talk through what came next. Dale arrived with two men. A furniture maker drove down from Mendocino after hearing about the unusual scar. The auction company sent a representative. A few neighbors leaned against the fence. Annie sat on the top rail with a juice box and a notebook in which she'd drawn the trunk as she imagined it looked from above.
Preston's car arrived at ten minutes to nine. Nobody had invited him, and he did not pretend otherwise. He shook hands, accepted coffee, and stood where he could see the entire length of the log without getting sawdust on his shoes. He seemed pleased by the gathering, as if Maren had arranged a public demonstration of the point he'd been making for weeks. When she went past him carrying chalk, he asked whether she'd prepared an acceptance speech for the firewood. She looked through him toward the operator and kept walking.
Wyatt Cordell ran the portable slab rig. He was a lean man with forearms burned brown by years outdoors and a manner that suggested he trusted measurements more than verbal assurances. He'd worked coastal salvage for two decades and knew that giant trunks were often more complicated inside than their owners imagined. He and his crew spent the better part of the morning positioning equipment, checking support, and planning the pass. Nobody who understood the risk complained about the time. Those of us with less patience watched the sun climb and tried not to look as nervous as Maren had every right to be.
She marked a proposed cut line in chalk along the flank, stepped back, and studied the way it passed the old fire scar. Then she moved the line by an inch. She stood at the butt end, comparing it with her father's sketch and with photographs she'd taken on the day the log arrived. She moved the line a second time, enough that Wyatt came over and asked her to explain what she was trying to expose. She showed him the curved grain on the outer edge and the spot where she expected the figure to widen, if it existed at all. He listened, nodded, and told her what the machine could safely reveal.
Preston observed from beside my truck. "Consulting the spirits?" he called when Maren laid her palm flat on the char for a moment. Somebody laughed. I saw Wyatt glance up, then return to his preparations without offering a comment. The operator wasn't interested in the social argument. He was interested in delivering the cut Maren had purchased without damaging people, equipment, or whatever lay inside the trunk.
When the saw finally started, conversation stopped for a reason that had nothing to do with respect. The sound filled the side yard and seemed to move through the ribs of everyone standing near it. Fine red dust lifted along the line of the pass, and the smell of fresh redwood mixed with the old sharpness of the burned flank. Annie lowered her juice box and stared. Maren stood beyond the marked boundary with her hands at her sides, not folded, not crossed, her fingers open as though she had decided there was no point concealing the fact that she was waiting.