excerpt from The Alligators of Abraham
Remember your father returned home from what the
newspapers speculated was “exhaustion of the nerves” or a
“delirium” and your mother called, “his terrible
melancholy.” Remember the papers reported how your
father raved to “persons unseen.” How he fired his
revolver at shadows and bayoneted the wind. Remember
your father home and how he wore his uniform through
the day and into bed and removed his cap only at dinner
hour or at church service. Remember your father returned
home intoxicated by the advancements in technology lately
made. He had watched men alive and coiled within in
barbed wire. He had observed their greened and their eyes
burst for unseen gases. Remember how your father brought
you to a mounded tarpaulin in the backyard and how he
pulled this aside to reveal the red machine silent beneath.
“The salesman suggested steam powered,” Father explained,
“as the fuel is readily found.” Your father, however, had
long understood the importance of the combustion engine
and had opted for the gasoline machine. “It may not be as
accurate or as gentle as that mower you have known but I
have found in these years about the land that often the
greatest success comes through the methods most brutal.”