J.D.’s Columns

The World Cup      The LaForce brothers hired me out of a saloon in Slave Lake. They were cutting pulpwood in a swamp alongside 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 pulp trees were an endless thicket of peckerpoles growing in a  mosquito hatchery and the LaForce boys were pulpwood professionals.  They had worked together so long that 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, who didn't like Americans of any shape.      In the 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.    ...