Read The First Annual Grand Prairie Rabbit Festival for Free Online Page B

on its own concrete slab. On the right side of the path, groups of men are knocking together wooden braces where I assume more slabs will go. Clusters of gas and water pipes sprout from the dirt like wildflowers telling me it’s just a matter of days before the new slabs are poured and more trailers moved in.
    How does this happen? There’s a suburb going up back here without me knowing about it?
    The bulldozer comes to a jerking halt and the driver climbs out of the cab and stands on the passenger-side tread of the machine. While he considers my car, he pulls a red bandana out of the bib of his denim overalls and wipes his brow. Like meerkats who’ve detected a hawk, the men working on the slab frames for the trailers all pop their heads up, look to the stopped bulldozer, look at my car, and settle their eyes on the bulldozer man. He waves his bandana at them absently and they go back to their work.
    He then flicks a wave my way in hello and motions me over. I ease up on the brake and inch down the drive, watching him the whole way.
    I stop the car and walk across the fresh dirt of the field. I feel it sticking to my shoes, but don’t look down. I don’t want to come off as prissy.
    This guy’s a mountain of a man, central casting’s idea of a Midwestern farmer: barrel-chested, beer-bellied (though if he’s Pentecostal, he doesn’t drink), a long-sleeve plaid Western shirt poking out from his overalls and wisps of blond hair sneaking out from under his camouflage baseball cap. The cap is the kind with the mesh back, the kind worn ironically by cool kids in big cities. But irony isn’t in this man’s vocabulary.
    He’s probably well on the other side of fifty, but despite his age and his size, he hops spryly from the tread of the bulldozer and meets me halfway, offering his hand as he approaches.
    “How you doing?” I say.
    “Hoo-boy, I tell you. If things got any better, it just might kill me,” he answers in a twang much more traditional Southern than the local Cajun. His eyes practically twinkle. He gives my hand a vigorous shake. “I’m Reverend Paul Tomkins,” he says.
    “Reverend? Is that right?” I say, smiling like an idiot.
    “Well, soon to be. Once this here church is finished.” He waves his hat back at the bulldozer and mound of dirt behind him as if it’s all just some little task to finish in an afternoon, like cleaning the attic or emptying out the garage. “But you can just call me B.P. Brother Paul. That’s what the brothers and sisters back in Church Point called me.”
    “Is that so?” I respond.
    “Yup,” he says, casting an eye out over the property and hooking his thumbs into his belt loops. “Oh, shoot,” he says. “I’m plumb forgettin’ my manners today. I didn’t even ask your name.”
    Now it’s my turn. “Father Steven Sibille. From St. Peter’s just up the road in Grand Prairie. Everybody just calls me Father Steve.”
    The smile remains fixed on his face but something changes in his eyes. He’s examining me now. I’ve gone from a potential member of his flock to some sort of alien species.
    “Is that right?” he says. He looks over at the men working farther back in the field, as if I might run back there and snatch their souls. He turns back to me just as quickly and asks, “Where’s your uniform at?” The joke seems to put him back in his good mood.
    I force a chuckle. “I left it back at the church.”
    “Afraid to get a little dirt on it?” he asks.
    What’s that supposed to mean? I look at him. I can’t tell if he’s joking or if he’s making a statement about the Church. “All that black gets a little hot,” I respond. “Besides, I find it makes introductions a little stiff, makes people a little nervous.”
    “Yeah, funny how that works,” he says. He’s still smiling at me. I wonder suddenly if he was born Pentecostal or if he’s an ex-Catholic with an ax to grind. I smile right back at him.
    “Anyway,” I say, trying to brush