Moira & the Moose
THE FIRST MOOSE MOIRA EVER SAW WAS DEAD. She was twelve, old to be seeing a first moose, at least for a girl who’d spent her whole life on the Island. But then, moose rarely wandered into town. They preferred to loiter out by the highway, delighting in the cool breeze that trailed each loaded logging truck. Moira didn’t blame them for that—there wasn’t much to see in Morrissey Beach. She hadn’t been out to the highway since her mother was carried away on it two years earlier, in the pickup of a man named Fred Chuggs from Nanaimo. Moira had chased the two of them all the way across town before she tripped on the gravel shoulder of Highway 19 and was catapulted to her knees, the truck shrinking as it approached the horizon. From then on, it was up to her to take care of her father.
That morning, she looked out the kitchen window of the trailer and noticed her father’s pickup back in the drive. He’d been up north, gone for a week. Through the windshield, she could see his head and shoulders slung over the steering wheel. He went on the same hunting trip twice a year with his buddies from the mill, but the most he ever came back with was a multi-day hangover. He had a neighbour look in on Moira while he was gone. Every time he went away, she worried he wouldn’t come back. Then Moira would truly be alone.
From the window, she could make out something in the back of the truck. As soon as she went outside, she got a big, foul whiff of whatever it was and stepped up on the back wheel to look into the bed. There was the moose—more mammoth than she could have imagined. The torso almost took up the whole bed, and beneath it were four knobby limbs collapsed like the legs of a folding table. Its open eye was the size of Moira’s clenched fist. In the back corner of the truck bed, a pool of maroon-coloured blood glimmered in the sunlight. Startled, Moira jumped off the wheel, stumbling backwards and landing with a thud on her butt in the dirt.
***
“It’s a special mission,” says Leif, approaching Moira in the dinner line. She feels tinier than her twenty-three years, her body sinewy like a teenaged boy’s in the shadow of Leif’s two hundred and fifty pounds. Leif elbows through the other planters in line, reaching for a bottle of barbecue sauce which he squeezes to douse over the mountain of chicken thighs on his plate.
“Tomorrow. Seven AM start. Twelve thousand trees to go into a burn block up the North Fraser. Twenty cents a tree. Andy’s running the show.” He picks a thigh up off his plate, pausing to admire it before he sinks his teeth in and chews. “We need four planters—you in?”
“I guess so,” Moira shrugs. She wasn’t about to refuse work.
“Good,” says Leif, before he strides away.
Working would mean giving up her day off in town, but this way she might just get to spend some time with Andy. As second-in-command in the camp after Leif, Andy never had a moment to spare—he even spent his days off running errands all over Prince George. Garbage runs, box runs, reefers, quad repairs, staging. It hardly mattered that Moira shared a bed with him every night. By the time Andy would get to their van, often after going through a twenty-sixer of whisky with Leif and the other crew bosses in the office trailer, it was two or three in the morning and Moira was stiff with sleep.
Andy didn’t seem to mind the lifestyle, but Moira couldn’t see the point of climbing the ladder in a tree planting camp. Did he think he was going to be doing this forever? She’d been planting since she was nineteen, it was already her fourth season—compared to Andy’s eighth—and she was ready to move on. The shitty thing was that she made far more money as a planter than she ever could in the city. Five months of planting and Moira had a decent chunk of money to put towards the down payment on her dad’s old lot in Morrissey Beach.
She might already have the money if she hadn’t spent so much in the off-season. This past year she’d lived with Andy in Vic, where they paid a thousand bucks a month in rent for a pathetic one-bedroom apartment in Burnside Gorge. They had to pay extra to live there month-by-month, so that they could take off when coastal work started in the spring. They might have had enough to live on—and maybe enough to save some, too—if Andy hadn’t been in the habit of spending his EI money within a few days instead of the two weeks it was supposed to last. He would blow a few hundred getting coked-up with his friends, or splurge on a fancy bottle of Scotch that would be gone in a night. Other times, he would insist on going downtown for dinner and invite all their planting friends. While Moira scanned the menu for the cheapest item, Andy would order appetizers and shots for everyone like he was some kind of king. See? I do help pay for stuff, he would tease her on the way home, after he’d paid for both of their meals, along with a few rounds of drinks for their friends. He’d laugh at her anger, say it was no big deal, he’d pay all the rent next month. But he always had some excuse when the first of the month rolled around. Then it was up to Moira to scrape together what she could. She relied on her tips from the pub to buy their food. But once or twice during the winter months, when business was slow, she had to stop at the local food bank on her way home. Andy thought that was funny, too.
If this season turned out to be as lucrative as the last, she was certain she’d have enough for her deposit. She and Andy had talked about living in their van on her land for a while to fix up her father’s old trailer, make it liveable again. Moira was sure that they’d be better off out of the city, where Andy could relax, ease up on the all-night benders. He was fine when it was just the two of them.
***
Moira sets her dinner plate down next to her friend Kate’s at a sagging plastic table outside the mess tent. Planters are seated here and there around the table, on folding chairs, plastic patio furniture, and stumps. They’re talking about the forest fire a few hundred kilometres away in Tumbler Ridge.
“I heard it’s like, 3,000 hectares,” says Alexis, a vet from the Okanagan Valley.
“Is that big enough for us to get a day off work?” chimes one of the camp stoners, the type that comes tree planting for the experience.
“Careful what you wish for there, greener,” says Alexis, who would know. “Being evacuated for a forest fire sucks.”
Moira turns to Kate, “Did Leif talk to you?”
“I’m not doing it!” says Kate, slamming a plastic mug of red wine on the table. The whole structure wobbles, causing some leftover soup in an abandoned bowl to swirl and spill.
“Seriously, fuck that,” says Kate. “I am not working on my day off.”
“I told Leif I’d do it,” says Moira.
“Have you gone batshit?” asks Kate.
“Probably?” says Moira. “It’s money, though, isn’t it? I thought Andy and I could spend the day together.”
“Mr. AWOL, you mean?” jokes Kate.
“He’s running the thing though, so no doubt he’ll have a bunch of other crap to take care of.”
“Just one of the many shitty parts of dating staff,” says Kate, her eyes drifting across the camp to a picnic table where Nuke, her last-season boyfriend and a veteran crew boss, is sitting.
“So does this mean you’re not partying tonight?”
“I hope to Jesus Christ not,” answers Moira. “I’m not going to be able to make it through tomorrow if I have to barf every time I bend over to put a tree in.”
“Well I need to drink,” says Kate, her eyes widening. She clutches Moira’s arm in mock desperation, “After the shift we’ve had, I’m getting white-girl wasted. Supposedly it’s a Valentine’s Day theme, maybe I’ll get lucky.”
“No chance you’ll come with me, then?” asks Moira.
“Not this time, kitten!” Kate gets up from the table, tapping Moira affectionately on the head. “Better go refill my grape juice. I’ll be back.”
Moira sits back in her folding chair, full from the meal. In the distance, she sees Andy emerge from the office trailer. He walks towards his truck as if on his own special mission, but upon noticing her, changes his direction and walks her way.
“So Leif tells me you’re coming on the special mish tomorrow?” he says, massaging her shoulders as he leans over her.
“Yup. Who needs a day off?”
“It’s going to be a big money day,” he says, squeezing her shoulders. He bends down to whisper in her ear, “Burns. Twenty cents a tree.”
“Yeah, yeah,” says Moira. Planting trees in giant slash piles that have been reduced to ash is fast, if nothing else. The soil is soft and sandy, a second to put the tree in—nothing like the overgrown blocks they’ve been planting since the summer contract started.
“Well, kid,” says Andy, “I better head to the reefer. I’ve got to load trees for tomorrow.”
“Can I come with you?” asks Moira as Andy turns to walk away.
“Sure,” he calls, his back to her.
They stroll across the camp together, passing clusters of planters. Most are holding cans of cheap beer. Some of them already look tipsy—it doesn’t take much after a long, hot day like the one they’ve just had.
“Oooooheeeee!” yells Nuke, already drunk and swaying as they pass him at the picnic table. “Where you two going? Quickie in the truck?”
The other planters at the table all turn to look at them, as Andy makes a show of grabbing Moira’s butt. She swats him away and shakes her head. Once, this attention would have made her feel important, not just because Andy was at the very top of the camp hierarchy, but because he was loved by all. Andy was the life of the party—the guy climbing the pole in the mess tent and swinging down it like a stripper to hoots and cheers at four in the morning. The type of person who made Moira feel less alone.
***
Her father was asleep when he died. He was driving home from the Highway Man in Fiona Bay, the bar he stopped at most nights after his shift at the mill. The police said his vehicle was going so slow when it veered off the road and into the water that he hadn’t sustained any serious injuries. If he’d have woken up when his pickup nosedived into the ocean, he might have lived. But an autopsy showed his blood level alcohol had been ten times the legal limit—enough to stop him from doing anything about the water that gradually filled the cab of his truck and drowned him.
A few years later, Moira left Morrissey Beach to go tree planting. They were a big crew that year, fifty planters and almost half of them greeners, like Moira. Andy was just a first-time crew boss, but to a greener that was enough to give him an aura of godliness. His looks didn’t help. He had buzzed blonde hair and a body that was lean and muscular. He walked around with a half-smirk on his face, like he was laughing at the world. The type of guy that even the veteran girls drooled over when they took over the shower trailer to get ready for party nights.
