The Smell of Citrus Devastation

Tank Navigator spits his saliva on his palm and rubs his hands together. He gripes that no lotion could match the powers of saliva to moisten dry desert hands. He continues to needle his fork into the flesh of the gar, ripping scales, and twisting the sea meat from utensil to his mouth. He made sure to spit on his palms before commencing with this meal as to not perfume his hands with fish stink.

Tank Navigator perches him self on the top tier of guns on the man of war vehicle prowling the desert when he takes his meal. His immense militant pride permeates his ability to breathe, eat, sleep, shit. Talent, he believes, will fade with any amount of time off. His capabilities in reasoning are shrouded in the fog of battle. He's a warrior in the truest sense. Foggy social judgment further plunges him into the survival mode. He tugs at his beard to be sure no bits of fish remain, to limit his smell, and hide from the birds. He rips a sheet of paper and uses half to wipe his lips.

Tank Navigator next wraps the ripe orange in the other half of the sheet of paper and will eat it later. The orange has such a pungent scent, he'd rather eat it closer to the oasis well, so he can rinse off the citrus and avoid the birds. The smell of citrus devastation is an ignorance that forfeits lives.

Tank Navigator is thin in waist. He's a grazer, and can survive days in the desert with only chewing gum and moist ivy to suckle at, contained in tight plastic and carried in black canvas, out of the sun's depleting shine. He knows how to identify non poisonous desert moss and squeeze at the roots for hydration.

Tank Navigator is truly on when stumbling across native camps. He's a savage to the extreme, and his aggression is truly frightening when in this mode of pillaging for loot and coin, burning towns to the pits of desert ash, taking the dry brush and weed with it in roaring flames fanned to intensity by the night wind. Tank Navigator would kill his "Ma" if forced to for survival. He wanders the desert alone, and has lost touch with the communal and team like army ways of life. Everyman for himself he'll growl as he hides in mud for days to track down an ambiguous enemy. Earth savy at the hunt, Tank Navigator will curse the Jew and yawn in the same breath.

No bite is too slow for him as he savors the flavor and allows his body the glory of digesting small grams of nutrition. He makes bibs from sheet metal covering his body, again protecting foods from staining him with scent. The world isn't safe like a zoo, he'll tell you, and again he'll grunt something about every man for himself. His lust for war has him more content than a Zen Buddhist.

Tank Navigator has devastated tribes and blood lines of kin. A dark id gets darker with the wielding of a blunted axe when out of ammunition. Powering down raging canyon rapids in a tattered cheap raft, all sense of right and wrong is null and void. He'll chew several live hens, one after another if surrounded by enough water to bathe off the blood scent. But if residing in the dry desert he's careful to hide the scent of prey.

The sun is on course to set, and the end of the bright blaze for the day will tap Tank Navigator to his most awake and alert, for dark night is when all the wild comes out to play and dine.