Unpinching

Woop! Wrue-oop! Wuppa! The blade flexed as he tried to move the saw.
There is no deft and graceful way of backing out a pinched blade. It is all trying, tugging, wriggling, sharp edges, ominous flexing and cussing to take back time; go back to a minute before and kick out a little more sawdust as you go, not be so fast, so direct, so precise as to not leave wriggle room, tolerance.
All the worse that I was watching. Witness is the villain of the incompetent. Witness the maker of glory and shame.
“Well! … Stupid girl!”
All of the sudden a call came from the far side of the orchard.
“Randall! C’mon, we gotta get back to the cove!”
Randall shot me a dirty look, rubbing his cheek with the top of his arm. He had cherry pitch and dust on his forearm and outer palm.
Then he ran away.
The handle of the saw flopped down from where the blade held into the trunk, and bounced a little. I picked it up and started working the blade out, pulling back on one side and then the other, then again, and again. It took so long, especially because I was worried Randall would come back. But it came out and I put the handsaw in my net. If he came back, he’d have to have another saw to saw anything down.
The cherry trunk had a wan little frown, drooling shiny pitch at the corners.
I decided to find some other part of the island, away from the orchard, to explore.
I hadn’t thought about having a saw before, but now I had a saw.