ROAD KILL

I had always felt bad about having to depend on her for money to feed us. But there wasn't much I could do about it. A lifetime of odd jobs hadn't left me with much of a retirement fund and we had to eat. The pittance that I got just about paid for this lousy ramshackle shack out by the Interstate. Her cheque paid for the groceries and medical bills.

No one seemed to want to hire a seventy two year old handyman. My eyesight was failing, my muscles weren't what they used to be and I sometimes forgot what I was supposed to be working on. With Edith gone, money for food got awfully tight.

I used to walk the Interstate for something to do, trying to find something interesting, when I noticed a cow, freshly killed by an automobile. It had wandered out of the pasture and happened onto to the road. Now, it didn't look nearly as good as the cellophane wrapped steaks down at the grocery store. But it looked a damn sight better than the once a day plate of beans I had been eating. Actually, it didn't look bad. No bugs, no discoloration, no real problem with the meat actually. Well, other than the section that had been hit by the bumper. Good red meat. If you didn't think about how you got it, it wasn't too bad.

I went back up to the house and got a butcher's knife. Flies had begun to gather by the time I got back but I shooed them away. I cut off a chunk from the undamaged section and carried it back up to the house. When I got to the kitchen, I carved off a steak and wrapped the rest. I had no refrigerator to keep it in but I wrapped it in a newspaper and put it in the cupboard.

That had to be the first meat I had in better than a year. Tasty. A mite tough but I figured that was from the cow tensing up before the impact. The meat down at the grocery store comes from cows that are killed quietly. Those cows never saw what killed them. And they're usually so shot up with tranquilizers, meat tenderizers and still so full of growth hormones that its a wonder they know where they are.

This meat was gamier. Sort of like the cow saw some car heading square at it and tensed up before the impact. I tried not to think about how the cow died. I was just thankful for the meat.

I ate steak at every opportunity for the next couple of days. Breakfast, lunch and supper, I ate steak. I knew that beef was going to go bad and I would be back to a diet of beans. I might have tried to stretch the shelf life of that beef too much. Towards the last of the cow, I got a little sick from eating it. Hurt me something fierce to have to throw out what was left of that meat. I was back to beans after that. I'll admit that I started walking the side of the Interstate more often. I figured if one cow can get out, maybe another one can. I thought seriously about walking over to the pasture and opening the gate. You know, sort of help them out onto the road. But I decided against it. Cows are pretty dumb animals and I wasn't sure they'd notice the gate was open before their owner closed it.

About a month or so after that, I was up on the Interstate. I hadn't seen another cow hit. Just the occasional dog or cat. Sometimes a possum or a squirrel. But no cows. The beans were getting to me by then. I was cussing my bad luck when I saw a German shepherd that had been killed the night before. I thought about how dogs are considered a delicacy in some parts of the world and how its better than beans.

The dog didn't look too bad. It was in worse shape than the cow, being smaller and all. The meat was pretty badly messed up and bloody as hell but it had to be better than another plate of beans.

Dog really isn't so bad. Not the same taste as beef or pork. And it sure as hell doesn't taste like chicken. But it isn't too bad. It was even gamier than the cow. The meat lasted better than the beef had. Or maybe I was developing a tolerance for spoiled meat. But I was ready to go hunting by the time the last of the dog was gone.

Pretty soon, I got good at collecting road kill. You had to do it just before dawn. I mean, what with all of the traffic on the Interstate during the day time, it wasn't safe to be out there in the light. And I was a little concerned about what the drivers would think. They're driving along and they see some old man carrying off a bloody animal and sure as hell, I'd get a visit from the police.

And it is bloody work. Its hard to carry what's left of an animal that's been hit by a car and stay clean. The carcass is usually pretty bloody. By the time I get back to the house, I'm a mess. I have to take off my collecting clothes outside the door.

Now and then I find an animal that didn't die. Maybe just a broken leg or dazed from an impact. So I carry my butcher's knife with me now. Dogs put up more of a fight; cats go pretty easy.

Kind of odd. Ever since I started eating road kill, I've noticed changes in me. I feel better than I have in years. My eyesight seems to be improving. I know my strength is returning. I'm back to running. In fact, if too long a period of time goes by without new meat, I can run down a dog and take him on my own. I figure its got something to do with the way the animals die. Those animals see some Buick bearing down on them and they freeze, terrified. In those last few seconds of life, I'll bet their adrenaline level goes sky high. God knows what other chemicals are produced during their death throes.

I'd always thought that eating meat from those docile cows, doped out of their mind, was making us as tame as they were. We used to be a fairly aggressive nation. Picked fights right and left and won them most of the time. Then we started eating domesticated meat and all of that ended. Well, I seem to be swinging in the other direction. Eating road kill seems to be having an effect on my body. And my mind.

I was cooking the road kill the same way I would have cooked beef. One day, while I was carving up a newly collected animal, I got to wondering how it would taste raw. I tried it and liked it and I've been eating them natural ever since.

Whatever those chemicals are seem to be concentrated in raw meat. I'm changing faster now since I stopped cooking it. My hair is no longer solid gray but is now streaked with the original black. I can run farther without getting winded. I can lift more weight and carry it longer. But that isn't what's bothering me.

Lately, I've been thinking about those chemicals. I've been wondering if maybe they would work better if they were from the same species. What if they were stronger and changed me back to fifty or even thirty if they were from a human?

I've been waiting for an fatal accident to happen after midnight. Maybe some young woman who's returning from a night on the town. I've heard that women have more fat than men and their muscles aren't as developed. I figure I could make it up there and be gone with the body before anyone arrived on the scene. It shouldn't be too hard to carry a woman back here to the house. I can lift about a hundred pounds now so I should be able to carry her back with no problem.

If I have to, I could help it happen. I could rig up a barricade or find a way to puncture the tyres on the car. And if the accident wasn't fatal, well, I could help that too.

What bothers me is how quickly I got to liking the taste of uncooked dog. What if I tried raw human flesh and liked it? I could give a whole new meaning to road kill!

End.