If it hadn't been for the garden and the animals, waiting all summer long for my 18th birthday would have been even harder than it was. Of course, there was also a lot of work, far more than we'd ever done in Coolin.

There was some sort of a deal where the slash and brush from the logging had to be cleaned up by a certain time in order to get some money back. I'm not exactly sure what that was all about, just that we children were the ones that did the cleaning up. We spent a lot of time piling brush, pulling tops and small logs out of the slash piles, and loading them into the back of the red truck. When we unloaded them, Raphah or I would pile them up and use a hatchet to make marks at 18" intervals on a log in the pile. That way Dad would know where to saw them. After he cut them, we would either pile them up for our own use, splitting them if necessary, or load them into the truck to sell. Raphah already knew how to drive, even though he was far too young to do so legally at 12 or 13 years old, so often the only part of the work Dad did was cutting the logs with the chainsaw and driving the truck to the customer's house. Of course, Dad was the only one who ever got any money. Raphah and I were merely "earning our keep" and "working for our supper".

Despite the frequent competition and antagonism between us, Raphah and I worked well together. Rachel was apt to throw logs without checking to see if a person was in the way first, and even if she was looking right at you, her aim was notoriously bad. Sarah tried, but she and Rachel were just not used to the work, and watching them carry one log at a time was aggravating. Didn't they know we'd be there all day if we all worked at that pace? Saying anything to them only made them quit and tattle and walk into the house in a huff. I tried to be nice, but they just seemed so wimpy and halfhearted about it! Often we would load the truck, unload back at the house, mark the logs, and have the girls help us reload the truck with the cut wood while we split, or stack the split wood. Most of the slash logs were small diameter and didn't need a lot of splitting.

We may not have liked the intensity of the work, or Dad's "supervising" which consisted of yelling at us and insulting us as we worked, or having to work in the rain or other bad weather, but Raphah and I enjoyed the physicality of the labor and the strength that we developed because of it. It was only that we were pushed beyond our endurance too often, denied rest or a decent lunch, and hardly ever thanked or praised for what we did. Adding insult to injury, we always had to massage Dad's body at night, because his feet were sore from standing around barking orders at us. We would be so exhausted that we could hardly stay awake while working on him, and if we sagged with fatigue, his fat foot would nudge or kick us awake again. We were so tired at times that just eating our dinner was an effort, even though we were hungry. Raphah sometimes fell asleep without any. And of course, our own bodies ached too, but we usually went to bed that way, unless we could talk our mother or sister into massaging the pain out of our backs. We were so, so tired. So tired that when I had finally soothed Eliyah off to sleep, I sometimes collapsed upon my own bed, not even bothering to get under the covers. If I were lucky, I would have taken off my work boots. If he found me in the morning that way, he'd yell at me and call me a filthy pig for not changing out of my clothes, for sleeping on top of the bed. I often meant to take them off, but after hitting the bed, I'd be out like a light before I undressed. And soon enough, long before we were ready, morning would come and it would be time for the whole day to begin all over again.