Page 6 of Lumberjack Daddy and Wild Child Little

CHAPTER SIX

Jason

I let out a cry as I strain every muscle and, finally, the six-hundred-pound log moves forward. I cry out again as I hear shouts and applause. I fight back the urge to turn my head in one direction to look at Hank or the other direction to look at Lark. They’re fighting with their own logs and cooperation isn’t the point right now. The log I push is very short, just about eight feet long. It’s a giant redwood, though. We don’t have any redwoods in this part of the country. These logs belong to the county, and they only come out during the Paul Bunyan Festival.

Yeah, it’s a lumberjack town and we have a Paul Bunyan Festival. Get over it.

There’s no chance in hell Lark is going to roll his log twenty feet over the field before I do. Hank, though, once he gets the damned thing rolling, is likely to beat me. Of course, Hank looks like those guys who pull container ships and lift boulders for fun, so it’s not really a fair contest. He’s beat me for the last three years. Not this year. I cry out again as I use the log’s momentum. The key now is to keep the thing rolling forward. Inertia works in my favor if I keep it moving. It works against me if the log stops.

I’m making good headway, and I can’t help but think about Hannah somewhere in the crowd watching me. I’m damned competitive in normal circumstances. Now, knowing my little girl sees me in the log push, the desire to win is more like an absolute, unyielding, complete, and total need to win. There’s no other alternative. It has to happen.

There are cheers and I think they’re for me until I see Wyatt Lark’s log a few feet ahead of mine. That surprises the hell out of me because he’s so damned quiet all the time. He’s never come across as particularly tough, for a lumberjack anyway. He certainly hasn’t come across as competitive. I guess there’s more to him than his reliability in the forest.

Of course, there’s no way in hell I’m going to let him win this, and I draw deep from whatever reserves I have and push with all my might. I feel my feet dig into the grass and the log moves forward at a faster pace. I don’t let up but keep it moving, working out a rhythm with my hands so they move with the log and use the log’s forward momentum as much as my strength to get the log to the line forty yards from where we started.

My log crosses over the line just an inch ahead of Larks. I collapse against it, my lungs screaming like a cat with its tail caught in a wringer. My heart beats like the drum of a heavy metal band, and my vision is a bit cloudy. I’m elated, though, and as hands clap me on the shoulder, a bottle of water is pressed into my hand, and another is poured over my head. I manage to turn around and lean against the log with a tired smile. I see Hank just pushing his log over the line and giving him a thumbs up for completing the task.

He returns a thumbs up of his own and though he finished last of the three of us, he doesn’t seem all that disappointed. He doesn’t seem tired either. I wonder if he has a shirt somewhere that says, YOUR WORKOUT IS MY WARM UP or something else that points out that he’s a freak of nature. Probably not. He’s as humble as he is powerful and when he lifts me up and pats me on the back, his smile and congratulations are genuine.

Wyatt appears worse for wear than Hank, but he’s able to stand on his own. He shakes my hand and says, “Good job, Jason. I thought I had you there.”

“You almost did,” I say. “You’re a hell of a lot tougher than you look.”

He laughs and says, “Well, you’re a lot nicer than you look.”

I return his laugh and I’m about to retort when I hear, “Daddy!” and turn to see Hannah running after me.

She leaps into my arms and wraps them and her legs around me, kissing me all over my face and neck. I laugh and say, “All right, little girl, all right. Let me breathe.”

She giggles and lets me put her down. When she sees Wyatt and remembers we’re not alone, she blushes beet red and says, “Um, hi. Sorry about… um…”

I read her mind and say, “It’s okay, little girl. Wyatt is a Daddy like me and so is Hank.”

“Oh, good,” she says, sighing with relief.

Wyatt smiles and offers her a hand, which she accepts with a smile. “Nice to meet you, Hannah,” he says. He hooks a thumb toward me and says, “This one won’t shut up about you, and now I see why. You’re even more beautiful than he described.”

She giggles and blushes again as she says, “Thank you.”

I take her arm and shoo Wyatt away. “All right, all right, find your own little girl. This one’s mine.”

He and Hank laugh, and I leave them with a promise to join them for drinks later. Hannah smiles brightly up at me and I say, “Well, you suffered through my little ego trip. I guess we should go have fun now. What do you say?”

She giggles and says, “Sounds like a plan, Daddy!”

We walk around the fair and I play some carnival games. Once more, my competitive side shows through and Hannah teases me regularly about how focused and intense I get whenever I do literally anything. She doesn’t complain, of course, because I win her a bear, a bunny, and a free spa day due to insisting on perfect scores at every game I play.

As we walk, I am stopped a few times by people who want to tell me how impressive I was in the log pull and how grateful they are for me and the other lumberjacks in the area. For Sweet Pines City, the lumber industry is as much a matter of pride as it is an economic necessity.

After a few of these impromptu conversations, Hanna says, “People really value the work you do, huh?”

She wears a strangely wistful look as she says this and I encourage her by saying, “Don’t worry. You’re working hard. You’ll be making your mark on the world in no time.”

She smiles and kisses me, but before she does that, a frown crosses her face and I spend the rest of the day wondering what might have prompted that frown.