He is deaf from the whining scream of the chainsaw, and is sweating under a thinning, November sun.  There must have been some way to avoid this hellhole in the Middle East.  When he had seen the pictures on the screen last night, something had knotted in his belly.  But here, at least, this morning, the work felt good, the bright, interior heart of the tree exposed like this.  Fuck politics.  There were wormholes.  Some people liked them in their furniture.  Antique.  He was fifty-nine years old.  And lately it felt old.  Antique.  Christ, what he wouldn’t give for a beer and a chance to get laid by that girl at Tommy’s.  She was a bright thing.  He’d vote the bastards out of office if any other bastards would do any better.  The white house down below had rung the cops once about his chain-sawing on Sunday.  Fuck the neighbors and their Sunday.  Fuck the neighbors and their lament about the old elm.  Fuck everyone.  What was it his son had said in that poem.  “Fuck was a strong word, an Anglo Saxon word, a good word that gets the job done.”  He was sharp, that boy of his, despite his politics.  Funny how the kid could be so sharp and dumb all at once.  How anyone could believe in those sissy liberal assholes, but worse, he began to think, how could anyone believe anything at all?  Maybe all he needed was to introduce his son to Sheila down there at Tommy’s.  Maybe that was all anyone ever really needed.  It was worth a try.  One more cut and he’d have the hour in and enough firewood for a month.  It felt good.  But, Jesus, those little kids.  That was what bugged him.  Little kids, parts of their bodies just strewn across the ground like windblown trash.  And our boys did this?  Something was fucked . . . big time.