The Hardwood Pile
| "The Hardwood Pile" | |
|---|---|
| Author | L. Sprague de Camp |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Fantasy |
| Published in | Unknown |
| Publisher | Street & Smith Publications, Inc. |
| Media type | Print (Magazine) |
| Publication date | September, 1940 |
"The Hardwood Pile" is a contemporary fantasy story by American writer L. Sprague de Camp. It was first published in the magazine Unknown for September, 1940. It first appeared in book form in the collection The Reluctant Shaman and Other Fantastic Tales (Pyramid, 1970); it later appeared in the collection The Best of L. Sprague de Camp (Doubleday, 1978), and the anthology Bestiary! (Ace Books, 1985) The story has been translated into French and German.
Folklorist R. B. Wilcox, collecting material for a book on the legends of upstate New York, queries Aceria Jones, a Gahato tea room hostess, regarding the village's rumored haunted woodpile. Aceria dismisses the story, but suggestively tells him she would be extremely grateful if he could point her to a job in the vicinity of a Norway maple (Acer platanoides). Moralistically rejecting her advances, Wilcox leaves, unknowingly killing his chance of getting the inside story.
The history of the woodpile goes back to a mansion built by 19th century Swiss immigrant August Rudli, who imported two Norway maples to grace his estate. A century later the house had gone back to nature, but one of the maples still thrived, until all the hardwood timber on the lot was sold and logged in the winter of 1938. The logs cut from the tree end up in Gahato at Dan Pringle's sawmill, where the next spring they are sawn into boards and stored in Pile No. 1027.
The trouble starts the following summer, when Pile 1027 is to be consolidated with Pile 1040 in the wake of a large timber order depleting the top half of each. Mill workers Henri Michod and Olaf Bergen are spooked when the remaining lumber in Pile 1027 begins swaying beneath them for no logical reason. Consequently, they stop work, whereupon their irate foreman Joe Larochelle assigns the job to another millhand. After he and Joe also experience the pile's uncanny behavior, the latter ties down the offending boards and the crew trucks the rest of the wood over to Pile 1040. When they return to load the remainder, however, the boards start flying out of their hands, now seemingly eager to go into the truck. The lumbermen watch in astonishment as the boards load themselves and the truck moves of its own accord over to Pile 1040, where it dumps its load.
...
Wikipedia