Tales As Tall As the Trees

A white quarter of the moon was shining down on the northwoods of the United States of America. Stars were faint overhead wherever the moonlight failed to wash them out. The towering white pines cast blue shadows on the snow. 

The square shapes of a few buildings squatted in a clearing, dark against the snowy ground. A single figure moved from the smallest, closet-size building toward one of the biggest. 

A pair of new boots crunched and squeaked along the well-trampled paths winding through the lumbercamp. The cold winter air bit at the inside of the young man’s nose. His footsteps seemed deafening in the quiet of night. 

The bunkhouse loomed in front of the first-time jack. Snow caught in the chinks between the rough-hewn logs glowed in the moonlight.

When he pulled the door open, the interior at first looked dark as a hole in the ice of a frozen lake. But a light was shining far away, at the opposite end of the building. "Shut that door!" a voice called, and the door banged, leaving the cold and the moon outside.

Advancing between the closely-spaced rows of bunk beds reaching up to the low ceiling granted an illusion of walking through a well-timbered mineshaft.

While a mineshaft was damp and cold so as to be bone-chilling, the black iron woodstove in the bunkhouse rendered the single large room warm enough to serve as a Finnish sauna. Sweaty wool socks and flannel shirts hung from the beds to dry were already steaming.

The newcomer finally reached the group of lumberjacks gathered around the woodstove with a few lanterns. One was mending a hole in a damp sock. Two more were playing cards on top of a nearby bunk's heavy quilt. The rest were watching one activity or the other, or staring off at nothing. Smoke trailed from a few mouths clutching pipes.

On seeing the newcomer, one man leaned over towards the sock-mender and said, "Why don't you tell us about Paul?"

"Paul?" the mender said, looking up from his work. "What's to tell about Paul? That break's a bad one, but I don't know of anything to tell about it."

"I didn't mean that Paul." the first man said. "I mean Paul Bunyan."

"Ah." The silver needle pinched between two of the mender’s fingers flashed as he plied it. A tiny reflection of a lantern's candle flame flickered in each of his eyes. Hairs in his graying beard moved slightly in the waft of his breath. 

Snoring rumbled from some beds. Wood shifted and rattled inside the stove. The card players gave an occasional grunt.

"Once there was a man," the sock-mender started, "bigger and stronger than any other who ever lived. He could chop down a tree with one swing of his giant ax. His snoring was often mistaken for a thunderstorm. His beard was so big a bear might bed down in it if he slept out-of-doors. His name was Paul Bunyan.

"Though he was born and raised up in Maine, he eventually made his way from the East Coast all the way to these parts. Paul came to boss a lumber camp, being suited to the work since he'd been a regular jack from the time he was a babe. For while his parents were sleeping one night, young Paul took his father's saw to the legs of the bed. It was a good thing that job tired him out, or Paul might have gotten himself into some more serious mischief.

"Being such a capable jack from such a young age, of course Paul grew up into the greatest boss there ever was. He knew what work a man could and should do in a day, and he never slacked off himself, doing ten times as much as any one man. He was undoubtedly the toughest and best boss you could have. With Paul in charge of a crew, work got done. One winter he—“

"How do you know so much about this Paul Bunyan?" the new jack interrupted. "I've never heard of him.” 

"How do I know him?” The sock-mended raised a brow that dared the new man to interrupt him again. “I worked under him."

"You didn't!" one of the card players exclaimed, looking up from his game.

"I did." the sock-mender asserted, "and I was with him during the winter of the blue snow."

"Blue snow?" The new jack snorted. "Now I know you're lying.”

"I'm not lying," the sock-mender insisted, sticking his needle into his sock and laying it over one leg. "The winter of the blue snow was so terrible that few wish to speak of it. They would rather forget. But not me, because I was working for Paul, and that year he went out of his way to give every man in the camp the best Christmas present he could have under the circumstances. You see, we were all so sick of the blue snow—lying in it is how Babe, Paul's giant ox, turned blue—that Paul decided he was going to find some white snow, no matter how far he had to go. He took off, and had no luck until he got to China, clear on the other side of the world. Being such a big man, Paul was able to carry back enough beautiful, pure white snow to make a single snowball for each and every man on his crew, just in time for Christmas. We were all so grateful that every one of us kept that snowball Paul went to such trouble to get, never letting it melt, and this," he said as he reached behind his chair and lifted up a damp-looking bundled kerchief, "is mine." He slowly unwrapped the cloth, revealing a melty snowball.

The new jack gave it a long, hard stare. It looked like snow, nothing more, nothing less. Nothing special or exotic. “How have you kept that snowball from melting through the summers?”

“In an ice house, usually.”

“Hm.” The young jack shrugged. “I’ll admit it’s a good story.”

“I should hope so,” the sock-mender grumbled, wrapping up the snowball and setting it as far from the woodstove as he could reach. He picked up his sock and continued his mending in silence.

The air was now smoggy with evaporated perspiration. Beyond the rank smell of unwashed bodies and clothes, the big room seemed dim and unreal,

The new jack glanced at the snowball, then fastened his gaze on the woodstove and said, “What else did Paul do?”

One of the smokers leaned forward. “Right after the winter of the blue snow, Paul cured a man of swearing. You see, Brimstone Bill, one of the single best loggers in the world after Paul, had a terribly bad mouth. Your eardrums would nearly pop, like a kernel of popcorn, just standing near enough to Bill to hear him…”