We stood awkwardly at the counter. I wanted to shift from foot to foot to burn off the nervous energy, but my fucking back was still killing me. The silence stretched, not uncomfortable exactly, but loaded. I think we both knew this meeting could either be very productive or explode.
When the drinks finally hit the counter, I grabbed them, and Rachel and I slid into a booth near the back window.
“I’m surprised you have time for this, since you run your own business,” Rachel said, pulling the lid from her tea and blowing on it. The move caused the bottom half of her glasses to fog up, and a smile threatened to spread over my face. She looked kind of cute like that, in anI would rather die, than admit it out loudkind of way.
I cleared my throat. “Yeah, well, I messed up my back. I’m on administrative duty only at the moment, and I’m bored without any trees to climb.”
“Just a little boy who never grew up, huh?”
I would’ve been insulted, except she smiled when she said it, complete with a little scrunch of her nose. This woman was more of a fairy tale character than a human.
“Something like that,” I muttered, sipping my too-hot coffee and burning my mouth in the process. “So you’re the academic here. Where do we start?”
Rachel pulled a notebook from her bag. When she shifted, the vinyl bench squeaked, and our knees bumped under the table.
“Sorry,” she said at the same time I did.
Her cheeks went a little red, and I liked the color it brought to her face. I liked even more that I was the one who put it there.
What the hell was wrong with me today?
I was letting her take the lead and smiling at her like a teenagerwith a crush. I’d blame the painkillers I had for my back, except that I refused to take them. I gave my head an internal shake. The only way this whole thing was worth my time was if it created positive advertising for my business. If she wanted to make this whole thing about how logging destroys the environment, then it would do the opposite.
“I was thinking the display could be built around a central theme,” she said. “Something accessible but grounded in current research.”
I braced myself. I’d gotten distracted by her, but I needed to remember that she worked in sustainability, and odds were she saw someone who cut down trees as part of the problem. I felt the shift before it fully landed. Whatever she was about to say, she knew I wouldn’t be happy about it.
“Go on.”
“I think we should look at forestry as a whole,” she said. “Past practices versus present understanding.”
There it was.
I took another swallow of coffee and ignored the burn. “So a timeline of all the ways logging screwed things up?”
Her mouth tightened. “That’s not what I said.”
“That’s what people will hear,” I shot back. “You putpast practiceson a board, and suddenly every guy who’s ever run a saw is the villain.” The words came out sharper than I meant them to. She was easing into the discussion, but I was already in the middle of it, ready to fight.
This wasn’t my first time talking about this topic, okayyellingabout this topic, and it wouldn’t be my last. I was Interior Salish, having grown up in Lillooet before I moved to Springwood. Ignorant people loved to assume because I was indigenous, I was somesteward of the landand didn’t want a single tree cut.Little do they know that my people had selectively removed vegetation for centuries. Using small controlled fires to prevent big out of control ones.
Rachel leaned back in the booth, studying me over the rim of her glasses. “Forestry has caused damage. That’s not controversial.”
“No,” I argued. “Reckless forestry has. Big difference.” My pulse kicked up, that familiar heat crawling up my spine. Forestry was an industry on the decline in this province, and I would be damned if my business would go the same way so many sawmills had. I wasn’t out there clearcutting, or putting profit over the environment. But I got lumped in with those people all the same.
“Then that’s what we can talk about. I’m not disagreeing with you—”
“No, you’re condescending me.”
She threw her hands up. “How am I being condescending? This is a public display. It needs to educate people.”
“And it should tell the whole story,” I said. “Not just the part where everyone pretends lumberjacks are the bad guys while they heat their homes with fossil fuels and clear forests to build condos.”
“With this topic, we can talk about the history of the area, the impact of the forestry industry—good and bad—climate change; the list goes on. But we only have a week to get this done. We need to drill down to a central topic.”
I forced a breath through my nose, and we glared at each other across the table. For a moment, I was sure this was where it blew apart. Where we’d both decide this was a mistake and walk away annoyed, but vindicated. I was just some blue collar guy who worked with his hands after all, and she was the academic.
Whose point of view would everyone want to hear?
