Roadkill

by David Estringel

Sitting, lazily swiveling in my broken leatherette desk chair, I looked around my office, searching its contents for some sense of purpose for being there, but much to no avail.  Brown bookcases lined the walls, squeezed tightly together in a uniform fashion. The shelves were concaved, choking on artifacts collected (hoarded, really) over my three-year tenure at the university that had unwittingly become my life.

Many interests, adopted since graduate school, were sufficiently represented: old English textbooks, manuals on psychotherapy, stacks of literature--mostly of the poetry and “dirty realism” ilk--and guides that promised to convey all one could ever want to know about qualitative research methods and their ethical applications. They were more distractions and dalliances than anything, really, that--instead of slowing things down and actually reflecting on my life--occupied my mind and most of my free time. Despite the random bursts of clutter that, strategically, were left untouched to add a sense of “busyness” to the room, it was a pleasant space to be in with its dark laminate wood furniture (in their varieties of almost-matching hues) and motley knick-knacks that, while decorative, gave visitors little to no information about the inner-workings of my head, leaving them a bit disturbed and slightly off-kilter. The main culprits were a gold-leaf Ganesh statue that doubled as a paperweight; a plaster skull that served as a makeshift bookend; a worn copy of the Zohar on the console table by the door; a metal dachshund on a wooden base, peeing on a fire hydrant; an earmarked book of daily reflections on stoicism; and a vintage toaster from the 1950s that sat atop the bookcase near the office’s rear window that immediately pulled one’s attention towards the back wall, where multiple degrees were mounted like stuffed deer heads but with no sense of pride or accomplishment attached to them.

Stopping mid-swivel, I eyed the few shelves dedicated to the field that I not only currently taught as a full-time assistant professor but had dedicated a good portion of my adult life to—social work. 

Many titles rang familiar, as I had immersed myself in the profession (clinical practice to be exact) for more years than I cared to admit, hitting heights in my career that even I had never anticipated. I smiled and nodded to myself, as I scanned book spines for titles I was particularly fond of and found most useful. Most of them centered around cognitive-behavioral therapies and developmental theories: the subjects that had lent greatly to my success as a therapist and college instructor. Other titles were observed, however, inserted willy-nilly amongst the familiar, that fell upon my consciousness with a dismally lackluster thud. I had no recollection of where they came from or even why I bought them in the first place. Their subject matters were relevant enough, spanning everything from family therapy to mindfulness-based practice to the “science of compassion” (whatever that was), but I had certainly never handled any of them nor flipped a single page between any of their crease-free, paperback covers. Must have been bought last year when I still gave a shit…or at least tried to, I thought to myself, disturbingly unmoved by the assumption.

Truth be told, I was no stranger to orchestrating a life based on what I “should” do, though the origin of that narrative really was never quite clear to me. The pursuit of upward mobility and goal attainment had become second nature, making alternate options tantamount to failure or—at the very least—proof that all the things I had been trying to convince myself that I wasn’t were, indeed and after all, true. Pondering too long upon such thoughts (i.e., missed turns and missteps) was unacceptable.  “We don’t do that”, my father used to say to me (when we were still speaking, anyway), after any suggestion of doubt or surrender was made audible, as if he were speaking to one of the many faceless football players he had coached during his long, acclaimed high-school teaching career. The radio silence between the old man and me should have made things easier for me to find a way out of my current sojourn into limbo, but it didn’t. Trying to live up to the unspoken expectations of a textbook narcissist is a soul-crushing and arduous task (a lifetime sentence, some might say), even when you are sitting alone in the room with the void they left behind.

Some specters follow you no matter how much time has passed. No matter how many skins you’ve shed and brushed under dusty carpets, they stick like birthdays or the need to breathe. No, those thoughts just didn’t do. They were weak. Dangerous. After all, what would chucking it all have meant in retrospect? All those years of graduate school. The years of training. The late nights and weekends in the ER until sun-up. My private practice. The systematic sacrificing of what little personal life I had had. All wasted? No. That wasn’t an option. From a practical standpoint, it made absolutely no sense to shift gears this late in the game—much less, start over from scratch. That meant giving up everything I had talked myself into thinking was important and that couldn’t happen, even though I (more than anything) wished it could. 

My work had brought me a decent amount of security over the years, opening enough doors to help me coast through life. Up until a few months ago, that had been the most important thing in my small world, but (more and more) the prospect of continuing to engage life in this automaton state had begun to grate on me, gradually tearing away at the ‘illusion’ of my career and its once-held platinum-card appeal. Maybe it was because I never really wanted to become this (a social worker, clinician, professor) in the first place. It was just a means to an end after all: a way to prove something to the faceless many who never thought I would get this far that I could; a substitute to fill the ‘void.’ Maybe that was what came from expecting too much or too little…or nothing at all. Maybe it was what came from forcing a purpose in life and not letting one just unfold before me. To have expected a different outcome seemed silly. In truth, the glamour had faded and, ultimately, I was left navigating a cold world of hard edges and empty space.

Things had been different in the beginning (or so I tell myself). They had to have been; otherwise, the motivations around pursuing my life choices over the past few years will either forever remain a mystery or (at the very least) betray me as being clinically insane. I couldn’t with any certainty say that choosing a career that helps people and makes the world a better place to occupy was a complete mistake. There is a lot to be said about leveling the playing field for folks that—even in the best of circumstances—don’t stand a chance in securing even the most basic of needs, whether it be something to eat, a temporary roof over their heads, or just the slightest reprieve from a lifetime of trauma. Moreover, teaching others how to do the same does give one a sense of purpose…or it should at least. Such philanthropy comes at a cost, however. Life and other people’s problems—more and more—become bigger than your own until, inevitably, you start to question why you even tried in the first place, leaving you feeling like vapor or a perforation in the air.

Picturing a life of ‘meaning,’ while not impossible, was terrifying. Ever since my senior year in college, visions of being a writer have always haunted me. My alternate fate had been sealed after reading my first Raymond Carver collection of short stories, Cathedral. Never before had I ever encountered a revelation of truth, served up so brutally and honestly, leaving me to wonder how I came to honor the current touchstones of my life, such as caution and restriction, cleaving to them for dear life as one would tourniquets and sutures to stop a hemorrhage. How different things could have been if I could have just immersed myself in life’s messes and discomforts, finding some sort of rhyme or reason to it all, finding beauty in its ugliness, truth in the lies I tell myself (and others).

Whether this was the life I wanted—or not—meant little to nothing in the grander scheme of things. The proverbial die had been cast, and the machine, as brutal as it is (and has been) had been set in motion a long time ago, leaving little room in my day-to-day for poetry and prose, nor the silly philosophies of a backseat poet. Maybe a time existed when I could have shifted the narrative, but that moment had long since dissolved away, disappearing into a background of doubt and monotonous lectures on psychopathology and clinical assessment, never-ending committee meetings that generated no change, and countless negotiations of grades that I found myself losing more and more (not so much on principle but from the deleterious effects of an existential ennui). No. The only truth I found myself living was that not only had I gradually and meticulously dug my own grave but hopped into it without the slightest bit of resistance. I (no one else) was to blame for the state of paralysis in which I lived my life—a truly bitter pill to swallow that still triggers my gag reflex at the strangest and most inopportune times.

Leaning my head back onto my chair’s headrest, thoughts pulled me back to the summer of 1977 when I drowned in my apartment complex’s swimming pool. I always ‘went there’ when I found myself walking that thin line between depression and numbness. School was out, so my sister, Lisa, and I had gone down to the pool to let off some steam and cut the boredom of the day. My father was there, reading a newspaper, sitting on a nearby bench with his usual cup of black coffee. Lisa, a pretty and slightly chubby girl, was lying on her stomach in a black Woolworth’s one-piece with sash-like fuchsia and turquoise stripes that wrapped around her thick waist, flipping through an issue of Tiger Beat magazine with John Travolta on the cover. I aimlessly dog-paddled about the shallow end of the pool, enjoying the warmth of the sun on my back and the silky coolness of the water that glided around my legs. 

After a while, a boy about my age (probably from another unit in the complex) entered the pool gate and headed to a patch of grass near the water. While close to the same height, the boy was much bigger than me in stature. He threw his towel on the grass and dove in, surfacing close to where I was treading water. A friendly exchange soon ensued, and both of us shot the shit, chatting about everything from Legos to what pains-in-the-ass sisters were. We played a game of tag (as might be expected in such a situation), and we flopped about. darting to and fro, launching ourselves from the rough-surfaced pool walls in relentless, individual efforts to make the other ‘it.’ Then, one of my ankles was grabbed, and I was pulled down hard, but not before an excited laugh escaped my lips: a moment of true, unadulterated happiness. I remembered being underwater for a long time, not being able to breathe or rise above the surface. There was thrashing and kicking. The pulling didn’t stop. There was a play of shimmering webs of sunlight on the pool walls around me. I remembered a distorted world, above the surface, that seemed miles from where I was. There was panic and the colors light-blue…and then black. 

When my eyes opened, I found myself on my back—the silhouette of Lisa’s head looming over me—with the burn of chlorine in my lungs, as the noon sun beat down in a relentless assault. Instinctively, my eyes searched for my father, but he was gone. It was just Lisa and me. She had given me CPR and saved my life: a fortuitous perk of her working part-time as a lifeguard at the city pool that summer. Lisa said he had gone to call an ambulance, but one never arrived that day; I didn’t even go to the hospital to get checked out afterward. Funny the things that don’t register as significant when you trust the people who are supposed to give a shit. In fact, the incident was never talked about, as if it were just an unfortunate event like stubbing a toe on the way to the bathroom in the middle of the night or jamming a finger during a game of tag football. It was just tossed away like nothing happened, back into the water and lost among the tangles of cold webs). Just another day…or yet another example of my father’s desire to brush his failures as a parent—and my sister’s success—under the carpet.

I rarely thought of that summer day: It, essentially, remained wiped from my memory, except for when things got low (really low if the truth be told), which did (does) happen on some occasions. Still, they happen more than I care for. I chuckled to myself at the irony of being saved only to live a life that didn’t seem like mine anymore. Guess God wasn’t done with the show yet. At times I felt like maybe things were so hard because I did come back, almost as if I wasn’t supposed to be here, anymore, and the world let me know that at every turn. Or maybe I didn’t come back all the way—a jumble of remnants that couldn’t quite be properly pieced back together, again. It was all so tiring, but that is what happens when you live life like it’s a dare: the words ‘want’ and ‘can’t’ just don’t exist, so there is no choice but to keep moving forward and trying until the day you just don’t anymore. I longed (long) for that day, sometimes, but that wasn’t (still isn’t) up to me. 

I could hear the custodian cleaning the office next door: he would be in my office soon.  It was almost six in the evening, according to the clock on the computer. I let out a long, drawn-out exhale, gathering a stack of ungraded papers from under my keyboard and stuffed them into my satchel. I powered down the computer and prepared to lock up for the night. I turned off the lights, taking one last look around ‘my space’ for anything I may have missed (or what was missing). Turning to leave, I slightly hesitated, noticing how peaceful the room was without the electric hums of fluorescents and a thinking computer. It was time to go, though. Papers to grade. Dogs to feed.  Sleep.

The drive home was calming, taking in the savage beauty of the South Texas landscape. The lulling, rhythmic kisses of rubber treads on the road. The random selections of my iTunes on low. The stale smell of cigarettes and sweat in my car that reminded me of my grandfather, who died forty years ago too soon, and his old, white Ford pick-up. I took the backroads home, as I always did, which took a little longer, but they were rarely used that late in the day, so I could take my time driving when the inclination hit me. I didn’t mind. I liked to drive, especially when the quiet in my life threatened to overtake me, granting license to thoughts and memories to rouse and scramble, looking for hints of light that seeped in through doors, opened ajar, hungry for recognition. I reached my right hand over towards the passenger’s seat, threw back the flap of my satchel, and dug into its contents for a Marlboro, fumbling through the sharp edges of papers and uncapped pens with determined purpose. Keeping vigilant, my eyes were fixed on the road ahead, when I felt the edge of a cardboard box graze my fingertips. I pulled out the pack and with my thumb flipped open the top, bringing a cigarette to my lips, where I proceeded to pull one out with my teeth. I lit it with the lighter I had purchased that morning at 7-11—one more to add to the slew that I had, progressively, stockpiled at home in errant drawers, leather bags, and even the bathroom, where I ritualistically had my first smoke of the day, after dragging myself out of bed. I tended to forget them when I left the house—too many thoughts, too early. I took a long, crackling drag and held it in my lungs for a while, exhaled, and then wrested my wrist on top of the steering wheel. As the cigarette dangled between me and the speedometer, I eyed the yellow-grey smoke, as it streamed from a flaming cherry, lost in how it rippled and curled like a fine, silk ribbon. I admired the graceful poetry of it and thought it a shame to turn it to shreds with another exhale.

A loud ruckus suddenly broke my reverie, as the car and everything in it trembled and shifted. Shit! Did I hit something? My eyes darted forward and found nothing but an open road. I quickly looked into the rear-view mirror and noticed a blackening sky that had melted into asphalt that was divided by intermittent dashes of vibrant yellow, then shocks of red. I squinted and focused, intently, into the mirror, noticing a band of red that stretched in tandem along the road’s surface, while my tires sporadically jarred and sounded, as if driving over stones and wet, rolled-up newspapers. Confused, I returned my attention to the world outside my windshield, clutching the steering wheel with my other hand so hard I pumped the blood out of my knuckles. Scanning the road before me, I noticed the same ruddy hue extending off into the distance.  Clumps of black speckled the highway, disappearing into the periphery, as quickly as my tires propelled me home. Intermittent bumps and pops from the road, below, reverberated within the car’s cabin. What the fuck? I tossed my cigarette out of the cracked, driver-side window. Something got run over.

I checked the rear-view, again, and saw no cars behind me, then decelerated to better see what was going on straight ahead. It’s blood. And fur? Given the distance that the length of gore had stretched and the amount of carrion on the road, it appeared as if some poor animal had been hit and dragged along for quite some time. Automatically (maybe instinctually), I turned the wheel, slightly, to adjust the position of the car within the lane, centering it directly over the gory strip. Off to my right in the distance, I spied a motionless black mass by the side of the highway, much larger than what I had expected was feeding the road and my tires. I drove on and followed my “guide” until it minimized into errant smears and splatters that trailed off onto the side of the road, where the still thing lay. Veering off, I parked just ahead of it, turned off the ignition, and just sat there, staring at it in the rear-view.

A quiver possessed my legs, as I noticed my hands were still grasping the steering wheel.  Releasing them, my right hand unconsciously searched for another cigarette. Damn! Stopping myself, I remembered I had just smoked the last one. It’s gotta be dead. No way he could survive that. I wondered why I had stopped. What could I do? It didn’t make sense, but something inside me knew I had to pull over and take a look. Bracing myself, I released the seatbelt and opened the door. The air seemed cooler the usual—chilly, almost. I poked my head out into the dimmed light of evening, looking to the right, then left. Still no cars. I—we—were alone. I got out, closed the door, and took a deep breath. I looked ahead of me at a field of cotton that flanked the left side of the highway. The stalks looked black against the dusky sky with a peppering of stark white that punctuated the seemingly lifeless expanse’s absence of color. Yes, it definitely felt colder than usual.

I walked towards the heap—the crunching of gravel and clods of dried mud beneath my feet. With every step, I saw splatters of crimson and bits of meat and fur mar the path ahead of me. I finally came upon it. The headless tangle of broken limbs (a dog, maybe) had thick, black, woolly fur that was stickily matted with congealing blood and gore. It was sprawled out in an almost apologetic fashion, seeming to want to edge its way towards a shallow canal just beyond its reach, past a patch of chaparral trees some ten feet away from where I stood. Near it, I looked downward toward the pathetic lump, safely distanced from it (though safe from what I didn’t know), Standing in silence, I inspected my ‘summoner.’ Shards of bone and bloody, gray innards crept out from peeks of torn flesh. Flies and ants had already started to feast. Doesn’t take long, does it?  The smell of carnage hung in the air like the odor of pennies that had been held in a sweaty fist for too long. I thought of how much it must have suffered. How long it must have taken for its suffering to end. All alone…out here. I wondered if he belonged to anyone. If he was missed, or if anyone even cared…or would. No answers came. Just the whispering of the wind through the chaparrals and black stalks of cotton, beyond.

I wanted to feel sad but didn’t…couldn’t. Something stirred within my chest: a familiar burning.  I thought about what I would have done if I had found the animal alive. I would have tried to save it--if I could. Stayed with it--if all was lost--so he wouldn’t have to die out there alone: a prospect that made the fire in my chest rage even more. I imagined it alive and what it might have looked like: a pair of pleading, brown eyes, looking up at me for comfort; a tail furiously wagging with relief and promise. In my head, I heard it whining and whimpering from fear and pain. “We don’t do that,” escaped my lips before my consciousness could ground me in the bloody place where I stood. My eyes began to sting and moisten, but no tears came. Silent and fatigued, I hung my head, as if in prayer, and watched the fading sun glistening off dampened, black fur and red-tinted bones, finding my thoughts pulling me towards the comforts of home and six dogs that were very much alive.

Before I got back into my car to leave, I pulled off the college ring I had bought myself years ago after graduation and tossed it onto the carcass, as if to show any passers-by that he—maybe I— wasn’t alone.

*2023 revised version published by The Honest Ulterman.

BIO: David Estringel is a Xicanx writer/poet with works published in literary publications like The Opiate, Literary Heist, Cephalorpress, DREICH, Cowboy Jamboree, The Milk House, Beir Bua Journal, and Drunk Monkeys. His first collection of poetry and short fiction Indelible Fingerprints was published in 2019 at Alien Buddha Press, followed Blood Honey and Cold Comfort House (Anxiety Press, 2022), little punctures (Really Serious Literature, 2023), and Blind Turns in the Kitchen Sink (Anxiety Press, 2023). David has also written six poetry chapbooks, Punctures, PeripherieS, Eating Pears on the Rooftop, Golden Calves, Sour Grapes, Blue, and Brujeria (coming soon from Anxiety Press). Connect with David on Twitter @The_Booky_Man and his website www.davidaestringel.com.