Burned hand man

I once knew a guy who had a burned left hand - top of the hand, I guess -
charred, scaled skin with wiggly lines pushed up in asymmetric patterns.
He was good with a Pulaski, skilled with a saw, gutted his Copenhagen,
and had very little to say about any of it, ever. One time we went down
to Red Lodge to skid out some lodgepole for a corral the Asst Ranger
wanted to build out in a cabin on the southwest corner of the forest so
he could take his wife there for Christmas. This guy with the burned
hand, one of the things he said once is that the assistant ranger was a
spitting fucking substantiated image of Curly from Of Mice and Men.

And so we're cutting down these skinny little lodge pole and skidding em
down the hill, two at a time for the bigger guys but mostly one at a time
for me. The rain turns to snow, and we get the load we want and one
of the others tries to pull down into the ditch in order to pull a U-turn
but the ground's too soft and the truck and trailer full of poles careens
down the side of the ditch, in slow motion like, until it's clear that
both truck and trailer full of poles will tip over. And the guy with the
burned hand is watching this and smiling, knowing what I do not know. That
is what I remember.