The Least of the Lumberjacks

by S. C. Mills

11 minutes reading time (2,600 words)
Originally published in the Dudes Rock anthology

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High in the mountains, where the air is rare and cool, a lonely lumberjack meets a forest troll.

The troll unfolds his long hairy body from under the bridge, and the lumberjack stumbles back into the forest. He trips through ferns and falls against an ancient sugar pine. The dull roar of the river fills the lumberjack's ears as he tilts his head back and up, up, up, looking ten, fifteen, twenty feet or more up at the troll's wide and startled amber eyes. Chest heaving under the tight cloth that binds it, he flattens himself against the tree, pressing his palms against it. Maybe that's what it would feel like to embrace a troll—the scraggly, dry, late-winter moss like the creature's matted hair, the rough bark like his brown skin, the rising panic in his chest sharp like the monster's yellowed teeth.

"Who are you?" The troll's voice is like crackling leaves and squelching mud.

The lumberjack drops his jaw and his ax. "Just a l-l-lowly lumberjack," he says through chattering teeth. "I've been cutting trees all winter, and now that the snow has melted in the lowlands, it's time to return to the farm for spring planting. I just want to cross your bridge and go home."

The troll lowers his head, swooping down, down, down to the lumberjack's eye level. The lumberjack lets out an embarrassing "Eep!" and scrambles against the elderly tree, boots slipping against the slick, time-worn roots.

"You are a lumberjack?" The troll blasts him with hot breath smelling of wet earth and mushrooms, slimy with rot. He lifts a bony hand, each joint of every finger sticking out at angles like branches on a freshly felled tree, and reaches a hooked claw toward the lumberjack—

"I'm the least of the lumberjacks! Please don't eat me." He hunches his shoulders, making himself even smaller. His mind races for any way to avoid becoming supper. "I'd make such a poor meal. Why waste your appetite on me, today, when there's fattened-up fare coming this way tomorrow morning?"

The troll's hand pauses just above the lumberjack's shoulder.

"I'm scrawny and puny, I know, but the others I work with are huge hunks of well-marbled muscle. They chop trees every day and feast every night. Tonight they're even sharing a whole roast goat for dinner to celebrate the end of the logging season. Eat them, not me!"

The troll lifts an eyebrow, a bushy nest crawling with caterpillars. "Then why have you left before everyone else, you who are the least of the lumberjacks, to embark on this journey alone? You could have feasted with your fellows tonight, then traveled with them in the safety of numbers tomorrow."

"Well, they didn't invite me to their feast, for one." Melancholy makes the lumberjack's face long. "And… I miss my lover," he whispers, forgetting his fear and leaning in, his lips inches from the troll's. "He stays on our farm to tend our livestock over the winter, while I travel here to cut logs to pay for new plows. Once the winter's work is done, I go straight home to him."

The troll's clawed hand creeps closer. Breeze through the boughs makes dappled sunlight move across his craggy face.

"If you eat me, he'll never even know what happened to me!" The lumberjack scrunches his eyes shut, waiting for the worst. Nothing happens. The sweet stench of decay, waxing and waning on the tempo of the troll's heavy breathing, recedes. The lumberjack opens his eyes.

The troll is standing straight, his expression unreadable, his face backlit by the late morning sun. The lumberjack holds his breath, thinking of falling into his lover's arms once again, hoping and shaking from his trembling jaw all the way down to his tired cold feet in his holey wool socks in his dirty old boots.

The troll wheels around to face away. "Go." That single word is as heavy as the thud of a great fallen fir, echoing across a mountain valley.

The lumberjack scrambles for his ax and his footing. He slinks past the troll, across the bridge, and runs along his way. The river runs also, carrying the fruit of his logging camp's labor downstream to the sawmill. Felled trees float by on his right, each one cut by a person whose name he knows. He imagines the troll's sharp teeth, the intelligence captured in those big brown eyes, glowing in the sunshine, pupils each a tiny black fly caught in a sea of honey.

The lumberjack listens for the thud, thud, thud of a troll's steps behind him, but it's guilt that catches him first.

He stops walking. He grips his ax at his side. He drops his chin to his chest, his scant new beard tickling at his collarbones where his worn wool shirt is unbuttoned to catch the breeze. A deep growl rumbles in his chest, climbs the scale up in pitch into his throat, and at last emerges as a muffled scream through the gaps in his clenched teeth.

He stomps away from the riverbank and into the forest. He picks a birch tree slim enough for even his arms to fell alone—spindly sapling arms, by lumberjack standards—and begins hack, hack, hacking away. Once the tree is down, he strips away the branches. Last, he pulls out a penknife and carves a few words deep into the flaky white bark and signs it with his initials. He hopes the miller will find the message and tell his lover what happened.

He drags the log into the river, then trudges back the way he came. When he nears the bridge, he cuts away from the trail and creeps through the woods, circling around the bridge and the troll, the evergreen boughs concealing him even in winter. Once he's a safe distance upstream from the bridge, he cuts right back to the river and follows the muddy bank up the mountain, back toward the riverside logging camp.

By the time he stands on the opposite side of the river from the camp, the sun is nearly set. He's drenched in sweat from the steep climb, his ax weighing heavy on his shoulder. In the sun's dying light, he sees a goat on a spit over a great fire. Dark spots shaped like men move between the fire and the river, looking away. One stands tall and proud, his arms folded across his chest, his bearded chin stuck into the air in silhouette. The other throws back his head, roaring in laughter, and claps his friend on the back so hard that the first man takes a step forward, spilling his mug of beer.

Envy burns in the lumberjack's heart.

Nobody goes out of their way to invite him to feasts. No one ever laughs at his jokes or claps him on the back. No one ever brings him a mug of camp-brewed sour beer. His dinners are silent affairs, inhaled quickly on his feet in the kitchens, before he runs off to his bunk for the night.

He stands on the other side of the river while long, lonely minutes pass in which, like usual, no one looks his way. He's risking a troll's wrath and will be late to see his lover, all for men who don't even miss him. He could just turn around and go back down the mountain now.

And yet. And yet. And yet.

He doesn't turn around.

He keeps not turning around.

He shouts the name of the man who told the joke, and then the name of the man who laughed. He knows their names from working side by side every day, all season, though he doubts they know his.

Neither of them look up.

He shouts again at the tippy-top of his lungs. The roar of the great river, crashing down hard in the high mountains, drowns out his words. He waves his ax above his head and jumps up and down, but the men are standing by a bright fire at dusk and it's dark, darker, now far too dark for them to see him. He leaps and stamps and roars back at the river, the mud sucking at his old boots, until his throat feels raw.

No one hears him.

No one looks his way.

He can't warn them.

The lumberjack shuffles back away from the river, shoulders rounded in defeat, and sits down on a fallen log. He hangs his head. He lets his ax slip from his hand. The cold wind off the river hits his sweaty skin and he shivers, alone. Maybe he can warn his fellows in the morning, but probably not. In wintertime, lumberjacks rise early and the sun rises late. They'll march merrily away from camp by torchlight and down the mountain until they run into the troll. There, they'll meet the same fate as the goat on their spit tonight.

Rustle, thud, squelch.

The lumberjack looks up, and then up more, and then up even more, at the darker darkness of the blocked-out stars rising twenty feet or more above him.

"Eep."

"I followed you down the mountain and then up it again. You are a liar."

The troll's quiet accusation stops the lumberjack's tongue and makes his heart race. At least that warms him up. He will not die shivering.

"You always intended to warn the others, to save them from a monster. You are just too small to shout across the river. I caught your log and read your love letter, but maybe you did that just to delay and distract me. Maybe your lover is a lie, too."

"He's not!" The lumberjack overcomes his fears to defend himself. "I told you no lies. I didn't intend to warn the others, not at first. I intended to go on to my lover, just like I said."

"You were in too much of a hurry to want to warn your friends?"

"What friends? None of the other lumberjacks like me." Why not be honest when death is so near? "I'm lonely, troll. I've missed my lover so much while we've been apart. He's the only one who ever speaks kindly to me, touches me, or even just listens to me without laughing at me."

The lumberjack's neck hurts from craning it to look up. He looks down from the troll-shaped gap in the stars and across the river at the fire and the men who stand around it. Longing fills his heart for a camaraderie that he believes will never be his.

Rustle, thud, squelch.

The troll steps over the fallen log and sits next to the lumberjack. The old wood creaks and cracks under his weight.

"Do people cower in fear when you come near?" the troll asks.

"No," says the lumberjack.

"That is what they do with me," says the troll. "Do they flee in terror? Threaten you?"

"No."

"That is what they do with me. Do they attack you with axes and arrows?"

"No. Never."

"Then why are you so lonely?" The troll's whisper drifts out into the dark, like the rustling branches of the trees above them. "I have no lover. I have no fellows. I have no friends. I have only myself. People see my teeth and my claws, and they fear me and hate me before I even speak."

"You and I have opposite problems, then. I fear them."

"But why? They have not threatened you. And why do you fear me? I did not threaten you either. I do not eat people. I only eat goats." The troll points a crooked finger across the river at the fire and the goat on a spit. "They also eat only goats, not people."

Silence, aside from the distant rushing water and the swish of tree branches, while the lumberjack processes that. Then, he laughs and laughs, slapping his thigh and leaning back on the uneven log. His shoulder brushes the troll's side. The troll shivers.

"You're right," the lumberjack says, once he's recovered. "I just assumed you were dangerous, like I assumed they don't like me."

"I know I look dangerous, though I am not. Why do you fear they do not like you?"

"Well, I'm… small. Different. My voice is soft and high. My body is thin and weak. I’m not the same kind of man that they all are. I'm easy to overlook. I'm nothing like them."

"All human men are small to me," says the troll. "To me, you seem just like them."

"Thank you," says the lumberjack. "You're a lot like me, too."

The troll sets his hand on the lumberjack's back, like the men do to each other, but gentle, gentle, so gentle, as if he's trying to catch a cloud. His hand covers the lumberjack from shoulder to shoulder. The lumberjack stiffens, and then relaxes. The troll's hand is warm, like a stone from the campfire in his bed at night.

"At least you have your lover." The trolls' voice comes soft like the patter of rain on treetops. "You should go on to him now. You do not need to warn these men about me. I do not eat lumberjacks." The troll's knobby feet press into the mud as he stands, his head lifting high into the sky. "I will go now."

The lumberjack's back is cold where the troll's hand used to be.

Now he has everything he wanted.

And yet.

The lumberjack grips his ax. He stands up. "Take me across the river."

"What?" The troll drops his jaw and his foot, for he has already begun walking away. "What about your lover?"

"He already expects me late, and we already survived a winter apart. Right now, I need your help, not his. I truly am the least of the lumberjacks, the weakest and smallest of us all. Maybe the others don't mind that, or maybe they do, but I still can't ford the river alone. I'm too short. I'll drown." Reckless courage fills him anyway, in spite of these truths. He lifts up his empty hand, reaching for the troll. "Let's go to their feast together. I don't care that we aren't invited. With you, I will not be as afraid. With me, you will not be as feared. Maybe together we can learn to make friends."

The troll stands in silence for a long moment. Then, he lowers his hand down, down, down to the ground, so the lumberjack can crawl up his arm, clamber onto his shoulder, and cradle his rough, hairy neck. Together, they wade across the river.

The lumberjacks gather in a clump, eyes up and jaws down, as troll and man emerge from the water. No one runs away. No one laughs at them. "Is that Gruff up there?" they ask each other. "With a troll?!"

"It's me," says Gruff. "Can I join you?"

He's never asked before. It's terrifying, but so was meeting a troll, at first.

One other brave soul pushes to the front of the crowd. In his trembling hands he holds aloft two mugs, their frothy contents slopping and spilling over the sides.

"Course you can," he says. "You and your big friend."

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