Wood Man by Joseph D’Agnese
Wood was his life. His new life. Mornings Walt took the truck south beyond the border and scouted the desert for dead or dying trees. He was really in it for the mesquite. He’d been doing this long enough to know where the most likely pickings were. He levered branches and logs into the truck bed by hand. Used the winch to raise the heavier trunks. On the way back he’d prowl the small villages to see what people had for him. They’d wave him down from the side of the road, their faces brightening into grins when he proffered dollars for their salvaged barn boards or dilapidated privies or scavenged cacti ribs.
He worried sometimes that he was sowing bad habits among them. He had one rule, which he tried to impress upon them, so much as his bad Spanish would allow: We must not ever take a live tree. Me entiendes? A good tree would come to them in time. When it was ready. No sense in pushing it.
