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BUZZARDS They came a week before my father died, a dozen torn umbrellas hunched one morning in the giant oak behind my parents’ house, wigged like magistrates with an inch of April snow. My mother joked about it afterwards, and I supposed that somewhere on the migratory path a big tree must have fallen or been cut, and here they were, our buzzards now – staring down the hill, tasting the breeze. That oak was older than Tecumseh, seasoned where it stood by lightning strikes, centuries of sun. Hard as iron, Mr. Altier said, tucking my mother’s check into his shirt pocket. Burned up two good chain saws, cutting it down. -- Jon Loomis, Nebraska Review, Sp/Summer ‘96