we shared the side of the road

When you live on the side of the road, you see all the shit people throw out of their cars. There are water bottles, soda bottles, piss bottles, empty cigarette packs, wadded-up napkins, plastic bags, tampon applicators, splintered plastic cups, pulverized Styrofoam, a hundred bajillion cigarette butts, beer cans, plastic liquor bottles for brands I’d never heard of (Sobieski? Rebel Yell?), and wrappers for every kind of processed food imaginable. The unofficial sponsor of roadside litter is indisputably fast food restaurants.

What truer advertisement than a greasy McDonald’s bag full of trash on the side of the road?

Sometimes there were mysteries: a single shoe, a vacuum cleaner, a white teddy bear with a red bow tie.

And then, of course, there was the roadkill. Nothing reminds you of the fragility of life — there on the side of the road, as you pedal your bicycle while two-ton death machines shoot past you at 45 miles per hour — than the corpses of those who weren’t so lucky.

The Cherokee would pray for forgiveness after killing an animal. Deer were a staple of their diet, and every part of the animal was a resource: hides for clothing and drum heads, bones for weapons, hooves for glue.

Today, we leave them on the side of the road to decay.

I saw a fawn that looked like it was sleeping. It must have been hit, I realized, by one of the cars that had just passed me.

Another time I heard a far-off buzz like radio static and smelled something like shit and garbage water and rotten food. As I got closer, the picture came into focus: a fog of flies settled over the bloated, putrid corpse of a deer. I retched and tried to hold my breath as I passed. Have you ever tried to hold your breath while pedaling a 70-pound touring bike?

There was a completely desiccated deer, leather stretched tight over bared teeth. And the one that had been cleaved clean in two. I saw the back half first; the front was easily 100 feet down the road. Her eyes were open.

There were raccoons and possums that died snarling, and frogs flat as chewing gum, and turkey vultures gathered around the rotting corpse of a cat; they floated indignantly into the air at my approach. I saw something pulverized beyond recognition, like vomit splattered across the road.

I saw fretful sparrow hopping around the motionless body of its partner, urgently chirping as if to say, “Wake up, please, oh please wake up.”

The saddest to me were turtles, their shells shattered like ceramic bowls of stew dropped on a stone floor. It’s not fair, I thought, glaring at a car that passed me with barely two feet of clearance. They can’t help that they’re small and slow.