The transport quotes arrived in pieces, which made them worse. A carrier could move the log but not load it. Another had a crane contact but couldn't commit before a scheduled highway job. A third could do the full move if the county road conditions held, but his number included contingencies that took Maren's breath away. Every offer was reasonable from the contractor's side. Add them together and the cost of getting the tree to her shop would exceed what she'd paid at auction by a margin she couldn't comfortably explain to her bank.
I watched her write down the totals. She didn't tear the page away when the arithmetic went wrong. She started another column for what she could postpone, what she could cover from pending invoices, and what she could pay only if a cabinet order arrived on time. The figures didn't become kinder because she wrote them neatly. She knew that. I knew that. But order is one of the few mercies available when the numbers are frightening.
Dale Merriman came over while she was still calling crane companies. He ran a mill across the next valley, about twice the size of hers, and he had helped her with overflow runs before. Dale was the kind of man whose advice you could trust because he would give it even when it made him unpopular. He looked at the paper and didn't pretend to like what he saw. "Flip it," he told her. "Call a broker, take a manageable loss, and go home with your shop still standing."
She thanked him. "I think I'm keeping it," she said.
Dale stared at the log, then at her face. "Maren, the freight alone will hurt you. That's before a blade goes near it. Tell me you have a reason better than wanting to prove Preston wrong."
She looked toward the burned flank. "The scar is the reason," she said.
Dale thought she meant the burn had left an interesting surface for decoration. She shook her head and tried again. The grain at the outer edge turned in a slow arc around the wound and kept turning beyond it. The color in that narrow band was deep and even, not bleached by decay, and her tapping along the flank had produced a firmer sound than she'd expected. She didn't know what was inside. She knew that the tree had survived its old fire long enough to build substantial wood around it, and that this growth was following a pattern unusual enough to deserve one careful look.
"Most of the volume might be terrible," she admitted. "That's the risk. But what if the fire made the part worth keeping?"
"Fire generally doesn't make lumber better," Dale said.
"It doesn't make ordinary lumber better," she answered. "I'm not sure ordinary lumber is what this is."