Uh-oh. Wasn't there supposed to be some loggers' bar around here someplace? Everybody knew it was high times for the stiffs in the woods — though not for those in the mills, with the Japanese buying up unprocessed logs as fast as the forests could be clear-cut — but even so, the scene in here was peculiar. Dangerous men with coarsened attitudes, especially toward death, were perched around lightly on designer barstools, sipping kiwi mimosas. The jukebox once famous for hundreds of freeway exits up and down the coast for its gigantic country-and-western collection, including half a dozen covers of "So Lonesome I Could Cry," was reformatted to light classical and New Age music that gently peeped at the edges of audibility, slowing, lulling this roomful of choppers and choker setters who now all looked like models in Father's Day ads. One of the larger of these, being among the first to notice Zoyd, had chosen to deal with the situation. He wore sunglasses with stylish frames, a Turnbull & Asser shirt in some pastel plaid, three-figure-price-tag jeans by Mme. Gris, and après-logging shoes of a subdued, but incontestably biue, suede.
"Well good afternoon pretty lady and how fine you're looking, I'm sure in another setting and mood we'd all like to know you as a person with your many fine points and so on like that, but from your fashion message I can tell that you are a sensitive type person who'll appreciate the problem we have here in terms of orientational vibes, if you follow —"
The already confused Zoyd, whose survival instincts may not have been working all the way up to spec, decided to produce the chain saw from his bag. "Buster," he called plaintively to the owner behind the bar, "where's the media?" The implement attracted immediate attention from everyone in the room, not all of it technical curiosity. It was a tailor-made lady's chain saw, "tough enough for timber," as the commercials said, "but petite enough for a purse." The guide bar, handle grips, and housing were faced in genuine mother-of-pearl, and spelled out in rhinestones on the bar, surrounded by sawteeth ready to buzz, was the name of the young woman he'd borrowed it from, which onlookers took to be Zoyd's drag name, CHERYL.
"Easy there cowgirl, now things're just fine," the logger stepping back as Zoyd, he hoped demurely, yanked at a silk cord on a dainty starter pulley, and the lady's pearl-handled chain saw spun into action.
"Listen to that li'l honey purr."
"Zoyd, what th' heck you doin' this all the way up here for," Buster deciding it was time to intervene, "no channel's gonna send no crew this far out of town, why are you not down in Eureka or Arcata someplace?"
The logger stared. "This person is known to you?"
"Played together in the old Six Rivers Conference," Buster all smiles, "those were the days, huh Zoyd?"
"Can't hear you," hollered Zoyd, trying to maintain a quickly fading image of dangerousness. He throttled the nacreous pretty saw reluctantly back first to a ladylike bass line and then to silence. Into the echo, "See you did some redecorating."
"If you would've come around last month, you 'n' 'at little saw, could've helped us gut the place."
"Sorry, Buster, guess I did come to the wrong bar, I sure can't saw any of this stuff, not with the money you must've put in …… only reason I'm up here is is 'at the gentrification of South Spooner, Two Street, and other more familiar hellraisin' locales has upped the ante way outa my bracket, these are all folks now who like to sue, and for big bucks, with hotshot PI lawyers up from the City, I so much as blot my nose on one of their designer napkins I'm in deep shit anymore."
"Well, we're no longer as low-rent as people remember us here either Zoyd, in fact since George Lucas and all his crew came and went there's been a real change of consciousness."
"Yep, I noticed . . . say, you want to draw me a, just a lady's-size beer there . . . you know I still haven't even got around to that picture?"
They were talking about Return of the Jedi (1983), parts of which had been filmed in the area and in Buster's view changed life there forever. He put his massive elbows on about the only thing in here that hadn't been replaced, the original bar, carved back at the turn of the century from one giant redwood log. "But underneath, we're still just country fellas."
"From the looks of your parking lot, the country must be Germany."
"You and me Zoyd, we're like Bigfoot. Times go on, we never change, now, you're no bar fighter, I can see the thirst for new experiences, but a man's better off sticking to a specialty, your own basically being transfenestration."
"Mm yes, I could tell," commented another logger, his voice almost inaudible, sidling in and laying a hand on Zoyd's leg.
"Well good afternoon pretty lady and how fine you're looking, I'm sure in another setting and mood we'd all like to know you as a person with your many fine points and so on like that, but from your fashion message I can tell that you are a sensitive type person who'll appreciate the problem we have here in terms of orientational vibes, if you follow —"
The already confused Zoyd, whose survival instincts may not have been working all the way up to spec, decided to produce the chain saw from his bag. "Buster," he called plaintively to the owner behind the bar, "where's the media?" The implement attracted immediate attention from everyone in the room, not all of it technical curiosity. It was a tailor-made lady's chain saw, "tough enough for timber," as the commercials said, "but petite enough for a purse." The guide bar, handle grips, and housing were faced in genuine mother-of-pearl, and spelled out in rhinestones on the bar, surrounded by sawteeth ready to buzz, was the name of the young woman he'd borrowed it from, which onlookers took to be Zoyd's drag name, CHERYL.
"Easy there cowgirl, now things're just fine," the logger stepping back as Zoyd, he hoped demurely, yanked at a silk cord on a dainty starter pulley, and the lady's pearl-handled chain saw spun into action.
"Listen to that li'l honey purr."
"Zoyd, what th' heck you doin' this all the way up here for," Buster deciding it was time to intervene, "no channel's gonna send no crew this far out of town, why are you not down in Eureka or Arcata someplace?"
The logger stared. "This person is known to you?"
"Played together in the old Six Rivers Conference," Buster all smiles, "those were the days, huh Zoyd?"
"Can't hear you," hollered Zoyd, trying to maintain a quickly fading image of dangerousness. He throttled the nacreous pretty saw reluctantly back first to a ladylike bass line and then to silence. Into the echo, "See you did some redecorating."
"If you would've come around last month, you 'n' 'at little saw, could've helped us gut the place."
"Sorry, Buster, guess I did come to the wrong bar, I sure can't saw any of this stuff, not with the money you must've put in …… only reason I'm up here is is 'at the gentrification of South Spooner, Two Street, and other more familiar hellraisin' locales has upped the ante way outa my bracket, these are all folks now who like to sue, and for big bucks, with hotshot PI lawyers up from the City, I so much as blot my nose on one of their designer napkins I'm in deep shit anymore."
"Well, we're no longer as low-rent as people remember us here either Zoyd, in fact since George Lucas and all his crew came and went there's been a real change of consciousness."
"Yep, I noticed . . . say, you want to draw me a, just a lady's-size beer there . . . you know I still haven't even got around to that picture?"
They were talking about Return of the Jedi (1983), parts of which had been filmed in the area and in Buster's view changed life there forever. He put his massive elbows on about the only thing in here that hadn't been replaced, the original bar, carved back at the turn of the century from one giant redwood log. "But underneath, we're still just country fellas."
"From the looks of your parking lot, the country must be Germany."
"You and me Zoyd, we're like Bigfoot. Times go on, we never change, now, you're no bar fighter, I can see the thirst for new experiences, but a man's better off sticking to a specialty, your own basically being transfenestration."
"Mm yes, I could tell," commented another logger, his voice almost inaudible, sidling in and laying a hand on Zoyd's leg.