Book part 5 or 6 or something

So, uh... do you like this? You, uh... you... like tree plant planting? Adam is asking this of Lyn, side of mud-road next to tarp-covered trees in grey rain.
Oh... not so much, Lyn says. But I'll live. I mean, it won't kill me.
Yeah, I guess you got, like, good gear and stuff... Good gear and stuff?, he thinks. What are you, six?
Yeah, it's pretty good, I guess. I'm mostly dry. She laughs.
He nods. Yeah, my gear sucks.
So I see.
I guess as soon as we get an advance, I'll buy some better stuff...
Thatsa good idea she says, eating a carrot stick out of a plastic baggie. I mean, it seems like we're gonna suffer enough in this job without having to be wet all the time too.
Silence.
Come on he thinks to himself, come on man, think of something to say. Anything.
So, uh... do you like this?
She smiles, chews her carrot . You just asked me that.
Oh yeah.
What made you decide to come planting?, she asks after a brief pause, looking at him then back out across the clear-cut to where the other five rookies struggle along, struggle along.
Well, a guy I worked with--
--in Winnipeg, yeah?
--yeah, he had done it, and so he sort of got me the job, but then he decided at the last minute not to come back, and so I just kinda came out here by myself and, like, so far I think it sucks.
She laughs. Yeah it's no picnic, that's for damn sure. I came out because I, like, heard it was fun? Parties and stuff, cool people?, being outdoors all the time and all that? I didn't think it'd be quite like this, though. I expected something more, uh, I dunno. A bit more fun.
Yeah, me too. I also, uh... He stops.
You what?
He's silent for a few moments. I guess I wanted to try to make some money for school, and I'd heard you make lots of money doing this, so...
She nods. Where you go to school?
I don't. Yet. Well, I did for one year, but now I don't. But I'm hoping to do, like, something at U of M this year, and...
Uh, Manitoba?
Yeah, but I'm not sure what, exactly. Something with money.
Oh yeah? Money, eh? That's your thing? Money?
I dunno. Maybe. Sort of, yeah. He laughs, laughs in spite of his wet feet and his general misery. I wanna be rich, he says. And what about you? How'd you end up out here?
She's silent for a few seconds. She's reacted to what he said, but he's not sure why. I, well, she says, I was in school too, but then I dropped out a couple years ago, so...
Me too. I dropped out too.
Oh yeah? Why?
My... well... He digs the toe of his sloppy wet boot in the rain-dirt, looks out to where the other rookies are. He doesn't know what to say. He's miserable out here. He likes her. There are things that are hard to explain to anyone, let alone to virtual strangers on an isolated rainy mountainside, things about how certain kinds of holes are left inside of the bone-cage, left in the spaces where someone else used to be. Left by someone who has fallen into shadow maybe. He thinks of he and his sister beside the Assiniboine River on a sad day of shadow smoking cigarettes and sharing a joint, behind the girls school there in the trees. I dunno, he says finally. I guess it just wasn't the right time for school.
Me either she says, shrugs, tries to look carefree. Too many other things I needed to learn maybe. Or take care of first. I dunno. She thinks of times spent checking morgues, police report and newspapers, scouring internet forums just for some sign of The Missing, but she manages to smile at him anyway. I, uh, I guess we should get back to work, eh?, she asks, thinking to herself I wonder what he was going to say.
I guess so, yeah, he says, wondering to himself where her mind went for that second, having recognized just as she did in him that subtle blip in the force that we soft-eyed mammals all seem to recognize in one another, the look of recognition between man and dolphin and dog, between cat and deer and doe, between woman and child, the look between long-ago Wolf Boy and his doctor, and no not our doggie friend Wolf Boy but in fact an earlier version, a feral kid pulled screaming out of the trees, age 11, no known family, no known human contact. Wild-haired and deep-eyed like a goddamn caveman, even he'd known it too.
And so they put trees into their bags, a hundred each, and they trudge back up into the long grey-brown slope, put their shovels in, try to start planting more trees. Hank is there with them now, showing up just as they start.
Hey dudes, he says. How goes the battle? Where you at? And they answer, and explain, or try to, and he shows them a few things, shows a few quick tricks and then they're back at it, back to planting what we learn is a few tree lengths apart. Three or four tree lengths. They don't understand this, or even have these words yet, because to them it's still twenty-five feet or eight metres or something, not tree lengths, which was almost the only useful form of measurement out there besides the sky and the vibrations in the life-force, but as they turn to follow the line of trees towards the other rookies they drift apart from each other, so that the awkward but promising moment between them, whatever it was, is lost now.
No. Not lost. Like The Missing or those in shadow, I guess, some energy of it had to be remaining still, pulsating, at least in the fact that these two tree planting people, just now, had thought about those in shadow, and so maybe those in shadow had taken up form, the spectral and sheeted dead given flesh through these words, taking up the body they have so often laid down and speaking out of the mouths of the living. And so something of that moment that had passed just now must have remained, some actual and real whatever real means piece of physical energy since their brains were energy, or were using it, or something.
Anyway, the rainy day ends. Day Two. Day two of a fucking million, Keith says as they're all settling into the van, racous and rain-wet, soaked with the grey-woolen heaviness of it. Woooooooooo!, he says, and everyone laughs.
Roxie is back with them again and she's driving, and the rain has eased up a just a little as they wind down the roads towards camp.
Adam is so sore, so tired, so miserable that he can hardly believe it, but at least this day, finally, is over, and he doesn't look completely beaten just yet. He puts his head back on the seat-back and it starts a bounce with the rhythm of the road, his eyes close, mouth falls open, he's sound asleep.


You were the one along the tree line there, all those years. I saw you. Staring! You were the ghost!


Adam wakes up with a start, subway city and forty six years old.