THE GOSPEL OF JOHN DEERE

“Tell the story about when people die,” they say. OK, you smelly little gremlins who won’t bathe or sleep, I think, but no embellishments. You’re getting the most basic model here. No power steering. When people die their bodies don’t work anymore. The part of them that we can see turns into compost. There. Maybe they’ll be so unimpressed by the lack of narrative that they’ll drift into oblivion.

“Tell the story about the deer body down at the orchard,” one of them says, as though asking me to strike a slightly different pose for the camera, since I’m not quite hitting the vibe she was going for. It probably got hit by a car, I say, with zero follow-through.

“It probably could still run for a little while after it got hit,” she corrects, “and that’s why it got all the way into the orchard.” Yes, that’s right. I curse my recent self for giving them long, thoughtful, meandering narratives to suck the marrow out of, even if I needed to do it at the time to get them up a steep hill in the wagon without biting