Paving the dirt road in the village of Pardeaux
-
The thickness of the morning hangs black kite heavy
in the barrels of fog masks that inhabit nearly the
entirety of the Village of Pardeaux. And I was hired
by Henry Foster, along with others, to pave the dirt road
that zig-zags haphazardly through the Village of Pardeaux
in the parish of Leopold proper in which I'd never been
before. I took to the task mainly because that type of
work had dried up in Virginia, and there were certain
other matters there that I was needing to escape from, so
I rushed down south before Henry Foster could give the
job promised to some other out of work vagabond type
who's availability wasn't hindered by travel time, but I got
to the lodging quarters the night before Henry's crew
was ready to head out to the site. Everything was
going swimmingly that first day, as we made headway
from the outskirts of the village toward the interior at
a somewhat steady pace, yet the second day, man it
was something'. Hotter than the sun's waiting room,
with the heavy morning fog straying deep into the
woods on either side of where the project was pushing
toward, and just before lunch break I heard several
pings echo off the flattener that I was steering
to level the asphalt slab. Initially, I shrugged it
off as the machine was simply working so hard in
the heat that the barrings were wearing thin, though I
knew that sound relatively well, and this was somehow
different from what little I was able to discern over the
belching of the motor. I looked around cautiously, and
idled the throttle to make sense of it all when another
string of a more pelting nature shot out to reverberate
off of the dense forest that I was now surrounded by.
The pings got more consistent after my initial shut down,
to the extent that I scanned in all directions for some
sort of cause. At first I saw nothing tangible to explain
the noises, though they continued undeterred. After
nearly five minutes of this, I got off the flattener
to explore the woodline, and a few feet beyond. A narrow
ditch divided the road from the woods which troubled me
quite a bit. Then a barrage of substantial sized rocks
fell at my feet, with one catching me square in the
stomach. A parcel of woods directly in front of me
swayed momentarily, as another round of rocks chipped
the paint off places on the flattener. I high-tailed
that thing out of there, backing the monster at speeds
I never thought it could go, as a collection of people came
out of the woods into the clearing. Tossing rocks as far
as they could throw, and I caught up to Henry Foster eating
lunch in a diner, telling him that getting' hit with rocks
in the stomach was where I drew the line, and hitched it
back to Virginia with nothing' to show for my troubles.
-