Disappear Behind Us

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Before we began a brief and terrible relationship, when we were new friends, John took me hunting. It was shocking to everyone that I did it-me, this small, liberal, artsy girl. Me, who had never touched, never seen a gun before.

We didn’t kill anything. We were ready to-physically, at least. I wore a too-big orange vest. John was in full hunting gear, camo under his orange. We talked for twelve hours. This wasn’t the time I fell in love with him, and I wonder now if I really did. This was the time that I became intrigued, feeling a magnetic pull of wanting to be near him. So we talked, John my tour guide, teaching me about the old wildfire that’d ripped through-petrified, shattered, gray trunks everywhere. He leaned over poop that he insisted on calling scat, identifying it. That’s a big cat, he said. Mountain lion, maybe. And he told me how you smell mountain lions before you see them-this foul, sweat, alive smell. Mountain lions hunt from behind and sever your spinal chord. Dead. Look at this, John said, leaning over another pile. Elk, he said. And after these lessons, he’d grin. You’re learning so much, he told me. That grin said: you’re a little kid, a little East Coaster, in need of a mountain man-me-to guide you.

On the way home, a long drive along highways I don’t remember, John continued to tell me things about Colorado, his dysfunctional family, people I’d met that he already knew everything about. I told him things too, but I don’t remember what I said. I remember looking out the window as we rose and lowered up hills, passing forests and grazing cows.

Jeez, John said. I followed his gaze ahead out the windshield. The highway lane was red. Dark red, maroon even. We approached the spot, rolled over it, the spot turning pink and fading as we passed. I turned and watched it disappear behind us.

John nudged my elbow with his. It was blood, he said, like I didn’t know. Road kill.

I nodded.

Musta been big, he said.

Like a deer, I said.

What do you know about dead deers? He said, laughing. You ever seen a dead deer?

I looked at him. He was grinning, shaking his head.

We have deer in Massachusetts, I said. There’s a family of deer that live on my parents’ land.

Your parents have land, he said, an accusation.

It abuts a state park, I said, as if this made it better.

Abuts, he said. We didn’t speak for a moment, and I returned my gaze to the window.

Anyway, said John, it was probably bigger than a deer. An elk maybe. Maybe two deers. A momma and baby. Like Bambi.

This was his way of joking.

I saw a road kill cow once, I said.

Bullshit.

Really, I said. When my brother and I drove through Ohio on the way to L.A.

A dead cow.

Right on the side of the turnpike, I said. Must have been a semi.

John nodded and focused his eyes on the highway, aggressively moving to the left lane to pass a pick-up.

I’d forgotten the cow, this hump of black and white on the side of 80 West. I didn’t know what it was at first, just saw the mound, and snapped my neck around to see as we drove on. There wasn’t a lot of blood on her; it was mostly a puddle around her.

What is it, my brother said.

Road kill cow, I said. We’d been noting road kill since it started to pick up on 90 in New York.

Jesus, Paul said.

I turned back in my seat. I’ve never seen anything like that, I told him. The rest of the drive I think we were looking for another one: another poor, defeated cow. I was relieved we didn’t. I thought it was so sad for that cow. She’d gotten out of the barn-she was tired of being milked by machines every day. Moments of freedom, then the face of an 18-wheeler. She was just a dairy cow, black and white, and hit by a truck in the middle of Ohio.

They must have just moved it, John said.

What?

The road kill, they must have just pulled it off. That blood was still so red.

Yeah, I said, wondering where they’d taken it. But I didn’t ask him if he knew.