The branches are small, about three to four inches in diameter, and he cuts enough to fill the bottom of an old wheelbarrow, then rolls it up the lawn to the screened porch which is covered by plastic sheets that do not come off in summer. Unavailable as a bug-free haven, the space is reserved for makeshift stacks of scrapwood which he loads day and night, winter and summer, into the fireplace like bodies into a crematorium. It is my observation that neither the heat gained nor the life of the flames propels what he calls recycling. Broken up pallets and furniture, roof shingles and plastics are sacrificed to the darker purpose of being perverse for perversity's sake. He punishes the air we breathe in order to punish us.
Infested branches plummet audibly to the ground.
Five bushes grow so closely to a spreading tree that they lean away as if attempting to flee. Apparently randomly placed metal rods, each with a rusted can balanced on its top, dot the yard. The placement of the rods, however, is not random. At one time tiny volunteer trees grew from seeds of the old, rotted hickory, and my father marked them in this way in order to avoid mowing them down. Only the rods and cans remain, which I offered to remove, but he forbade me to do it.