Louis LaForce

Alberta, Canada 

     I was headed to Alaska when the LaForce brothers hired me out of the Slave Lake Saloon. They were cutting pulpwood in a swamp along the Athabasca River and looking for help. Five bucks an hour, under the table. Screw the work visa if I could run a chainsaw and pile slash.

     The LaForce boys were pulpwood professionals, three generations who had worked together so long they pissed in unison before walking onto the logging unit. They were hunched men, top-heavy from working with their arms and shoulders, simple and honest and friendly, except for Louis, the eldest son, who didn't like Americans of any shape.

    In camp at night they played rummy and talked in French of the politics of Quebec while I lounged in my camper shell, listening to a shortwave radio and applying Calamine lotion.

     On the first Saturday night of my employ, I drew three hundred and fifteen dollars Canadian for sixty-three hours of work. In the saloon, with a dozen Molsen's in him, Jerry LaForce confessed to me that he and his brothers were paid a penny a square foot for knocking down the pulpwood. We were averaging five acres a day. Forty-some thousand square feet to the acre. This penciled out to six hundred dollars per brother per day.

     The LaForce Boys were Catholics. St. Christopher stood among the chainsaw parts on their dashboards. Jean had the bleeding heart of Jesus tattooed on his left forearm. We did not cut pulpwood on Sunday. That was my assigned morning to cook.

     On the third Saturday night, surly Louis instructed me to have the Sunday breakfast ready by nine o'clock, because at ten the CBC was to broadcast the final game of the World Cup soccer match and he had once played sandlot soccer in Montreal.

     After relieving myself into a nettle patch at five on Sunday morning, I crawled back into my camper to take a hit of current events and discovered that the British Broadcasting Corporation was broadcasting on shortwave the same soccer game their Canadian affiliate would delay until a more civilized North American hour.

       I listened through my old Koss headphones so I wouldn't wake the brothers. It was a juicy game. The score was tied until an Englishman, Geoff Hurst, scored two goals in the last two minutes, making the final score England 4,Germany 2. I rolled out of the sack and had the coffee, hog parts, and hotcakes ready by nine.

That gave me a full hour to pimp Louis. I talked soccer like an American, said I figured the game could go either way, but I favored England because I'd been reading in the papers about some guy named Hurst. A French Canadian is going to take the Hessians over the Queen every time. By ten o'clock I had him on the hook for five hundred Canadian.

I held my breath at the beginning of the broadcast. The CBC never mentioned the taped delay. Neither did I. I tended the fire and watched Louis' face as Hurst became the only player in a World Cup final to score three goals in one game. I stashed the money in the air cleaner of my truck.

Two months later, when the snow began to fly, the brothers shut down the pulpwood operation. Alaska seemed too far away in the wrong direction. It was time for me to wander to California. First I drove to Athabasca, bought Louis a new American chainsaw and a Pakistani soccer ball, and left them on the seat of his truck outside the Slave Lake Saloon.