Rites of Passage

…in which Uncle Duke discusses Life, Roadkill and stuff.

This time of year, the highways are covered with evidence of our overwhelming desire to begin anew. We call it road kill. It is an unpleasant reminder of our own mortality and our own compulsion to get to the other side of the road. It can be pretty ugly---irregular shapes of fur and feathers, intestines and bones spread out on the road, former life-forms smashed and splattered on the asphalt or bounced into the drainage ditches. It makes us pretty uncomfortable, and we go to great lengths to avoid the mooshed corpses. Even in this age we recognize some connection between them and ourselves.

Evolution has not prepared animals well for the automobile. It came along so fast. They are ill prepared for 3000-pound metal monsters with great bright, transfixing eyes, racing at them at 60 miles per hour. Their instincts tell them to cross the road. The air is saturated with the smell of unlimited possibilities. Their hormones demand that they venture across. The sweet, glandular secretions from ready females beckon them, promising mating opportunities, copulatory delights.

So testosterone-soaked raccoons sniff at the roadside, weigh the risks, and then, with lust in their hearts, waddle off to their deaths. And despondent possums, losers in love, rejected suitors, lumber out onto the road and throw themselves into the paths of speeding trucks. Graceful deer imagine Elysian Fields of clover and corn, discard caution and leap blindly into traffic. Snakes slither their cold-blooded bodies out onto the warm blacktop to soak up the heat and wind up twisted, reptilian ropes on country roads all across America. Turtles find that the path to enlightenment and self-fulfillment often crosses other more dangerous paths. They resign themselves to the perilous journey and set out. Turtles are slow. The odds are long.

Cats and dogs make bad choices and wind up under buses every day. Cats cannot resist their curiosity, and dogs blunder out for no particular reason. Rabbits, confident in their quickness, dart in front of cars and wind up a hare too slow. Squirrels, awash in indecision, flit back and forth and ultimately underneath fat, black tires. Even hawks and owls, incredulous at their good fortune, land to feast at the roadside bounty and become matted feathers themselves.

There is a prominent theory that life exists poised between order and chaos. In the same way, all of us multiply and thrive or diminish and subsist based on the delicate dance we do between foolhardy courage and excessive caution. Each evening this scene is played out millions of times along the highways of the world---to risk or not to risk. What are the chances? Is the benefit worth the risk? What are my odds? We see the losers at this game---those who gambled the family jewels and left them for crows on the pavement, those who wagered their DNA and lost it in the headlights. This is a cruel time of year.

About this time every year, I am reminded of Lester Mudd. Lester was from my hometown. He was one of a number of diminished individuals around there we termed “retarded”. In small towns, they existed at the fringes of society and were pretty much allowed to do as they pleased. Everyone knew them and watched out for them. He ate all his meals at Cecconi’s Restaurant, and I never saw him pay. Billy Mayes never charged him for his haircuts either, I don’t think. I would guess he was around 40 when I knew him, though I could be off by 20 years in either direction. I never knew where he lived. Or if he ever went to school. The details were unimportant. He was just Lester.

Lester could most often be found walking along the highways of Washington County. He would pick up trash and put it in bags. I believe the Rotary Club paid him 50 cents a bag. The Highway Department gave him an official reflector vest and a yellow hard hat which he wore with some pride.

Lester’s main function though was as the self-appointed mourner for animals killed along the highway. He carried with him a number of shoe boxes, supplied by Cunningham’s Men’s Store, and a fox-hole shovel. When he came across an unfortunate animal, he would gently scoop the remains in one of those shoeboxes and bury them along the roadside. When it was laid to rest, he would conduct a small ceremony with head bowed and hands folded. He was the minister, the pall bearer, the grieving family and the congregation. He represented all of us. No one knew the contents of those prayers. Or who they were directed to. But it is true that Lester always wiped his eyes and blew his nose when he was done. They were genuine prayers all right, as sincere as there was in that county.

Later he would mark the spot with a crude wooden cross made out of old pallet lumber from the sawmill. If there were wildflowers available, or someone’s garden nearby, he would sprinkle the grave with fresh flowers. The roads in Washington County were covered with silent memorials to animals who died trying to get to the other side.

This is an intense time of year, on many levels. There are moments of terror, frozen instants of dark realization, when flight is not an option, when death is inevitable. There are moments when the truth is overwhelming. I believe that those moments are held in place somewhere. The silent screams are recorded in time and space and become part of the permanent history of the planet.

Well Lester understood the terror. He felt the panic. He heard the screams. It’s true he may have been slower than the rest of us. And he didn’t focus on the same things. But I don’t know that his days weren’t more meaningful or more profound. I’m not sure the things he thought about weren’t more important and that he didn’t do a better job of keeping the Universe in balance than any of us.

Spring is all about renewal. But the act of renewal requires closure. We must grieve for that which passes before rebirth can occur. Lester was our designated mourner. He was our witness. He laid the wild things to rest. And ushered in The Spring.