Where is Nature?

    Tall whisks of grass cover the deep-rutted road with the false feeling of not appearing so naked upon the judgemental gaze of the many stars above, their faces glowing in their self-absorbed egotistical white fire. The lacking height of the small oaks that dot the open pasture seem to create a suspenseful air, as their rough appendages grasp at the sky above the canopy of the hair around them, that is blowing steadily to the same side. Far-away cattle lights line the side of the even further hills off to the west, as the occasional moan of animals echoes through the otherwise desolate land's airspace.
   
    Suddenly, all is still in awe as the crying howl of a coyote pierces the land and the hearts of many terrified and crippled animals alike, trying to stay hidden in the brush that is only dying with the parasite of time. Another joins. The cries seem to resemble that of a woman screaming; a shrill, exasperated sound that demands attention and recognition among an otherwise undeserving, and involuntary audience. In a proud moment of achieved glory, the pack of ravenous dogs harmonize their battle songs, each carrying their own tune as the other carries their own, and matching it with such beauty, it draws away from the original purpose. Why must death sound so pretty?
   
    A turkey begins to call out in its roost, high above another dying oak tree, as the sun threatens to engulf them in their own fear of becoming noticeable in the light it delivers. The drone of cars from a nearby farm-to-market road break the serenity.
   
    Here he stood, a teenager by age, yet an adult by wisdom, misunderstood by a generation of those considered his senior, although the very word is only all too relative. Misunderstood, really, because of the way he chose to be placed in society. Society, so cruel, was not kind to him.
   
    Though teased by his peers out of their fear of the unknown, the uncertainty of the even more uncertain, he found comfort in this paradox of life. He was uncertain of the uncertain.
   
    Nature, in all its beauty, had been pleasant to him in the past, always offering a break from the routine of normality, by playing a different hand of cards each time they sat together, in the tranquility of a chapping winter morning, upon a chair perched high in the hugging arms of oaks. It wasn't often that he won the game, you see, but Nature found it in her heart to give a prize for effort. He was a great hunter.
   
    There came a day when the cries of coyotes and the bleats of the sheep they stalked in vein were washed away in a wave of throbbing gunfire, the smell of smoke filling the air with the bitter odor of beer long abused, with the shabbiness of blinds and shacks lacking even the shame of mediocrity in their craftsmanship. Animals long kept plentiful by Nature were depleting on the forlorn teenager's land with the rise of the explosions surrounding him. Vengeful explosions could not be taken by the teenager, you see, for the bow and arrow carries little intimidating sound.
   
    On their weekly card game in the treetops, the boy asked Nature of the change in a blessing he tried long and hard to prevent from taking for granted, much to a puzzling surprise. Nature seemingly ignored the sorrowful interrogation that pained wounds of guilt, until she laid down a hand silently on the table. Nature had lost.
   
    The teenager found no resolve to a problem that seemed to grow in its deserve for concern, and the blinds of other hunters plagued the desicrated fenceline, with strands of barbed wire cut from the tops to keep the animals moving to their lands, which resembled nothing more than an invitation for death. No limitations were put on themselves, and they continued to harrass and pressure the natives of the newly scarred land with the humiliating killing of the animals that were so easily looked upon as decorations for trashy mobile home walls.
   
    Nature did not show up in the trees the next week, and the boy saw nothing in terms of animals that had roamed freely in the past.
   
    Hunters on the other side of the moral boundaries of the barbed wire compared their prizes on the backs of flatbed trucks as brown bottles of alcohol lay beside the various deer and turkey, each their own shade of brown showing the only pride that lasts in their figure after wrongful death. They were such pretty animals.
   
    The boy hunted hard, yet careful not to take his hobby in vein, for it had corrupted his drunken neighbors across the fences.  After all, who would care for the deer that were long respected by the Indians that originally owned the land, yet were herded off by the growing amount of stupidity beyond barbed wire fences? A lone premature buck cautiously slipped into a slight opening in the trees that made such a pretty background for the card games, and began crunching on a littered mess of acorns below the tips of the grass, his small stubs of antlers vaguely showing. It was the only deer he had seen all season, and the freezer was desperately low. He passed.
   
    Nature had not shown up for the game of chance long played with the boy for a month now, and rumor had it in the cheerful songs of birds that never die suggested nature was captured by the men around the boundaries. It made sense to the boy. Nature was missing for an awful long time.
   
    Months passed on top of the weeks that flew by under it, and the season was ending ceremoniously with the flat bed hearses that openly carried the bodies of the deceased that had their God given respect neglected amongst the intoxicated laughter of the men who drove them away.
   
    On the last day of the season, the teenager hunted long and hard, as he did every other day of the season, paying attention the call of the birds, of the body language displayed by the blind armadillo, and the lack of deer that walked by seemed to say a million words in silence.
   
    Then he saw it through his binoculars, peering to the fenceline, and he found where Nature had been all this time.
   
    Roars of drunken laughter echoed through the trees. They were dragging the young buck to the flat bed.