“Don’t know, don’t care,” said Rudy. Without looking at me, he reached into his back pocket and held the cardboard piece high. “Got what I need from that stubborn idiot. Superstitious. Fucking sentimental. High-and-mighty educated man, looking down on the guy who’s got to do the shit job for him. Doesn’t want to get his own hands dirty. He’s got to keep them clean so he can wring them and be all saintly.” He almost sounded like himself.

“When’s the last time you ate?” I asked.

“Don’t start with me,” he said.

“I brought you some breakfast,” I said. “Pumpkin seeds. They’re good for men.”

“What the hell does that mean?” he asked.

“They’re good for your prostate,” I said.

“At a time like this, I’d rather have a fucking cheeseburger,” he said. “Or almost anything else.”

Rudy pitched the end of the bull rope up into the tree, tied the bowline. Down at the pond, I wound a cow hitch around an old stump, hooked up the come-along. When I came back up the hill for the rope, Rudy said, “I want you to stay clear of the area. We might have taken a lot of weight off this thing, but don’t be fooled. It’s big and it’s hollow and it could go anytime.” I went back down to the pond and scoped an escape route, which meant being ready to swim.

Rudy took the big saw in both of his hands, and approached the tree like an outmatched fighter. I heard the saw whine. I saw him send the bar through. I began to pump the come-along’s handle, keeping the rope taut so that the tree would fall the direction we wanted it to go, away from the garage. The plan was to aim the thing down Aldi’s front lawn, running toward the pond. We would spend a day or two bucking it up and stacking it.

The oak was a fifteen-ton mousetrap waiting to go. The saw blade worked, and the oak sent up a wail, creaking and groaning, so great was the pressure. I worked the handle back and forth, and the shriek of the tree rose up so that I couldn’t hear Rudy call to me. I heard no signal from him. Soon I could hardly hear if the saw was working or not. I saw his yellow hard hat shiny like a thumbtack against the base of that mass, that force of tree. The tree drowned everything out. The way I knew something was wrong was that the rope went slack.