The Red and Blue Wire

A timber depot shed on a hot summer midday, sunlight through the open doors across a dusty plank floor, on a small two-wheeled trailer a low tracked vehicle one hundred and sixty centimetres long, a rhomboid hull of thin sheet steel in faded sand-yellow and olive-brown, broad steel-link tracks running over the whole hull, a spoked drive wheel at the front, small sprung road wheels, on top a black lid with a round filler cap and a bent tube handle, at the rear a steel tube hoop and an open drum wound with red and blue twisted wire, the sides plain and unmarked, a mechanic's hands coiling the wire end.