It had been nearly six months of hard toil.

Charlie had set you to work clearing trees with a hatchet.

The trees, hazels that sprung from the base of what seemed like dozens of trees that had been cut down were far larger than any of the rotting stumps sitting beside them like fallen soldiers.

At first you questioned Charlie if it was a good idea to cut them down.

They produced food.

Why would you want to get rid of them?

He shook his head, sputtered something out that was unintelligible, and went back to work.

The first day, your hands swelled, and the blisters across your hands and palms were like the soft spots of an overripe orange, dulled and unnatural, oversaturated with fluid.

It took three days to get back in the field with him.

You were left watching with the children.

You didn't mind, it was a change of pace,

but there had been something curious about the woods,

something beckoning,

the managed wilderness, as Charlie called it.

Charlie had been manic that first month,

working late into the evening,

cutting and cutting and cutting.

You thought he was just thinking about the next year's winter, but he didn't seem to care so much about the wood coming down.

It littered the ground in a trail that followed his whereabouts.

He would jump from tree to tree, one branch here, another 20-year sprout from a coppastool

there.

He was like a miswired robot shooting about.

...