Tripping over my thumb (with or without Rob Zombie)

[ChicoHarris]

Where I live in the north Mississippi hills is a good five miles from civilization. I walked out the front door Sunday and found a very large coyote, dead in the yard. He was out close to the old Yocona Road, which snakes by my house, but he didn't appear to be dead from vehicle-induced trauma. He appeared to just be asleep, but I know a dead coyote when I see one.

Today I needed to hitch into town, so I walked out there to the road with my "Oxford" sign and started reading an old copy of The New Yorker.

Directly, a black and gray '88 Ford Ranger pulled over.

The driver was a Rob Zombie lookalike but probably was not a Rob Zombie wannabe. He was wearing a hat like Ted Nugent might while hunting, a necklace Keith Richards probably would and his mirrored sunglasses had a dime-sized and triangle-shaped piece missing from the right lens. The arms had been cut off his blue jean jacket and his black t-shirt had a bulls-eye on the front. His pants were dark blue jeans so slick, they looked like leather. His grayish black ponytail wrapped over his shoulder and his long goatee was pointed, a sinister Van Dyke. The coffee cup perched on the tranny hump looked like a small volcano spouting cigarette butts instead of lava.

He nodded at me as I moved the empty ammunition boxes to sit down.

We rode in silence over the hills and through the valleys toward Oxford. If the ride doesn't say anything to me, I don't say anything beyond "Thanks for stopping."

We were near town when he said, "That coyote in yore yard was a big one."

"It was, wasn't it?" I said. "Biggest damn coyote I ever saw. Small head, though. Like the thing was on steroids."

He looked down at the seat and asked, "Nothing in that New Yorker about coyotes, is there?"

I supplied the chuckle and said no.

The guy nodded and said, "Going to Oxford to see my parole guy. Last time."

"Oh yeah?" I asked.

"Yep. I'm headed into town right now talk to him. Then, that's it for that." He straight-lined his hand over the steering wheel.

Silence, and then he asked:

"What'ed you do with that big coyote?"

I wanted to tell him the county picked it up, but instead told him the truth.

"I put it up in the loft of my barn so Chuckie and Brownie could eat it."

He downshifted as the red light by the old armory got us.

"Chuckie and Brownie?"

"Yeah, that's the vultures that's been living up there for some time now. They have the ugliest chicks you ever saw. Chuckie and Brownie, I haven't looked yet, but they won't leave a thing but bones."

He nodded.

"What ya gonna do with the bones?" He looked at me as he asked this and through the triangle-shaped hole, I could see the retina of one eyeball.

"I'll get up there with a broom," I said, "and get rid of them Freddy Mercury style."

"Freddy Mercury style?"

"Yeah," I said, as we reached the town square, where I needed to get out. I would have told him that Mercury was a Zoroastrian, and that part of their burial rite was to let vultures pick clean the bones of the deceased, after which they're swept into a well. I planned to just sweep the coyote bones down into my big wheelbarrow and dump them in a creek rut I was filling. Had I the time, I would have included that I planned to look for visions in the dark place the coyote carcass left on the loft floor.

"Never heard of Freddy Mercury," he said.

"Don't ever listen to Queen, huh?" I asked while getting out.

He looked at me over the top of his sunglasses and his eyes looked like black spiders with red legs.

"No," he said, and grinned while putting the Ford in first gear. "Obama, neither."

I said thanks again and he moved off toward his parole guy.

['Scratch]

Keep em' coming. How was the trip back?

[Duke Silver]

Cool story.