In the Beginning Was the Sea

26

AFTER CHRISTMAS, the loggers were once again idle and intractable. They were cutting less timber and doing it badly, something that infuriated J. The due date for the loan was looming yet again and he had not managed to save a single peso towards paying it off.

Once, he made an unannounced inspection while the loggers were working in an area he rarely visited since it was a long, steep climb. He stumbled onto a veritable bloodbath. The labourers had been cutting down trees so small they would hardly yield a single plank of wood; they were working from the wrong side so that, as they fell, the trees uprooted smaller saplings; the timber was crudely sawn, many planks were too short, others too long…

“I will not be paying a single peso for this wood,” said J.

The men looked at each other and were silent for a moment. Then, keeping his eyes fixed on the ground and never raising his voice, one of them began to protest. J. was convinced he could see the man smiling. After a moment, the other men joined in: there was nothing wrong with the timber, they insisted, J. did not know what he was talking about; they went on to rant about the high prices in the shop, about their earnings, about the quality of the food, the accommodation.

Keeping his temper, J. dealt with their complaints as best he could. He could be extremely persuasive when he needed to be. Besides, the loggers knew as well as he did that their working conditions here were much better than they would find anywhere else. Still the men tried to bargain over the timber J. had dismissed as badly cut.

“I will not pay for miscut lumber. And I’m not going to let you guys bankrupt this finca with shitty second-rate work.”

There was another howl of protest, voices were raised, someone muttered the word “robbery”.

J. stood his ground: he could not yield on this point without risking the whole venture. When one of the loggers became aggressive — a surly, broad-shouldered man named Maximiliano, who stood almost two metres tall — J., indignant and a little afraid, informed him that his services were no longer required and told him he could collect what was due to him that afternoon. At first, the astonished Maximiliano was dumbstruck; after a moment he growled that J. deserved to be hacked to pieces with a machete. He drew his blade and, without looking at J., buried it in a tree trunk. J. turned his back, insisting again that he would not pay for miscut timber, and stormed off. When he had gone some distance, he took the bottle from his backpack and gulped down two long swigs.

“You did the right thing,” Elena said when he told her what had happened. “You can’t let these people walk all over you.”

Late that afternoon, Maximiliano showed up at the house alone and much calmer. He tried to persuade J. not to fire him, but, while J. agreed to give him a good reference, he said that he could not take him back. Maximiliano took his money without a word.

That night the labourers got drunk. Someone heard them in the early hours, ominously banging the blades of their machetes against the floor and spluttering threats against J. Two days later, Doña Rosa warned him: “You need to be careful, these men are bad men.”