Wayne 1

It was late afternoon. We stood on Wayne’s porch enjoying the cool breeze; the children were milling around with the dogs and horses in the paddock: shrieking, barking, neighing.
"Government," said Wayne, "government..."
I actually had not mentioned government, but muttered a slight "hmm?", as to encourage him to complete his thought.
“See that slope?” said my imaginary friend, pointing at the side of the mountain facing us, still visible in the failing light. “See anything wrong with that? Looks pretty darn good, doesn’t it.”
It looked undeniably good. It rose to a few hundred feet above the valley where we stood: mainly Ponderosa, some Spruce, occasional patches of bright green first-growth Aspen, perhaps sites of small long-ago fires.
“Yes, nice. What about it.”
“I look after that,” he said. “The wood you buy from me in the fall each year? It all comes from those slopes. Year after year. Still looks good though, doesn’t it”.
“Yes, well,” I replied,” that’s because you know what you’re doing.”
“So I don’t need no environmentalists, tree huggers, regulators, Indians, forest experts, commin’ here telling me what to do.”
“But that’s just you. Another person would make a mess, clear-cut, make landslides, torch it, drive all over it...”
“I drive all over it,” said Wayne.
“Still,  you probably don’t destroy the watercourses, churn up the whole place and scare the owls.”
“Yeah, right. I say who needs those owls.”
Wayne never used the word “fuck” or any other obscenity in his talk. He wasn’t that kind of cowboy. But here, “fucking” was clearly a missing adjective before the word “owls“.
“Too many animals in these valleys. Elk and deer destroy the pastures before the cows can get to them in spring. But you try culling them...”
“Me? No, I’m a vegetarian.”
“I don’t mean you, I mean you try culling them.”
“There is a hunting season.”
“And I take out as many as I can get in my sights. As many as my permit allows...Take all that Elk, every one, get rid of them, send them to France, they would love them there, love them to death, with luck.”
We stood in silence for a while. The kids retreated up on to the paddock railings and were wiping horse shit of their legs and sneakers.
"Government," said Wayne, "government...they want to take care of me, but they don't take care of what really matters. You know, a lot of things just don't get talked about. Did you know that gay illegal aliens come here and get married, adopt some of our children, take every job that there is, then take the adopted children, load them with explosives and send them into government buildings, airports and the like for Al Qaeda? Does anyone dare mention that?"
"No. Is that true? I didn't know that."