idle when he saw me.

“If you come any closer, I’ll take it you want to be killed by this tree,” he yelled above the motor. I stood back while he made the back cut. We watched it fall. Rudy turned off the saw and lifted his goggles. “You expecting your man back anytime soon?” he asked.

“Seems like you’re having a hard time holding on to ground crews,” I said.

“Must be due to my bad attitude,” he said.