Carlos limped to the worksite near South Fork, Colorado, out where he believed the early October air surrounding the San Juan Mountains held strange spirits. He positioned his double-bitted axe through the barbed wire fence and struggled his limbs between the razors.

“Viejo,” the broken-faced Tony Sandoval shouted, pulling at the cigar beneath his harelip. “Too good to sign in like the rest of us?”

Carlos shifted his axe from one aching shoulder to the other.

He slapped at his deaf ear and scratched at greying whiskers.

Ahead of the crew of men, placed far in miles of green woods and down among a skidway of ten-foot-high logs, the saw engine ripped through the first of the day. The littlest man of the crew, Pifanio Jaramillo, stood there staring at the mountain of trees and then the surrounding wooded hills. “Less talk and more work, cabrónes.”

Carlos rested his axe against a tree and hustled before any of the other younger men to help roll a chunk from under the saw. About ten a.m., Tony slid a decrepit branch under the saw.

Most of the logs were birch and beech and some maple, eighteen to thirty inches through, but this one was only a few inches. The thickset one they called Eddie took off his greasy denim cap and hollered, “Quit fucking around.”

Tony grinned and laughed with the rest of the men. “Lookit what I am making for the old man. Carlos needs his caneto

walk.”

The blade bent and the branch kicked sideways from the track, rapping Eddie just under the jaw. By the time Pifanio stepped in and raised the saw, the blade had jumped free and hung spinning and shaking shredded pulp from its two-inch teeth.

“Ay, que cabrón!” Pifanio said. “What the hell are yous do- ing?”

“Kicked,” Tony said, glaring at Pifanio. “Knocked him in the face.”

Eddie chuckled, felt at his chin. Carlos slapped at his dead ear before finally running to clear the branch from the line.

at lunchtime, Eddie cut the switch, and the engine stopped with aching coughs. Tony sank his axe in the chunk they were splitting and collected his flannel shirt from the bushes.

“Come on, Carlos,” Pifanio called.

The rest of the men looked and grinned, and then mud-footed, one by one, they made their way to enter the makeshift tent at the top of the hill.

Inside the tent Pifanio’s table sat with lunch boxes and mason jars filled with water. By the time Carlos finished his smoke and sat down at the table, the men had finished washing up out of tarp-lined buckets. They ate their bologna slices and drained thermoses of coffee.

“We should have a radio, Pifanio,” Eddie said. “What do you think, viejo? Carlos? We need a radio in here or no?”

Carlos stared as his ear buzzed and cracked, the voices not quite reaching him. Finally, he grunted with an understanding. “You want music, get down to Main Street on Saturday night,”

Pifanio added and nodded.

“Hey Carlos, tell me what you were saying about the Indian hell,” one of Pifanio’s men said, laughing out loud. “What’sthis

about hell’s entrance, Carlos?”

“Sipapu!” Carlos finally acknowledged. “Mountain hell—” “What language is that?”

“Tewa Pueblo,” Carlos whispered.

“A mountain hell?” one man said. “Like the shit work of a life out here, Carlos! Que no?”

“Hey, Carlos,” one interrupted. “Tells us about the war and fighting in the trenches.”

“Yah, Carlos,” another agreed. “Tell us about shooting Germans.”

“Old man has some batshit stories,” Tony laughed. “Bullshit,” Eddie whispered under his breath. “He’s never

been to no war.”

“Sipapu is a place in the mountains,” Carlos finally whispered. “It’s a home—”

“Oye, Carlos. Old man,” Tony interrupted. “I hear you got a wife out there in Monte Vista.”

“I hear she’s fresh from the looney bin,” Eddie claimed. “From the institution. Not quite right in the head.”

“Jesus Christ!” Pifanio said. “Give my Compadre’s life some respect. Didn’t none of you ever learn to respect elders? For Christ’s sake!”

The men loitered after lunch smoking and throwing their va- chas safely into a water bucket outside of the tent then walked silently down the skid road into the woods and their saw work.

The youngest man, Renzo, pointed at Carlos’ half-smoked cigarette and asked: “Can you teach me to roll my own?”

Carlos shook his head at the simple boy, not registering the words directly. Before Eddie had his saw engine running and before he refilled the tank, Tony and Jake had their axes and hooks into tough and knotty wedges they had rolled aside earlier.

Carlos later answered the voices, slapping at the buzzing in his ears, “I ain’t about to be no boy’s schoolteacher.”