And the radio blared.

Dan was a big man. He wore his jeans, polished by hard work and constant strain, like they weren’t his second skin, but his only skin. He pulled his truck over onto the sand that was a parched and weathered as his face. It used to be soil. Dirt. Earth. 

Dan stepped out of his truck. Like him, it was beaten up…but not beaten down. The paint on his truck had faded to a more rust color. Like blood dried on an old wooden floor. He patted the hood. A smile edging along the canyons of his face. 

“Good girl.”

The truck, being inanimate …did not reply. Dan, however heard her smile. 

He pulled out his radio, set it on the tail gate, and pulled out a series of poles, a pole digger, and his canteen. He looked up to see how far the sun had gone up. 

Not far. 

“Good.”

Those would be the last words Dan spoke until lunch. 

Someone watching would think Dan was fighting the Earth. Trying, in some way only understood by the spirits that used to inhabit the old tales, to bend the sand to his will. Powerful shoulders, honed by thousands of post holes…dug in solitude, with only the Radio blasting out pressure waves to fight through the rippling tides of heat that radiated up…and not out. 

Not many would realize what Dan was doing…helping the Earth find its way back. He knew that this was once clean fresh dirt. Soil. A place that held life. Life that wasn’t hanging on by a thread…hoping for a drop of water…or something to grow in. He would bring grass. And then animals. And then those animals would make fertilizer. And water would be trapped, then pooled…then…flow. 

He never let those thoughts show. He just…worked. 

The Radio Blared. Carrying all the words that a modern world made into sound: war, lies, gossip, cruelty, disaster…and the overwhelming tsunami of Opinion. It was that last one that Dan despised the most. Opinions washing over the sprawling planes to finally become insignificant, irrelevant, and immaterial. The irony being that the I was washed away by I words. 

He never listened because he heard the messages. It is why he never slacked off. He had his work cut out. He could see the difference he was making. He could feel where the grass would grow. Where the animals would leave their paddies, scat, and droppings. It would make him smile a second time. 

“All that crap will some- day…someday soon, smell like good clean earth.”

The next thought made him laugh out loud. 

“Like me. I stink all day, go home shower, eat, and just like here…I smell better. Look nicer. And feel better.”

The Radio blared out some more noise: the war is on, the war is over. Ships are moving. Ships aren’t moving. Gas is up. Gas is down. Oil is getting more expensive. Societies are growing angry. Mean. Powerful men are making poor decisions. And then the adds….so many of them. Buy this. Buy that. You have to have this. You have to have that. Even the commercials have commercials. 

The Radio blared them all. 

Dan could have put music on. He could have heard pleasant melodies drifting across the acres upon acres of rolling empty fields. He rarely did. Because when the Radio blared…he understood that world wasn’t where he fit. It was the world he wanted to change. He wanted those people to stop. Come out here. See the amount of help Nature needs to keep the Garden Growing. 

Out here…alone. He could see the US in Humanity more clearly. So he worked harder. 

And the radio blared.