Soon a yellow D9 Cat, wrenched and welded together by beer-drinking, polka-dancing union members up north, arrived, and then there was no more silence in the simple woods. This American juggernaut crawled with steel treads churning over a hill jetting black smoke, and its progress could be gauged by the shaking treetops with their rafts of dark green leaves waving and then bending before it, like masts in a wild sea, and then slamming to the ground. In this way, tearing and shoving, the machine made its way into the glade of poison ivy and began to push down white oaks and bulldoze them into a pile. The soft earth that had lain hidden beneath rotted leaf mold for millenniums was torn up and printed with dozer tracks and shown to the unflinching sun, where it lay curled and cracked and began to dry and flake and be clambered upon by red fire ants. The sun was hot and the day went on. Things formerly in the shade now got some light. A box turtle moved away dryly rustling, scaly clawed reptilian feet digging for purchase in the dead leaves, bright fingers of yellow stippling its round brown shell. A clan of local crows flew in and lit and walked around on some limbs and started saying in their crow language, What the hell’s up? Anything to eat?
The dozer dude ate his lunch. Fried chicken, cold biscuits, some olives in a plastic bag. A nicely folded paper towel. A homemade fried apple pie crimped around the delicately crusted edges with a fork as evenly as teeth on a gear. Then a good nap beneath the shade of a giant bur oak with a black Cat cap with the yellow letters over his face. The crows sat and jeered and watched him from their limbs.
You think we ought to sneak in on the ground for them scraps? He ain’t got no gun. Least I don’t see one.
Naw, man, he may be just playing possum. They do that sometimes. That’s how my uncle got killed. My mama told me. Fell for one of them owl decoys and a good mouth caller. Let’s just watch him for a while.
I think he done eat it all anyway. What was it? Fried chicken?
Yeah. Fried chicken. Wing and a leg and a thigh.
That’s another bird, too. I mean if you think about it. Seems kinda cannibalistic if you know what I mean.
I ain’t related to no chicken, but I can see that other biscuit from here.
Well, if you so badass, why don’t you just fly your black ass on in there and get it?
I could if I wanted to. I’m swuft.
In your dreams maybe.
I caught a rat other day. Beat a hawk to it.
A hawk would whip your young ass.
I can dive-bomb like a freight train.
Well, do it, punk. Fly on in there and get that biscuit.
I think I’ll just wait till the time’s right.
That’s what I figured. Set up here in a tree and talk shit like a juvenile.
Later on in the afternoon diesel smoke drifted again through the woods, and deer at their grazing in sun-dappled and beech-shaded hollows stopped and smelled it, and their little spotted ones stopped and smelled it, too. It seemed to alarm them a bit. They were used to smelling honeysuckle, cedar, tender shoots of grass, acorns, somebody’s nice patch of purple hull peas if they could find it. For which they’d often get the hell shot out of them with 00 buckshot. Maybe Brenneke rifled slugs. Depending upon whose place they were on, maybe even machine-gun slugs. They trotted off toward a trail that led into the forest, single file, tails down, not scared, just moving away to somewhere else, picking up a few more ticks. The bucks’ horns were just bulbous branches full of blood at this time of year. They lived there and they weren’t about to move just because somebody was building a pond. A regular drinking hole in the woods was actually a pretty good idea.