All You Can Eat

We approach at sunrise: five men packed into a crew-cab truck, descending on the last five-acre parcel deemed “problematic” because of its rumored curse. Armed with cables and winches, first aid kits, and an assortment of chainsaws, we're here to “beat the heat” of a fall afternoon, which means the real reason we got up so early is so that Ken could bang pots over my head at one in the morning.

He chain-smokes the entire drive because he’s the boss and considers my asthma a personal failing, though he keeps the windows cracked to appease my mother. I cringe when he flicks a butt out the window, my jeans singed from one that boomeranged into my lap and burned a second too long while I flailed and screamed for someone to find it.

Ken thought it was hilarious.

I worried the fumes in the truck might ignite.

Why Mom thinks sending an ecology major to work a summer job on a logging crew will bond her son and new husband is beyond me.

I lean forward over the seatback. "Are you sure they don't need someone to drive a truck or something? Maybe run a loader? Oil bars and chains?"

Ken laughs and says, "Do what I said and you'll be fine. Keep two tree-lengths between you and the next guy. Head on a swivel for an escape route. Got it?"

Billy, who claims to love this time of morning but has downed four energy drinks in under an hour, says, "Nice of you to worry, Boss," as if appealing to Ken's sense of fatherhood might help him professionally.

It's a flawed approach. Ken has his eye on a desk job and an empty nest. I'm not finishing college fast enough, so he figures he'll let a deadly job take its crack at me.

We arrive at the lot.

Billy wakes Norris with multiple thwaps on the forehead.

Leon's phone erupts in the Wicked Witch theme from Oz ringtone. His wife, with whom he's been texting the entire drive, is calling. He shoves me out the door to yell at her.

I take in the damage done already. Hundreds of acres of forest littered with plastic flags, neon paint markers, and a graveyard of stumps like a bomb had cleared miles in every direction. Habitat loss, gas emissions, and climate collapse are how humans exterminate themselves, but all these guys care about are the paychecks.

I sit with the silence—no birdsong, not a single insect—and feel a pull from this place. The air smells of pine and willow leaves, which old stories say mean tree spirits are near. I can almost make out the faces in the bark.

"All right, guys," Ken says, scratching his full beard. "The big boss says if we get these last few acres down, dinner is on him."

Billy fist-pumps, amped on caffeine.

Norris shrugs with the enthusiasm of someone who prefers liquid meals.

"I couldn’t help myself. She seduced me!” Leon says.

Ken taps his watch face. "Leon, man. Wrap it up. We’re burning daylight.”

Mulchers and a cleanup crew arrive—one truck towing a wood chipper and another to haul out the wood.

All I can think about is Demeter’s curse.

Emotionally stunted as he is, Ken recognizes my unease. "What is it, Kip?"

A light breeze kicks up.

I hear chimes in the distance.

"It's just—" I think about how best to warn him, but Ken isn't superstitious. He isn't worried about the trees. He doesn’t believe in curses. He won’t even recycle. "This reminds me of a story."

"On that note," Ken says, "let's move out. Corporate says the woo-woo types were evacuated, but keep your eyes peeled. The last thing we need is another lawsuit."

"What do you mean?" I ask.

"You know, court battles. Fines. Settlements."

"No. What 'woo-woo types'?"

"Tree huggers," Ken says. "Some cult. A bunch of protesting hippies."

My eyes go wider with each insult. "Humans were living here?"

"I know, right? Who lives in the woods in 2026?"

I add the displacement of indigenous people to the reasons I might be going to Hell today.

"Kip," Ken says. "You're with," he looks around, "Leon. As soon as he gets off the phone. Make sure to wear one of these." He hands me two orange work vests. "Norris, you're with Billy and me."

I hand Leon the safety gear.

"You do that," Leon says, snatching the vest from my hand. “Hire yourself a real good lawyer, and make sure to tell him you're unemployed."

I put on my hard hat and glasses, grab the cooler Mom packed me, a chainsaw, and head as far from Ken as I can get.

Leon follows. The sound of loose chaps slapping against jeans interrupts the serenity of this place.

"So, you're the nepo hire?" he says. "Lucky me."

"If I can leave these woods without cutting down a single tree, I'll die a happy man when Ken kills me."

Ken has an appearance to maintain. Control. Authority. The sweet promise of office work.

Leon says, "Yeah, well, do us both a favor and stay out of my way."

Chainsaws rev to life.

Heavy equipment descends.

A pit opens in my stomach at the thought that losing all this wilderness is what passes for progress.

I hear, ‘Go home,’ and think it’s Leon cursing me under his breath.

We're in the middle of nowhere, far beyond the reaches of Uber and Lyft. But I say, “I’d love to.”

"Love to what?" Leon asks.

"Didn't you just say—?"

“Go home.”

I hear it again, only this time I'm looking right at Leon, and his lips didn't move.

Hearing disembodied voices isn't the sort of thing one admits to someone he’s known for only a couple of hours, but either Leon moonlights as a ventriloquist, or someone else is here.

I catch a shimmer, like heat rising from the pavement, in my periphery.

Leon locks onto it. "Did you see that?"

“See what?" I ask, wondering what he thinks he saw.

"That hot chick. We need to get her out of here."

I don’t like the look on his face when he says it.

"Leon, wait!" I take off after him, headed toward the sounds of mechanical teeth into bark and the smell of fresh-cut wood. "I have to tell you something!”

My steel-toe work boot catches on a tower of stacked flat rocks—a cairn—either left behind by hikers or marking an ancient burial site.

It scatters.

I freeze.

Oh. OH NO.

I might as well have spilled ashes out of a funeral urn.

"I'm sorry," I apologize to no one and everything at once, scrambling to reassemble the marker, but unable to strike a balance.

The stones topple onto leaves too dark to have come from an oak. I hold a handful to my nose and inhale the leather-like scent of dried tobacco, which doesn't grow here.

I find a gold coin and a rustic clay statue of a woman.

Every discovery erases another doubt.

I call Ken and go immediately to voicemail.

I text, but the message cannot be delivered.

A sharp crack echoes nearby.

I feel the crash of a massive tree in my soul.

We need to get out of here. All of us. I owe these men nothing, but life is life. I don't get to assign its value. I chase the neon orange streak of Leon's safety vest through the grove, shouting for him to stop.

We race through moss and mushrooms, over a dry creek bed, and toward the rest of the crew hard at work.

The canopy rattles. A tree crashes. Another. Then another. I feel like I’m navigating a minefield.

I try Ken's cell again, but there's no signal.

I am running deeper into the woods with my phone over my head—praying for at least one bar of service—when I come upon the heart of the grove, and a ceremonially decorated oak.

Deep green, gold, and red ribbons hang from the boughs.

The chimes sound more like a warning than harmony.

Leon is undressing. His shoes and socks are on the ground next to his chainsaw. His chaps are off. His jeans are next. He is about to unbutton them.

"What are you doing?" I say. "Stop!"

Sirens, mermaids, and succubi have lured men into ruin for centuries. I have no doubt Leon is being seduced by something more powerful than any mistress.

We're all dead if we don't leave.

"You have a wife, and a girlfriend!” I collect his clothes. "We have to go!"

I might as well be invisible.

Leon unzips his jeans as our team rolls up.

Norris breaks into hysterics. "That is not the sort of wood we're after, my dude."

Billy lifts his face shield with a wide-eyed stare of disbelief.

Ken throws open the cab door of a skidder. "What the hell are you up to?"

“Ken, before you cut down this tree, I need to tell you something.”

“Kip, man, I love your mother, but so help me—”

Leon snaps out of his trance and looks at me like this is my fault.

I hand him his clothes.

“Five minutes. Okay? Just hear me out.” I step between Leon and the oak. “What if this grove is spiritually protected?”

Ken scoffs.

“There’s a myth about a king who cut down a sacred tree and was cursed by Demeter. Look at this place. The ribbons. The chimes. Leon saw a woman out here!”

Leon is dressed now, staring a hole through me that makes me glad looks can’t actually kill.

“Can we just consider the possibility for a second that if you cut this tree down—”

“Kid, get out of the way!” Ken says.

Billy stares, mouth agape.

Norris sips from his Thermos.

Leon snatches his chainsaw with the determined expression of someone with something to prove. He pulls the starter rope. The engine revs. He drops his face shield and comes at me like something out of a Texas horror film, the spinning chain so close that I can feel the wind off the blade. I have no choice but to step aside as he levels the saw and carves a notch. The tree bleeds.

***

The crew freezes me out after that. Even Ken thinks I’m nuts.

I tell him I want to go home.

He says it’s too far out of the way.

I quit my job.

We both knew it was coming.

He accepts my resignation with a head shake at an all-you-can-eat barbecue buffet called Pitmasters, where I remind him that I’m a vegetarian, and head for the salad bar.

The crew devours their first plates of meat before I eat a single crouton. I tell myself it's nothing to worry about. Myths aren't real. I tried to warn them. No one but me believes a gorgeous spirit inhabited that oak tree. After today, I’m not sure I care how crazy that sounds.

I take my time with a plate that would be a waste of money if the crew hadn’t already consumed a side of beef and a drove of swine.

Our waiter side-eyes the stacks of empties cluttering our table.

Billy says, “And here I was worried seeing Leon naked might make me lose my appetite.”

Ken smears pork grease into his beard with the back of his hand.

Chicken flies from Leon's mouth as he chews, elbows-deep in a stack of smoked wings.

Norris raises an empty beer pitcher for the waiter to bring a refill.

The more they eat, the hungrier they seem.

Exactly like the myth.

I won't outright accuse anyone of contemplating cannibalism, but I don't like the way Leon is looking at Ken.

A man in a crisply pressed Oxford with a nametag that reads Nikos strides up to the table.

"Excuse me, gentlemen. I'm sorry to interrupt, but we do have a length of stay policy." Nikos points to a tiny sign pasted to the far wall: two-hour time limit.

I check my watch.

A hundred minutes have passed already.

"I haven't had all I can eat." Ken wipes his hands on a napkin and gives Nikos his credit card. "Restart the clock."

I expect pushback, but Nikos shakes his head as he walks off with Ken's card.

The crew refuses to leave.

I spot a gold streamer glued to the heel of Leon’s shoe.

Food is becoming scarce.

The barbecue sauce looks too much like sap.

I cannot keep quiet.

"Can I at least finish the story?" I ask.

Ken rolls his eyes.

“Please. I think you should hear this.”

Ken shrugs. “Yeah, go on.” He gnaws on another hunk of charred flesh and picks at his teeth with his nail.

Leon leans in.

For a second, I think he might eat whatever it is right off Ken's finger.

Customers complain about the stripped buffet trays while staff rush fresh meat from the kitchen.

"As Erysichthon cut down the dryad’s tree, she vowed a curse from Demeter.” I dig in my pants pocket and set the tiny figurine I found in the woods in front of Ken's plate. I hadn't recognized her when I found it, but now I see the shape of a basket roughly carved into the sun-dried clay. "Whose curse was insatiable hunger. No matter how much Erysichthon ate, he only became hungrier. He ate all the food. Emptied granaries. Decimated flocks. He sold his daughter into slavery when he ran out of money, but was still hungry.”

Billy and Norris exchange glances.

Leon licks his plate clean.

Ken says, “So you’re saying working up an appetite is some kind of curse?"

Whether I say it or not, it doesn't make it less true.

"The worst kind. Desperate to be full, Erysichthon resorted to eating himself, one bite at a time, until there was nothing left of him."

Ken aims a finger at me, the way he does when he’s about to make a point, and jerks back too late when Leon bites down on it.