Marvin’s war with the squirrels began with the roar of a chainsaw. He stood in his backyard wearing a Budweiser baseball cap, a pair of short shorts, and a farmer’s tan. Red body hair nearly hid a faded “April” tattoo that arched over his round gut. My daughter Tressa watched him front the fence line, as I sweated in to a fresh hole that would soon be home to a young oak tree.
I wiped the sweat from my forehead with the back of my hand and tossed the shovel aside. “Honey, come on back and give me a hand.” Don’t make eye contact with him, I thought. He might come over here.
Tressa wandered back to the hole, weaving across the grass. She seemed to drift rather than walk as her new spring dress swirled in the breeze. “Why does he have the month tattooed on his stomach?”
“I don’t think that is the month, kiddo. It’s a woman’s name.”
“But his wife’s name is Sandy.”
I wasn’t sure where to go from there, so like any good parent, I let the line of questioning vanish. Marvin helped out by cranking up a Jackyl cassette on a beaten-up boom box. He downed a can of beer, crushed it, and then tossed it in a growing pile of aluminum next to his patio door. The King of Beers was lucky to have such a devoted subject. Marvin gunned the chainsaw in time to the music as he laid in to an old maple in the center of his yard. Squirrels fled, leaping from its limbs to a nearby oak or fleeing to the grass to be chased by Red, Marvin’s barking pitbull.
Red snatched a squirrel that had moved too slowly and shook it. Red strutted to Marvin’s side and dropped his prize. Marvin stopped cutting and patted the dog’s head before picking up the squirrel and punting it over our fence. Tressa hurried over to it.
I called after her. “Don’t touch it, Tressa. Squirrels can carry diseases.”
She dropped down to her knees beside the body. “Poor squirrel. He’s a mean man. Why is he cutting down the tree?” (more…)