A Parable on the Work of Ministry

The local coyote, mange-struck, found the neighbor's chickens in my yard over by the garden: feathers, blood, and bone, wet with dew.

Their kids, two girls, doe-eyed, with carefully combed blonde hair (usually pinpricked and ornamented with leaves from their journey through the woods), came over yesterday.

They often drop by to talk about school or church or, if we're not home, to leave some toys on the porch for the boys. But yesterday, they came over to ask if I had seen the hens, or any predators about (her word was "pwedatuhs").

In the smell of death, I shook my head.

Today, the girls are at school, and so are my boys. So I mowed over the meadow-shambles of nature’s way: an unceremonious hearse of machinery, from which I once watched those chickens run from the boys; a game we played to spare the garden.

Now, burying the scraps under the fresh-cut grass, I think about the green beans and zucchinis, undisturbed; the garden unpilfered by what once was, and now remains, a last-leg meal of a skin-raked wild thing.

“Have you seen any pwedatuhs about?” I park the mower and go inside.
After loading my papaw's rifle, I begin the walk across my other neighbor's farm.