At just after nine a.m. that Monday, Veronica, Nathan, Lars, Uncle Cliff, Josie and Nicky, Clete, and Danny spread out around the kitchen, all of them wearing masks. Nathan sat at the kitchen table typing on his laptop, his silver hair sparkling in the morning light. Lars stood by the door, blinking behind his tortoiseshell glasses and glancing at his phone. “I’ve got about five minutes,” he announced. “Someone trickster stole the chains off our saws, and I’m having to GoldStreak some in from Juneau.”
Nicky tried not to smile as she stood to address them. “You know I am Nicky Hall,” she began. “You probably recognize me because you’ve seen my sister. Except I don’t have green hair.” No one laughed. She took a breath, and continued.
“I know this is strange, but what I ask of you this morning is just that you listen. To Clete. To me, and Josie, and Veronica. We know the vote to cut Sky River Valley passed yesterday. We know that equipment is gathered at the trailhead. But we have a new proposition.”
“I just want to say, if I can,” Lars interrupted, pulling down his mask, “that I—that we, at the Norseman Mill—appreciate the involvement of the young people in this whole process. We want to be a friend to you. How do you call it, Nathan?” he said, looking at Veronica’s father. “An ally? I—we—want to be an ally. So we are listening.”
“Thank you, Mr. Ruger,” Nicky said, stopping him. “As we speak, Mr. Deschumel is working on a website called Sky River Valley Instruments.”
Nathan turned his laptop around so everyone could see the screen. “That’s right. I’ve already purchased the domain name. SkyRiverAlaska.com. Here’s our landing page.”
They all leaned in to examine the photo of the mossy rainforest, and the words “Sustainably built instruments from salvaged Alaska Sitka spruce. Produced on Shee Island.”
Lars nodded slowly. “Interesting. I like this, Nathan. Congratulations. I thought you had retired. You’re looking for investors, I assume? I could set up some meetings in Seattle.”
Uncle Cliff readjusted his baseball hat. He kept giving disbelieving stares at Clete, who sat in his customary corner of the couch.
“We have a post up on Jackson Cove Convos,” Josie said, standing beside Nicky. “So far, there have been over a thousand likes, and 258—no, 260—comments,” she said, looking at her phone.
“That’s wonderful!” Lars said. “New businesses are exactly what Jackson Cove needs.”
Josie stared back at him, unblinking. “You should be congratulating yourself, Mr. Ruger. Because it’s your new business.”
The man pursed his thin lips and cocked his head. “Beg pardon? I don’t follow.”
“That’s because you keep interrupting,” Josie said.
Nicky started again. “Our plan is to convert the Norseman Mill to instrument fabrication. The Wheel of Fortune, and the other front-end saws would remain. On the back end, you would build instruments. It could employ three times as many people. Training the workers won’t cost that much. It would require less wood—significantly less—but make more money.”
Lars’s jaw dropped, as if he was about to speak. He continued to stare at Josie, then began peering around the room, as if searching for an explanation.
“I said the other night that we should just leave the forest alone,” Josie said. “But Clete and my sister have convinced Veronica and me that it’s reasonable to use salvaged wood to build guitars and other instruments. Mandolins. Violins. Maybe even an ancient lyre. Or a Russian balalaika. That could be cool.”
Their father sat beside Clete on the couch, shaking his head. “There’s just no way, girls.”
“No,” Lars began, his voice gathering momentum. “No, there’s not. I agree. As I said, thank you for this interest in my affairs. You frankly have no right to post like that on the community website. No right indeed. Nathan, I’m surprised you let this fly. In fact, I’m well within my rights to call my lawyers and press charges.”
“I helped with the posts,” Nathan said. “Anything that happens, you can blame it on me, Lars. As you know, I’ve made my living investing in start-ups. This is an excellent idea. In fact, I just shot off a text to EcoTrust in Portland, to one of my program officers there. He got back immediately and said he he’d like to know more. I have investor friends not only in Seattle, but also in Silicon Valley. Instead of cutting down rainforest, we make guitars from it. It’s simple. Concise. No one wants another clearcut. Especially not trees that have been growing for a thousand years.”
Lars started to pace. “I don’t understand any of this. This is my mill. My company. Town just voted to allow me to cut these trees. At this point, no one can tell me what to do.”
“Mr. Ruger,” Nicky said, surprised by the calm tone of her voice. “We’re not telling you what to do. We’re suggesting a way for you to make more money. Can we start by agreeing that we would all rather have the products be manufactured here, instead of the wood just cut up and shipped to China, or to the Lower 48?”
“Well,” Lars said, glancing at Uncle Cliff, “in an ideal world. But we don’t live in an ideal world.”
“That’s the thing,” Nicky said, her voice warming. “Those Sitka spruce logs, they’re out there waiting for us. It is an ideal situation. Clete and I cut into one this morning. The wood is pristine. Don’t you see? This is a chance to save this valley and not devastate the community. To help it.”
“Our mill is built to process individual lumber,” Uncle Cliff said. “We sell raw material. It’s what we do. We get wood from the woods, and we cut it. It’s that simple.”
“You’re still going to get the wood from the woods, Dad,” Clete said. “We can still use all the equipment. We just get to add the manufacturing, so the profits are greater locally.”
When Cliff didn’t respond, Nicky turned to him and pressed the point. “Remember when you told me yesterday that the Norseman is built for primary preparation?” Nicky said. “You told me how the ‘green chain’ saws trees into cants. That’s exactly what my dad uses for his guitar tops.”
“How do you know all this?” Lars asked.
“Because I showed her the mill,” Uncle Cliff said, sighing.
“And what do you mean ‘your tops’?” Lars growled, turning to their father.
“Back in Danville I had my own shop,” their father explained. “Behind my house. I made instruments. Mostly guitars. Resonators. A few mandolins.”
“He’s the best,” Josie said, beaming at her father. “Everyone wanted one of his guitars. There were waiting lists. He’s also great with people, which I know is why you hired him,” she said, turning back to Lars.
“It could be the first guitar shop in Alaska,” Veronica added.
“Clete and I calculated that, given that you won’t have any shipping costs, since the wood is already on the island, you only need one hundred salvaged Sitka spruce from the forest for the mill to produce about twenty thousand guitar tops a year,” Nicky said. “Depending on the final cost of the guitar, that will make you twice as much as what you’re making now. I have all the numbers. All the wood is right here, on the island.”
“Out of rotting trees?” Lars said incredulously.
“Mr. Ruger,” Clete said. “Nicky and I can show you downed Sitka spruce logs right around the Old Yellow Cedar that could be used for building guitars. They’re all just waiting, with clean wood beneath the bark, like Nicky said. We checked one this morning. The wood still has integrity.”
Lars raked his fingers through his blond-and-pewter hair. “This is preposterous.” He stared down at Cliff, who stood with his legs crossed, leaning against a counter.
“It would be a huge retooling,” Uncle Cliff said. “You’d need some fine-toothed band saws.”
“A kiln,” their father added.
“We have the kiln,” Uncle Cliff said. “The boy’s right. It’s the sun that’s rough on dead fiber. Especially in the grove there, with those old trees. Only about three percent of light gets to the forest floor. When a tree blows down, that wood stays hard as a nut. All that salvage out there is probably still good.”
“It is,” Nicky insisted. “We saw it.”
“Cliff, are you serious? You’re actually considering this?” Lars said. “We’d have to helicopter out the logs. Even if we bought a helicopter, it would be too expensive to retrofit the shop. Two million dollars, at least.”
“We wouldn’t even have to helicopter them out,” Cliff said. “We could work back there to break them down, then four-wheel the logs. Use the Alaskan mill. The kids are right. All the blowdown in that valley would be enough to keep us in business for ten years or more. Better than straight logging, anyway.”
“Imagine,” Veronica said, stepping forward and standing beneath the overhead light, delivering her winning smile. “Yo-Yo Ma sitting down to a cello from salvaged wood from our forest. Would you rather have that?” Her voice dropped, turning sinister. “Or a bunch of small-town middle-schoolers putting it all over social media how the heart of a thousand-year-old yellow cedar is being used to build fences in Somewhere, USA. Think about that.”
Lars met eyes with Veronica’s father, who stared right back at him. “Is your teenage daughter trying to extort me, Nathan?”
Nathan put up his hands. “She calls it as she sees it, Lars. I have no control over her.”
Lars turned to Nicky. “I’ve let you make your argument. But we’re cutting down those trees. All of them.” His coffee sloshed as he set it down on the counter and started for the door. “And you,” he said, pointing at Nicky’s father, “I suggest you load back into your camper, or whatever that thing is, and find another island for your girls to make trouble on. You’re out of a job.”
“Don’t talk to my daughters like that,” their father said, straightening and following Lars out of the kitchen. “Go on. Get out of my house.”
“You’re a renter, buddy. Get off my island,” Lars shouted as the heels of his loafers fell heavy on the wood steps. The door slammed behind him.
When their father came back into the kitchen, Josie smiled. “At least it’s not me doing it this time.”
After a moment, he started to laugh, giving a soft, disbelieving shake of the head.
“You four,” Cliff said, looking at them all and smiling. “A bunch of troublemakers.”
“We created trouble,” Clete said, who still had cedar shavings stuck to his fuzzy wool sweater.. “But I don’t think we got anywhere.”
“I guess that means we go to Plan B,” Nicky said.
Clete looped an elastic into his hair. Nathan slapped the tabletop with his palms. “I love Plan B,” he said. “I don’t think it’s got a chance, but something tells me we should try. Now is someone going to tell me exactly what is Plan B?” he asked, looking around the room.
“Yes,” Cliff echoed. “What is Plan B?”
“Why should we tell you?” Josie said. “You’re the enemy.”
Uncle Cliff watched his niece, his eyes going cold, then soft again. “I’m your family, kid.”
Their father glanced at his phone and opened the case for his guitar. “Plan B is already in action. Mall is waiting for us at the trailhead. So is Alice. C’mon, Cliff.”
“To do what?” he asked, pushing himself off the counter.
“To go into the valley,” Nicky said. “And make some noise.”