I’d seen the wooden and metal wagon before in the far back of the tool shed that’s dilapidated and overgrown, to the point, deer have occupied the space for years. The trailer once had high sides made of tin. Rats and mice make their way under the shed, and snakes follow, of course. Maybe a squirrel runs through every now and then, but I see the traces and tracks of deer. Humans used to use it. There’s a grinder and things were worked on under that shelter when workers could get to it before the foliage made it almost impossible to access.
The floor is packed Georgia clay, and I see the heart-shaped tracks in the fine dust, which is how I know the deer use the shelter. It looks like a deer dance floor. Right smack in the dancers’ way, there sits the big metal and wood wagon that was used for the last time and parked and left there on rubber tires to rot. The shed would be warm in the winter and shade in the summer, protected cover almost like a cave. More deer could hide if the wood and metal trailer wasn’t parked there, but it is parked there at the corner under where the eave drops. The rain barely misses it, but rain spray hits it if the wind blows hard.
Hunters lease Andalusia’s property and come with their four-wheelers in the winter, and if I were a deer, I’d find this a good retreat. Briars and privet hedge surround the tool shed now. The humans quit using it no telling how many years ago, so I can see why the deer shelter. It’s protection from lots of things.
The humans would have to have been short because the ceiling is low. I have to be careful not to hit my head on the rafters. The place is falling in.
Not a hundred yards away is the main dairy barn. Some money was spent to stabilize the structure. Not a hundred yards the other way is the Hill House, which has been carefully restored. Nothing however has ever been done to the tool shed. Facing, the left wing of the dairy barn, there had been a makeshift wall propped up at the front when the dairy barn was beginning to fall in. It’s the old side of the trailer when it caught hay in the Andalusia fields. For all I know, Regina could have put the trailer’s side there to fix the falling barn, or it could have been there when Flannery was alive.
MFOC 