The houses left empty

A short intercalary chapter on what is left behind. The only living things on the land are the corrugated-iron tractor sheds; a tractor, unlike a horse in a barn, is as dead as ore the moment its motor stops, and the man who drives it knows the land only as chemistry and so holds it, and himself, in contempt. Town boys break the windows of the empty houses. Cats mew on the porches for a night, then go wild in the fields; bats, mice, weasels and owls move in. A shower brings weeds up through the porch boards, wind lifts the shingles one by one, and the sun burns a glaring hole through the roof onto the floor.