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A west coast posse of forest radicals based out of San Francisco State University, Jokerman engages in a wild array of pranks—they sink whaling ships at harbor in Iceland, skydive into the winter forest of British Columbia on a bend to save a pack of wolves from a government-sponsored slaughter, and stage a Tree-In in a southern Oregon old-growth forest. Jokerman spikes trees, jerryrigs tractors, spoils traps, and conserves enough energy to laugh and drink beer at the end of the day.

In numerous subplots encompassing both present and past, a young husband flees San Francisco for Portland during the Draft, another young husband sets himself on fire in front of what he thinks is Robert MacNamara’s office in the Pentagon, and the Yippies succeed in levitating the Pentagon, inspiring the Jokerman Eight to respond by building a pyramid next to the Pentagon.

Written in a polyphonous prose where every tendency is contrapuntal to another — rollicking yet meditative, whirlwind yet lax, lush yet stark, ghostly yet grounded, complex yet accessible — the novel bears comparison to Edward Abbey's 1975 cult eco-classic The Monkey Wrench Gang and can best be summed up by its final (and shortest) sentence: “Live happy.” Jokerman 8 is about laughing more and taking the world less seriously; about learning to swim and fly; about following gentle impulses; about not sitting still while Earth’s flora and fauna are shaved, poisoned, and burned off the planet's surface; and about daughters and sons learning what it is they are about.

Born in San Francisco in 1968 and reared in Oregon, Richard Emidio Melo attended Gresham High School and San Francisco State University. He spent two years performing environmental service with AmeriCorps, the domestic Peace Corps during the middle 1990s. He currently lives in Portland, Oregon with his daughter. His writing is forthcoming in The Believer and in the Gobshite Quarterly.

1987 — Willie Shoman, Jokerman provocateur, gets busted for spiking ancient trees in the Siskiyou National Forest, but that’s not what makes his face fall. At home at his San Francisco address after his release from jail, a registered letter arrives for him, which he signs for, opens & reads. It’s official correspondence from the Department of Interior, the federal agency that oversees the U.S. Forest Service. The letter is signed by the Secretary himself, although the typist’s initials are jmb.
What does Willie say? Well, nothing. Willie is not the kind to talk to himself when no one else is around. When he’s in the company of others, he talks to himself incessantly. He talks to himself so much in the presence of others that those around him pretend to listen while their minds wander elsewhere.


The Forest Service thought Willie’s quote-unquote conviction was, in a word, soft, so it decided to mete out a punishment of its own. The letter to Willie informs him of his lifetime ban from the National Forests of the United States of America.
Banned for life? From the forests?
[When Willie becomes confused his eyes cross & he stares blankly ahead.]
Willie’s eyes cross & he stares blankly ahead.
The Forest Service shows they have a sense of humor after all — banning him *as if Willie poses any threat to the forest whatsoever. Willie never litters, always covers his tracks, never plays with matches & by golly, the last thing he would ever do is fly out old growth logs with helicopters — the last thing he would ever do is build a logging road. All Willie ever does is visit — breathe — thoroughly fall in the love with life & the world all around him & occasionally leave some 50-penny nails cozily nestled inside some of the statelier trees. He’s not hurting anyone æ he’s not hurting anything. Banishment from the thousands of square miles of national forest land is unthinkable. The government wishes to use its hold over the law to force the Willie Shomans of the world into extinction æ like so many a grey wolf or marbled murrelet. Willie won’t go for this.


We breathe in the view, we camp — camping fixes my back, the rocks under my sleeping bag hitting the pressure points just right. Rain beats loudly on the tent, pitter-pattering — our food & toothpaste hang from trees so bears cannot get to them. We hike — we spend hours studying the native plants that we cannot find in our field guide. We follow animal tracks & recreate the story of the critters who passed through this way before us. We pick up after ourselves so well that no one will know we were ever there.
The trip nearing its end, the three of us return to the tree in the heart of the valley where we hid the bag of tools, glue & 50-penny nails that we drive into ancient trees in the National Forest marked for cutting.


The way it works is this: One Jokerman stands on another’s shoulder, while a third stands watch. We stand on each other’s shoulder’s to make the spikes harder to find & to keep the logger out of harm’s way if indeed this is a tree that does get cut. With a Leatherman tool, the top monkey scrapes a small circle of bark roughly four inches in diameter off of the tree. Then she uses a battery-powered Mikita drill to pierce the tree’s soft, wet flank by six inches. Into the hole, the top monkey pushes a 50-penny nail in as far as it will go with her thumb, then hammering it in the rest of the way so that the head is nearly flush with the tree’s skin. Then she uses a small pair of boltcutters to snip off the nail’s head — so that anyone bent on removing the spike from the tree will have a bear of a time of it. She covers up the tree’s wound, coating the inside of the piece of bark with waterproof Elmer’s & then wedging it back into place, so that to the naked eye, it will appear as if nothing happened there. We are used to it — the entire procedure takes two or three minutes. We can spike 50-70 trees on a good day. The trees will carry on as if nothing happened. Trees can live with spikes in them.
The idea is to delay the cut. Maybe if we delay it long enough, the cut will never happen. We are not alone, either. A rogue contingent of USFS employees are on the side of the trees æ which seems obvious æ it’s why they become foresters in the first place æ & no, they are not on the side of the timber companies. These employees do not always move up through the Forest Service ranks & are assigned the grunt task of checking out each of the trees. They help us out in nonchalance. They take their own sweet time in checking out the trees & pulling the spike & in the end, delay the cutting even longer. The timber companies live in a world where time is money. We are glad we live someplace else.


[One day, the earth opened up & squeezing themselves out of a hole in the mud & slop were Jude & Willie. They are manifestations of a planet that refuses silent submission & produces a Jude & Willie to fight back.]


Despite repeated attempts by the timber lobby to make this as dire an offense as murder, tree spikers do not get arrested. Then again, there was the time back in ‘87 when Willie turned an ankle & an instant later, two baseball-bat wielding Chevron attendants caught him in the act æ seemingly red handed & subjected him to a citizen’s arrest, which led, eventually, to Willie’s stateside forest banishment. They tied up his wrists with twine & drove him down to the Wakonda County sheriff’s office. They kept the handle of the baseball bat in a stranglehold around his neck should he try to escape. His ankle throbbing & swelling, Willie wasn’t going anywhere.
Jude, meanwhile, was left behind at the scene. She is a current Pac-10 middle distance track champion & for all her world-class quickness, can outrun nearly everyone. Willie Shoman, though, running for dear life can almost keep up with her. God knows they ran in the past — more than once hearing gunfire with their names on it. Bullets give you no other choice but to outrun them. This time, though, neither ran. Willie had hurt himself & couldn’t run & Jude wasn’t going to leave him there alone. For whatever reason, the two Chevron boys didn’t even notice her & instead hauled just Willie away.
Riding over the bumpy county roads en route to the sheriff’s office, Willie becomes peaceful. He considers not of his pending loss of freedom — meaning in a word, jail. Rather he thinks about baseball.


Baseball is a way of comparing Willie Shoman to Fidel Castro. Both had dreamed of becoming star baseball players. Castro had been a semi-professional southpaw pitcher, dreaming of playing the American pro leagues. His baseball dream withering, he turned his thoughts toward revolution. As an American youth growing up in Marin & playing sports, Willie became not Fidel Castro æ but rather Charlie Brown. Baseballs were always landing on Willie’s head, footballs were flying directly into his balls, basketballs were jamming his fingers & all too often, he was lying on his back, staring at the sky, an opponent’s blow having knocked the wind out of him.
During Willie’s childhood baseball career, no matter the level of his concentration, eyes open or shut, he could not swing the bat so it would hit the ball æ he could not hit to save his life. Meanwhile, all the other kids in Marin County Babe Ruth League who could hit the ball did hit the ball while Willie rode the pines. Willie then decided to become a pitcher & spent the winter determined to build up his arm strength so that he could whiz fast pitches by opposing batters. When spring baseball rolled around, those kids who could hit now hit Willie’s curveball — hard. Trying once again, Willie now went to work learning to field an infield position in hopes that he could keep playing as a light-hitting defensive star — the goal is to keep playing æ to make it to the next level. One day while playing third base, a line drive smashed hard into Willie’s mouth. After that, he played third base defensively — tentatively æ pee shy — lithely getting out of the way of any ball hit hard his way & letting it dribble into left field. That season turned out to be his last. He learned humility. He lost his desire to compete against others. After that, he grew his hair out & back at his Marin high school during the early 80s when his classmates were wearing business suits with suspenders & matting their hair down with pomade, people called him a hippie.
Ease up, Jimmy — I don’t think he can breathe like that. I think he wants to say something — let the dogfucker breathe.
Jimmy — his name is — loosens the bat’s grip around Willie’s throat.
Willie gags, unable to get the air he needs into his lungs fast enough. As soon as he can muster up words, though, he has a question for the two fellers — not an apology, not an excuse, not any sweet talkin with eye toward changing their minds into letting him go æ rather just a question.
Gasp, gasp, Willie gasps. Then his breath is caught. Ever play ball? Willie asks.


[Why did the dumb cuss go & ask us about playing ball?
It’s because we have that bat in the rig.
Shoothow, I remember back high school days when we were playing & carried a bat with us because we had to go to practice. These days, we carry the bat just in case of trouble. The dumb cuss really did want to talk about baseball. I liked him better before I knew he used to play.]


Off they drive with Willie, leaving Jude standing alone in the parking lot behind the service station, carrying in her backpack a bag of nails & tree-spiking gear. She’s the one who is red handed — Willie is whistle clean. Because the gear is not on Willie’s person when he arrives at the sheriff’s office & they have no evidence linking Willie to tree spiking other than the testimony of the Chevron attendants who did not actually see anything other than Willie & Jude stepping out of the forest & who know what they were doing by nothing other than speculation, county sheriffs venture into the forest & discover freshly spiked trees but find no tracks or other evidence linking Willie to them. Willie, meanwhile, is saying nothing. Taking the Fifth confirms to everyone that he is guilty, but his silence, too, cannot be used against him. [Everybody else at the station house — Chevron attendants, deputies, jailers, et al — are talking about baseball æ about their high school playing days & last year’s World Series. Willie has a knack for getting people to talk.]
Without other evidence, Wakonda County charges Willie with criminal trespassing — pure & simple — a misdemeanor for which those convicted rarely spend time in jail — a misdemeanor for which those out-of-towners who are guilty usually receive a ticket & firm warning not to come back.
Willie’s case is different. While the charge may be trespassing, everyone knows that tree spiking is his crime. After Eleanor Cookee who handles the books at Jokerman HQ posts his bail, Willie is free to go. He then returns two months later for his nonjury trial, which wraps up in less than an hour, the judge convicting him of misdemeanor trespassing & sentencing him to six months in the county jail. Four months of his sentence are suspended & should Willie participate in the Inmate Work Program, he can be released in as few as fourteen days. Yippee skippee!
[Why can’t you do something about goddamn tree spikes? timber company executives whine to Reagan appointees at the Department of the Interior. The bureaucrats make haste, drafting a letter to the only known offender on the books æ one Willie Shoman of San Francisco, California USA. This letter will surely send a message. ]


Chapter 13: A little doghouse in your soul


His reputation spreads by word of mouth & from the sign down by the highway. So wonderful are his doghouses, they become an international phenomenon — last month he even had an order from Japan! Bill Taylor lives with his family along Highway 20 in Eddyville, a nook of land along Oregon’s Coastal Range. In these parts romp many of the mangiest dogs in the state — stinky, sloppy, mudfooted dogs made mangier because of all the rain æ some years it rains 200 inches. Shelter here is a basic need for human & dog alike. It makes sense that everyone here owns a doghouse. Since Bill Taylor is best at making them, it makes sense that everyone owns a Bill Taylor ™ Signature Doghouse. It starts off with the customized shed business he runs out of his home. Next comes the sign along the road: Customized sheds. Low-low prices. The finer print below says more: Also Available: Genuine! Truly Top-Flight Dog Houses! The traveler passing through between Corvallis & Newport stops at the red blinking light near the train tracks in Eddyville. On days when the rain ebbs enough to see some of the world beyond the windshield, the traveler may take a look around at people’s property — not too different from anyone else’s along this stretch of highway: the washing machines in the front yard, the clothing on lines waving gently in the coast wind, tires on the roof holding down tarps (patchwork repairs to prevent rain from falling in the living room & bedroom), chain link fences & always a number of kids glowing in their wild-cherry Kool-Aid smiles, running around dirty barefoot with a dog in the light rain. Then you see it — there! — along the side of the yard, the dog’s house — Will you take a look at that one? It’s the kind of doghouse that catches your eye & will not let go. The next thing you know, you are forgetting your hurrying ways, your 75 miles per hour through the curves & turning the rig around — heading back a mile or so to the place where you thought you saw a sign. You are going to see a man about a doghouse & you don’t even have a dog — not since the last one ran off. You meet him — Bill Taylor — he says he can set you up with one custom designed to fit your dog & match your home æ siding, paint & all. Shoot, I can load one of the prefabs in your Suburban right now if you like, or I can deliver it to you anywhere in the state — for a small extra charge. [Of course, our own two doghouses don’t get much use. Our dogs sleep inside — in the kids’ rooms. The way I see it, no one should ever have to sleep alone, but damned if we will let the kids sleep with us anymore & damned if we will let them sleep with each other, being from different marriages & all. A dog curled up behind a child’s knees while asleep at night — that’s the way I grew up & damned if my kids don’t get the same.]
You are living a lucky life when your joy is how people come to know you. Bill Taylor is a cut above — he can hardly keep up with back orders for his Bill Taylor ™ Signature Doghouses. His shed business is falling by the wayside, but his bottom line is steadily on the rise. Life is good.


1986 — The doghouses here come in handy for Willie Shoman & Jude that soggy day in February in the Eddyville backwoods when gunfire came calling for them. The two of them find dog houses, hide out & keep dry until the shooters themselves decide to take cover from the rain, cuss themselves a blue streak & let Willie & Jude get away.


1989 — Life gets better for the others in Eddyville. A rumor spreads — a timber sale is going through. They are going to let the cutting go on after all.
Down in Waldport, I heard on the radio that Oregon has more ghost towns than any other state.
I know — I’ve seen them.
It got me thinking: Eddyville is a ghost town, even though we’re still livin here.
Can you call this livin? David, it rained more than 180 inches last year.
That doesn’t matter, if the sale goes through. It will again be like the old days when we all had money in our pockets & the Eugene radio station had enough power that we could get good reception.
Not so fast. The Willie Shomans of the world are still out there. I don’t understand those people. Don’t they know wood is the best product there is? It’s not like tobacco, which kills people. Wood is for people to build things — the covered playground at the elementary school. Wood gives us the paper for the books that children read, the newspapers that keep us in touch with the world. People sit — that’s what they do. Wood gives them chairs to sit on.


[People shit — that’s what they do. Wood gives them the paper for wiping their asses clean.]