An older man wearing a beaten up lumberjack jacket with a baseball cap perched on his head is standing staring out over a large excavation in a field out back of what we can only assume is his house. If we look over the edge of the big hole we can see that the bottom is covered with gasping fish, walking ducks, forlorn frogs, and confused snakes.
The only animal that looks remotely happy is the heron busily spearing as many fish as possible. Of course he hasn't seen the state of his nest yet, which is laying in two pieces in an inch of mud surrounded by collapsed bull rushes.
The old man removes his baseball cap and mops his almost completely baldhead with a worn pocket-handkerchief, which he then stows in the breast pocket of his jacket. As he places the cap back on his head one can just barely discern the words Massey-Ferguson on the front, just above the bill.
The sound of a pick-up truck barrelling along the road breaks his reverie, and he turns his face away from the view of desolation, towards the source of the noise in time to see a late model Ford spewing dirt and gravel in its hurry, pulling into his lane. With a sigh he jams his hands deep into his pockets and starts to walk towards the new arrival.
But the truck seems intent on coming right up to meet him, so he changes direction in mid stride, turns around, and heads back to the lip of the hole. He flinches only slightly at the sound of the trunk spraying gravel as it comes to a stop behind him, and his sole reaction to the slamming of the door is to hunch himself a little deeper into his shoulders.
He's known who it would be long before the trunk even made its presence known on the road; known he'd be out here as soon as he heard about the tanker trunk being seen in the neighbourhood. He sighs again as he hears the energy in the footsteps kicking the gravel behind him.
He wishes he could have the energy to get that heated up again, but in his years of farming he's known so many ups and downs, that one more, no matter how unfair, doesn't make much of a difference anymore. Jeff will learn that sooner or latter, but for now he needs to rail against the world.
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