It looked quiet outside. The noises in the other room continued and were intrusive but I didn't want to focus on them. Rather than try, I proceeded with my weekend plans.
Those plans called for layers and layers of clothes which I began pulling on; their chill was soon warmed by my activity. The right foot sock liner was perfect, the left liner and sock an annoying tightness against my toes. A watchcap and hat with ear flaps made my wife and her mother's argument a little more distant.
I took my saw and headed for the front door, grunting spare acknowledgement to the women. They took the opportunity to direct their anger and accusing hands towards me as I tried to ignore them, struggling into my boots.
Then I was outside with a door and frigid weather between me and decades of ongoing disagreements. My dad and I had been more like the deep winter; loud moments of strife, like tree limbs breaking from the weight of frozen rains. However, interruptions of this kind were usually separated by long periods of quiet.
I had sharpened the chain on my saw, cleaned the air filter and checked the chain brake last evening. My ten pound model was, in comparison with my dad's saws, almost vibration-free. There's nothing like a good fire in the fireplace; I needed some more wood.
The day was overcast and quiet, just the snuff and crimping sounds of snow under my boots. In winter, most times, sounds should be few and far between as well as dampened and remote.
Preparing to argue with that thought I filled the saw's tank with gas and headed past the tree line. I started the saw and began making my cuts in the wood of the fallen Spruce.
As I finished, they began to rev up their verbal chainsaws. I could feel their voices attempting to messily sever my limbs, sunder my trunk... You will clean up those dishes, I won't be scrubbing dried oatmeal out of that bowl! When in the hell are you going to get around getting the television fixed?
I climbed back into my clothes and boots and headed outside to continue my work with the chainsaw and axe. As I worked I wondered what it would be like to head back into the house with the chainsaw.
Day dreaming about wading into them with an axe carried me up until lunch time.
Lunch was four or five brews and more female noise. While I puttered around in the shed for a couple of hours, I decided that burying anything in this weather would be a real bitch. I don't have a woodchipper. I like my shed so I couldn't see stuffing them into that and burning it up.
I sharpened the chain on my saw and checked the air filter again. I put a slicker on over my clothes, got my field kit and took the ladies outside on the tarp. By that time they were pretty cold and the blood had begun to make a patchwork on the parts of their bodies closest to the ground. They didn't look much like themselves.
That made it easier to think of them as trees. I placed some two by fours under them and went to work. The saw did a fairly neat job with the head, hands and arms; there wasn't a lot of vibration and surprisingly little blood. The legs were awkward though and I ended up having to tie the torso to the two by fours and use an axe (dad was right). I put the chitlins into my kit's ziplock bags and the rest of the pieces into several double garbage bags.
