Carcass

by Richie Kurt

The buck hung, strung up in the garage like some ancient ward. The guts cut out– the heart– ready to process, package, and make into meat. Venison. Clay's dad was one of the best people around at processing deer, so everyone brought him their kills for a share of the meat and the hide. He tried to show Clay over and over again, but to Clay the buck was untouchable, a bad omen. Strung on the lines, its death seemed contagious. Eyes glassy, wide from violence. Clay was fifteen and still he could not touch it. His father called him a sissy. Ironically, his seventeen-year-old sister could. This wasn't good enough. Clay's dad wanted a son to take on the practice, the art. 

“God gives you dominion over these creatures," he told Clay. 

The buck knew no God. Looking at it, Clay thought it might even be God. Maybe Mr. Fuller killed God and brought him into his father's garage. Maybe they were cursed now. There were flies gathering on God's eyes. 

“I've got to go to football practice," Clay muttered. He looked over his shoulder as he walked. 

The football field lay along East Road. Clay could walk on a Saturday down the side and get right to it. The high school lay beyond, a foreboding of his chemistry class come Monday. He wasn’t good at locker room chats with the other boys. They talked about girls’ boobs, trucks, and their parents’ liquor cabinets. Clay had nothing to contribute. What could he say: “Today my father is butchering a deer in our garage and I’m afraid it’s God.” Or worse: “Sometimes I think death is contagious, and I’m going to catch it if I touch anything dead.” “Sometimes when I eat meat, all I can think of is how it’s a muscle.”

He was quiet most of the time. The boys teased him for it, tried to guess the girls he might like, one had even suggested boys to try to get a rise out of him. Clay hadn’t known how to say he was too busy thinking about the hundreds of little bacteria that lived on his skin to figure out something as trivial as who he liked. He muttered that he thought Olivia Rodrigo was hot. He should have said someone the boys would respect more. 

Tyler ran into Clay’s stomach hard with his shoulder during practice, and he was left sore and nauseous. He lied and said he felt fine, because he just wanted to go home. He walked down East Road, as the sun sank low and dusky, trying to stand straight, and not hunch over the stitch below his ribs. His father would ask what happened if he did, and depending on his mood, he’d call the coach or tell Clay to stop being a sissy and walk it off. Cars whizzed by occasionally, the road wasn’t highly trafficked, but people liked to go sixty around the curves. Clay clung to the woods on the side out of harm's way. 

Crashing through the trees, a deer ran out five feet in front of him, bringing Clay to a sudden halt. The doe, probably startled by his presence leaped into the road, straight into an oncoming SUV. She went across the hood, sliding back towards Clay’s side of the road, bleeding from abrasions, her eyes wide, she cried out. 

“Shit!” A college age boy got out, looking at his dented car. “Fuck! My Dad’s going to kill me!” 

Clay stared at the deer, bleating, dying. And he thought maybe death was contagious. But he knelt down, cradling her head in his legs as she panted, rattling breaths. “I don’t have time for this!” The boy got back in the car and drove away, leaving Clay and the gasping deer.

“I’m sorry,” he said to her as she let out a final groan. And he found tears in his eyes. “We shouldn’t have to die, how are we supposed to live if we know it’s coming?” The deer, eyes wide and empty, had no reply. She was not God. 

Clay stood up, then somehow, with all of his teenage strength, shouldered the deer and carried her home on his back. His dad was one of the best people around at processing deer and maybe he would take Clay’s gift as a sign his son was becoming a man. Something to be proud of. Clay thought maybe death was contagious, or a bad omen, but if he carried her with him he could face it.