Life In A Shit Town

I realized these boys meant business when Luke pulled the scrapbook out of the glove compartment. He continued to fish through the small storage space for the Polaroid camera they kept for just this sort of occasion. Kenny passed the scrapbook to me and told me to "check it out". I began flipping through the pages, each one containing "before and after" Polaroids of the bloody remains, with vital information like date and time and location jotted in the margin next to each picture. It was a disgustingly detailed testament to the boredom and creativity of people in my hometown.

Downingtown, Pennsylvania seemed to produce tons of artists and musicians, everyone struggling through their respective arts to stave off the increasing ennui of life in a hick town. I myself was always discontent with Downingtown and what it offered. As a result I was constantly undertaking “projects” as a child, like making movies, drawing comics, writing stories. In essence I was creating other worlds to escape to. Bigger, more interesting worlds. Worlds that didn’t smell.

Upon entering Downingtown, one is immediately confronted with the peculiar odor that hangs over the place. There is something stale and vaguely intestinal about the smell of my hometown. Imagine opening a cedar trunk that you had taken a shit in 30 years ago and never opened since and you’ll have a loose understanding of the sulfurous stench I grew up with. This olfactory assault is provided by the local paper mill and the neighboring sewage treatment plant. On humid nights the acrid airs from these two buildings commingle in an unholy union and cloak the town in a fetid fart fog.

I had just graduated high school and was enrolled in classes at West Chester University. I had to spend a night there as part of my orientation. Kenny Courson, a friend from my biology and art classes in high school, was also enrolled there, but he’d had his orientation the week before. There was a “dance” held in the lobby of the dorm we all were staying in for our orientation. When I saw Kenny and his friends Luke and George at the dance I was surprised. Kenny informed me that they were taking me “for a ride”. Anything was better than standing against a wall all night watching people I wasn’t going to talk to for the next four years hit on each other and drink punch, so I gladly left with them.

We drove around West Chester taking hits from a bowl that George, the driver on this expedition, had stashed in the ripped fabric lining of the driver’s side door. Just cruising around on a boring Friday night, getting high, and telling each other lame stories about what we’d done so far this summer. Then Luke spotted the raccoon.

About fifteen feet ahead of us there was a dead raccoon by the side of the road. The headlights of the car shone on it and its eyes glowed an emerald green.

“Oh shit! There’s one!” Luke yelled.

George started laughing and pulled the car over, slowly creeping up so that the front tire squashed the remains of the dead raccoon. Then he put the car in park.

“Go check and see if we’re on it,” George said.

Kenny laughed and got out of the car.

“What are you guys doing?” I asked.

That’s when Luke began pulling stuff out of the glove compartment. Kenny returned and told George that we were dead center.

“No seriously,” I said. “What’s up?”

Kenny passed the scrapbook to me and I began flipping through the pages. Each page had before and after photos of roadkill around town. The after photos were barely recognizable. Just smears of blood and hair on the road.

George revved the engine and the three of them laughed maniacally. I realized just what was going to happen and let out a chuckle of disbelief.

I’d been pretty bored growing up and I’d done some stupid things like tossing dummies and large sticks off bridges at passing cars, dressing up like dime store superheroes and running around the neighborhood filming my adventures, but this took the cake as far as inane activities done to alleviate boredom.

George threw the car into gear and we could hear the front tire kicking gravel against the underside of the car. That and whatever was ripped free of the raccoon corpse under the tire. We pulled ahead of the raccoon and Luke got out to snap a picture of its desecrated remains.

When he hopped back in the car he said, “Now let’s go to Wawa and get some cigars.”

Hmmm.

Was this the ritual? After hunting down an already dead animal and further destroying it, they kicked back with a few celebratory cigars and recounted tales of roadkill safaris past? I laughed about the absurdity of it all.

When we got to the Wawa market we got out of the car and were confronted with the smell of charred flesh. The raccoon’s scattered parts had roasted and formed a thick slag on the engine. It smelled as if someone had left an uneaten McDonald’s quarter pounder in a garbage can for a whole summer. Perhaps this “game” would’ve been less foul if we didn’t have a car with front-wheel drive.

Other customers exiting the Wawa ran for their cars. People who pulled up to the store and got out of their cars immediately got back in them and opted to drive an extra ten miles to the next store rather than have to deal with the stench. It made the town’s usual stink seem pleasurable.

After that we smoked our stogies and drove back to the university. I said my goodbyes and hurried back to my dorm room. We never really hung out after that night and I lost touch with those guys over the ensuing ten years. I ran into Kenny about two years ago at a bar and I reminded him of that night. He tried to remember the incident but had apparently blocked it out. He agreed that it had probably happened but couldn’t remember it specifically. We had both moved on with our lives and he’d lost contact with George and Luke as well. I moved around to different cities, finally settling in New York, where there’s a little more to do than get high and scout out road kill to run over again. He had finished college and started managing restaurants.

“For some reason that’s the last clear memory I have of you guys,” I said.

“Well, at least you remember us,” he said.

“Yeah but we did a lot of other stupid shit too, right? But that’s the one thing I remember.”

“Well, we were pretty messed up back then,” he said and ordered another round.