Eyes averted but never crying. I’ve seen them down and dry eyes more times than I can count, and I count good, better’n most. Am I rotted meat? People generally don’t like the smell of that; I get it. I don’t neither, rotted meat. I’d see bad meat on the side of the road, smashed. Under the sun, broilin'. You see that festerin’ mush, flattened, and you don’t forget it, ‘specially in your spine.
Roadkill, some call it. I call it misfortune and opportunity. Roadkill is about right, though. Roadkill leaves nothin’ to the imagination. My drunk uncle Cy hit a deer once, but that's another story for another time, and my time's not mine anymore, so this ain't about that deer, though it's a good one. My uncle tells it better’n me. So, ask him if you see’s him. He’s always hovering down the Alley.
Anyhow, skunks, they’re strong. Nothin’ stronger after bein’ dead than a skunk. My Ma would call ‘em pungent. She’s got a way with words. Boy, does she ever. Tol’ my old man he had a reprobate mind more’n a few times. Imagine that. Straight out of Romans, she clobbered him with the Good Book. She’d say the same thing about my mind, my way a thinkin’ years later. Her voice was an angry violin. Broke my heart. Imagine that.
Well, back to it. I’d smell ‘em a mile off, skunks. I swear I did. I’d get off my bike. I’d drop it in the dirt. My old man hated that; said I had no respect for nothin.’ He ain’t wrong. Well, I’d walk toward that carcass, challenging my nose. To see how close I could get before puking. I’m brave like that when no one’s looking. Usually, no one’s looking because their eyes are averted. I told you that. People with clean shoes look down a lot. Maybe to see their faces in the reflection. Dirty-shoe people keep walking, shabby as hell. Where are they all going? Probably to work to buy cleaner shoes, the poor slobs.
Makes no difference. Clean or dirty. No one looks at me anyhow.
For the good, the better, probably.
I’d have to look back at them if they did.
All’s the time wondering if’n they picked up the scent.
Of me.