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“Don’t be a dick and throw your litter out the window. First of all, that’s a five-hundred-dollar fine. Second of which, I find out it was you, I’ll come beat your ass. That McDonald’s trash draws in all kinds of stuff. I’ve seen flat squirrels holding fistfuls of french fries. Beer, neither. I bet if I Breathalyzed half those dead raccoons, most of ’em were drunk when they went down.”

Nationwide data suggests astonishing annual death rates for roadkill: forty-one million squirrels, twenty-six million cats, twenty-two million rats, nineteen million opossums, fifteen million raccoons, six million dogs, and 350,000 deer. But Larry has a message for anyone worried about their furry friends:

“If it’s a dog or a cat that’s got a collar on it, we take it off, send it over to Linda Chance at the pound. That way nobody’s got to wonder what happened to their pet. For a while we would take a picture if it was a dog or cat without a collar, post it to the Markham County Lost Pets page, thinking somebody might be able to identify it. But then a moderator blocked us so we can’t do that no more.”

If you’ve lost a pet in the past forty years, the county’s been using a mass grave for all unidentified roadkill since 1981.

“We just kinda dig a hole, do a dump once a week, cover it up once things get too spicy, dig a new hole, go back to the old one a few years later. Some archaeologist in the future is going to come across it and wonder what the hell happened here.”

Animal apocalypses aside, Larry loves working for ODOT.

“It’s the only place you can still smoke on the job.”

No data has been provided for nicotine addiction in raccoons.

A couple of last words of wisdom from Larry, who aside from being a county employee, enjoys long stretches of shooting his pellet gun at buzzards and organic gardening.

“Don’t ever go into your garden when you’re on your rag. It wilts the pickle plants.”

No data has been provided for male cousins and their understanding of euphemisms.

Thanks, everyone, for tuning in to this week’s episode of On the Ground in Flyover Country. My cohost, Lydia Chass, will return next week for the first in our series covering the legendary long stretch of bad days.

I’d like to close by remembering the animals whose brief lives and splatterific deaths I witnessed during my ride-along on the highways of Markham County . . .

Randy the Raccoon, Samantha Squirrel, Tom Cat #1, Tom Cat #2, something that might be a toad, Pam the Possum (no length of intestines given), and the innumerable insects—

Twenty-Three

I power off the Bluetooth speaker and fix Bristal with a stone-cold glare.

“What the hell was that?”

“Lydia!” Mom chastises me. “You can’t talk to—”

“Yeah, Mom. Actually, I can,” I say, spinning on her. “Our listens are up, my applications are still in review, and any one of those sets of ears out there could be attached to someone who is making a decision about where I can or can’t go to college—and Bristal is treating it like stand-up.”

“And it was pretty funny.” Dad looks at Bristal. “Quite well done. I can’t say how the language will go down with the school staff, but if it comes in front of the school board, I think I can make a case for artistic license and capturing local color.”

“Are you serious right now?” I say, switching my glare to Dad. “Henley might be all over this, but Harvard won’t.”

“If it matters—” Bristal begins, but I cut her off.

“It doesn’t. It doesn’t matter,” I tell her.

“Well, now, hold on a second,” Dad says, rising from his chair. “Bristal has a right to defend herself. This is a group project.”

“Whose side are you even on?” I screech. Tears are pricking at my eyes now, the anger arching toward hysteria.

“I don’t see why there have to be sides,” Dad says.

“It’s an argument, Dad! Yes, there are sides. And you’re supposed to be on mine!”

The tears are coming now. I’m standing in the middle of the living room, my cheeks wet, hands on my hips. I can see my face reflected in the living room window, the darkness outside nowhere close to matching what I feel in my gut.

“Look, Lydia, I didn’t mean to piss you off,” Bristal says, her voice weirdly subdued. “But you gotta admit your monument episode was kind of a bummer.”

“A bummer?” I yell. “It’s about the Civil War, Bristal, which was a bummer for a lot of people. So, I’m sorry if I couldn’t find a way to make it more amusing. I guess I’ll have to get more dicks in there next time.”