Editor’s Note: down to the farm this morning to check on Edgar and Edwina, the famous Turkey Buzzards and maybe a winery or distillery visit. We will see…escaped the savagery of another Nor’Easter here in Your Nation’s Caital, but another is coming on Monday, part of a winter that really seems to like us. A lot. Marlow’s story this morning is part of the ‘Four Corners” saga of a Harley ride from Key West to north to Maine, west from Maine to Washington State, down the coast to San Diego and back across the southern tier to Florida again. It is one of my favorites.

– Vic

Author’s note: This is the first of a short Road series. Some of them like this one are slightly fictionalized bits of nonfiction from my motorcycling times. Others are no-shitters. I have changed the locations in some, added players to others and changed individuals’ names to protect the guilty and the usual suspects.

Road Kills

Be happy while you are on the road for it makes you young again, and let its heart give you joy during the days and the nights. Follow the ways of its soul and whatever your eyes see, ears hear and nose smells, but know that for all these things it will bring you into a final judgment. Come to it without sorrow, and do not bring evil or vanity with you, since the road will kill you.

– S+10’s journal entry on a day’s motorcycle ride
through the middle of a western prairie desert

The sound of a loud Harley motorcycle was heard long before that iron horse and its rider arrived in the motel parking lot. As the motorcycle came to a stop, its rider’s feet lifted off of the bike’s floorboards, stirring up dust trails as they glided barely above the asphalt somewhere out in the the western US highland desert. Nothing seemed to live or move in that late afternoon summer heat.

The new rider took off his gear and offloaded his bag from his ride, looking around as only those new to the road can look around, his hair recently cut and his face barely touched by the brutal sun that had bore down on him for less than two hours of a single day, his eyes curious and cautiously searching, while his riding clothes were crisp, clean and perfectly fitting.

Grumpy, next to S+10 on the motel’s tattered, folding lawn chairs outside their room, in his best his welcoming committee, southern, low country boy drawl, “Well, is that what I think it it . . .

S+10 after a brief look while maintaining visual lock through a brief gathering of lazy flies blown their way from the dumpster down the parking lot, “I think so . . . ”

“Well, lo and behold, I’ll be dipped in pig shit . . . new meat . . . you’re gonna love this road, man, for-fucking-sure.” Grumpy stirred to get up and welcome their new rookie riding companion just as he had done forty years earlier to newbie replacement Marines stepping off the C-130’s in Vietnam.

The FNG appeared to be a bit older, late 60’s, Grumpy thought, and had a slight limp, maybe from arthritis or a long ago accident. S+10 knew better.

Closer inspection of Pup Tent’s dark sunken eyes told the tale of his Army Airborne days in ‘Nam. He had done several tours and still suffered from occasional after effects of malaria and jungle rot. As the years passed, his naturally olive skin color had taken on a lighter pallor that peaked when his night sweats returned.

Pup Tent, sauntering up to them with clothes bag on his shoulder, looked at them and noisily dropped his poorly packed, heavy load at their feet. The sun flared out a brief hot dry wind gust of frightening intensity, singeing their nostrils. For a moment, they thought they saw a ghost.

“Bite. Me. Grumpy.” Pup Tent slowly counter-punched.

Pup Tent had flown into the area from his Georgia barrier island home, rented a bike and rendezvoused with these two at the pre-planned end point of their day’s journey.

The pair had been on the road for weeks. Their faces were grimy, fatigued and parched from day after long day of riding the western plains, valleys and mountain passes. They were still alert, not having begun to wind down or shower after the day’s ride. Their clothes were dirty, rumpled, baggy, torn and sometimes slept in after a day too long to change them after stopping for the night. They wore bandannas to keep the sweat from blinding them when they raced at high speeds in the shadows to cool off.

Pup Tent’s apprenticeship started the next day, when he took the lead after the other two had done their two hour stints. His pale face glistened with perspiration as he lead them back and forth, up and down a twisty, triple digit, state-side route, whose shifting track required strict attention to avoid missing a turn off or reroute.

He paced himself and kept his breathing steady like he had learned in his sniper training classes back in the late 60’s. Debris every now and then blocked a part of the road, required him to switch lanes or slow way down. The road rule was to keep going and not put their feet down until the next gas and water stop. Smaller road obstacles required just a small shift in direction and a boot point to warn his fellow riders behind him of the upcoming object. In lesser folks, these details would have made a rookie a pathetic neurotic. Not Pup Tent. He had serious time on point.

Right after a long sweeping, blind, right hand turn, they came to a sudden stop. Point man’s stop got a little squirrelly sideways, while his followers’ stops were smoother, since they had smelled the blockage a bit earlier than Pup Tent had seen it.

Pup Tent stared at what was strewn out before them. Two dead cows with eyes bulging out blocked the two lane road — flies, no maggots but several buzzards feasting the fresh kill completed the tableau.

Grumpy after getting off of his back-of-the-pack bike appeared by Pup Tent’s side a bit perturbed to survey the situation and ready to deliver some suitable Marine chiding to this Army grunt for his less than professional stop.

They drew up short when they noticed simultaneously that the cows had been shot dead in the head at that very spot in the road. “What the fuck . . . ” they all muttered softly.

Grumpy softened his delivery like a football coach to his star player after a rare on-field screw up, “What are you waiting for? They ain’t gonna bite you. Let’s move.”

Pup Tent looked back at him with poorly disguised disgust but weaved them around and away from that road kill scene.

Thirty or so miles later, they pulled off the road into a small, double stall, single pump gas station in the middle of nowhere. From overhead, this way station and these wayfarers were insignificant amidst this great empty expanse of high plains, rock desert. Refilling his tank first, S+10 went inside to pay.

The pump jockey visibly stiffened with his hand moving slowly behind and beneath the counter top. He relaxed a bit when he saw the cash in his customer’s hand. “Tell them to reset the pump and start the next fill-up.”

Doing so, S+10 turned, opened the stand up cooler’s glass doors and searched for some bottled water, when he asked about the dead cows. He turned with water bottles in hand, when he saw the attendant’s revolver.

Fixing this young kid with a steady but friendly gaze, “Something’s bad happening out here, kid?” In return the kid nervously grunted in the affirmative.

Offering him a five dollar bill from his leather jacket pocket, S+10 continued “Seems strange that someone would block a back road with gangland executed, meat cows. Should we expect to see more on the road ahead?”

“Dunno and don’t want to.” as he rubbed his grungy hands with the revolver’s barrel to scrape that morning’s work from his palms. S+10 noticed that the safety was off and slowly backed out of the place.

This gas station had an utter absence of the rational. Reasonable conversation was impossible.

Was there a whacked out anti-meat crusader on the loose out here? The kid’s trembling eyes, his clenching and locking facial muscles and then his sudden return to a calm demeanor said perhaps the machinery of civilization was beginning to break down. Somewhere out there was a full bubble off beast. A wrathful, obsessive and angry one. It was time to bug out quietly and quickly.

Once clear of the station’s office, S+10 finally glimpsed the nearby multi-colored rock formations.

After warning the others, S+10 secured an inter-service Army-Marine Corps agreement to fill both remaining bikes on one tab at a rounded off number — $30 — and split pronto. They would piss road side a bit on down the road.

With the wind slackening in the midday sun an hour later down the road, they saw little wisps of smoke from what was obviously a roadside wood fire up ahead. They slowed their pace as they came upon a scene that took their breaths away. Another head-shot dead, rotting cow was being dismembered and cooked on the spot.

These road kill scenes were created by someone who was proud of his work. This cattle executioner was shouting defiantly “Dig me! There’s nobody like me in the world.”

Despite the stench of rotting flesh, the multi-child family was a beehive of activity as they butchered, cooked and feasted upon their unexpected bounty. They politely offered the three gringos some of the meat asking them in broken English how they’d like a slab cooked.

The riders accepted just small tastes, offering in return some bottled water and trail mix. Off to the side, Pup Tent asked the oldest child softly in Spanish for the particulars of this meal.

. . . drove upon the scene about an hour before . . . had heard yesterday that this was happening in the valley . . . cow looked to have been shot less than a day ago . . . the family was hungry and the cow had no branding marks that were visible . . . so free steak for all . . . they had no fear of whatever mighty intercessor was behind their good fortune . . . looking a gift cow in the mouth was not on today’s menu . . . an angel had led them to this miraculous feeding

S+10 and Grumpy were transfixed by the skill of the father as he butchered the cow with amazing speed, precision and dexterity, while the small ones took the chunks to their mother who tended several hastily constructed spits and fire pits. Downwind of these beef fat flames was where the gringos planted themselves to keep from barfing from the cow rot stench.

Before parting ways with the family, the riders shared the location of another two cow bounty about 90 miles farther on down the road. They had a good chance of finding food for a week, maybe two or more.

Their presence stayed with the riders long after they disappeared in their rear view mirrors. Their lives were on point all day, every day. They got up before sunrise, looking for work along the road not knowing whether they’d find it or even eat.

The family had an almost austere manner, simple dress and humble acceptance of what life had given them. Their easy familiarity with hunger, the desert and its solitude was sacred in a way the riders had seldom seen before or since. Their iron willed strength in the face of hardship stood as a rebuke of evil, a proof of divinity and a marker of the enduring presence of the unseen grace in life and the dignity that comes with it.

Copyright © 2018 From My Isle Seat
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