She just missed the dead boar in the road. She passed it so closely that she should have heard its spine scraping lightly against the rims of her tires, but her screams, mixed with the sliding gravel, dumped such a heft of noise onto that instant that she couldn’t have distinguished one sound from another.
The boar now lay next to her on the road, and for all the pounding in her head and chest, she squeezed out a sigh of release, though she was far from relieved. She hadn’t seen the body coming until she was almost directly upon it. A second later and she would have plowed straight through it. Who knows what kind of damage that would have done? The boar was definitely big enough to flip her straight forward, the speed she was going. The realization of what she’d just escaped started to sink in. What if she had been flipped? What if she were pinned between the backwater dirt and her little Jeep for hours, days, or weeks, with a rotting boar as her only companion? The condition of the road certainly suggested neglect and disuse; chances for help would most likely be few and far between. She was beginning to wonder why she’d taken this way. The reason didn’t really matter, though; she was here now, still alive, and her destination was only a few miles off.
She sat still behind the wheel for a moment and replayed the scene in her head. Something had caught her eye that instant before she swerved. Was it a glint? Her headlights reflecting on something? She’d reacted so instinctively that she hadn’t noticed what had actually triggered her reflex. It must’ve been the blood. Looking down, she saw the pool at the boar’s mouth was still small and very wet. It must’ve died within the past few minutes. What had killed it? The possibility of another car finding it before she had seemed small; the road stretched out across the flatlands ahead of her so vastly that she would’ve seen brake lights no matter what their distance, especially on such a clear night. Was it killed by another animal? A coyote seemed a likely perpetrator. Whatever it was, she could see it hadn’t gotten a chance to eat, probably scared off by her lights.
The prospect of an angry and hungry coyote lurking just outside her low beams made her shiver. She threw her car into drive and hit the gas with emphasis. She cast a quick look back into the scene she’d left. She hated boars. They make an awful sound when they’re wounded. She imagined what might have happened if she’d hit it while it was alive. The screams. She shuddered and turned back to the road.
She saw its wild eyes widen in a split second. This time she didn’t feel herself swerve. She smashed to a hard sudden stop, meeting the steering wheel so violently with her face that her eyes felt strained to stay in her head. In an instant all sound ceased piercing her ears, but not before they caught a hint of the sound she hated so well – the bloodletting shriek of a wounded boar.
She didn’t black out. Things just went quiet. Looking up, she saw three or four animals running full speed into the wisps of scrub, leaving piles of droppings in scattered trails behind them. They were obviously afraid. She almost started to laugh, but she quickly noticed the warmth between her own legs. “At least it’s not shit!” she coughed after them.
She tried to sit up, but her stomach lurched her forward and she vomited against the steering wheel. She drew back her hands, which were still clutching it, and tried to inspect her bile for blood. She couldn’t be sure in the darkness. She wiped her mouth on her sleeve and tried sitting up again, with a better result. Through the steam of her broken radiator and a single headlight, her eyes traced the shapes of snouts and protruding legs.
She opened the door and awkwardly planted her feet down. The cold air hit her face suddenly, and a terrible pain cut through her left eye. It was so overwhelming that she turned aside and gagged, with little reward for her effort. She covered her eye with her hand and touched the area around it, but it wouldn’t open. “Maybe it’s for the best” she thought. She clung to the door and made her way to the front of the car.
She’d hit a boar; or rather, several boars. At least three were pinned together under the bumper. One appeared dead, and the others were writhing and screaming silently in a mass of hair and entrails. She felt a pang of sympathy for them, but she was glad she couldn’t hear their cries.
“They must’ve been coming to see their dead friend up the road”, a man’s voice spoke behind her, “and now his friends are left alone, no trail of shit to follow home.”
She turned quickly in surprise and lost her balance. Falling to the dirt, she glimpsed a man in a tree. “Strange”, she thought, “there wasn’t a tree for miles…”
“Maybe you’re not where you thought you were. That’s always been your problem, hasn’t it?!” The man giggled like he was drunk and swung down to a lower branch. “Hasn’t it, Lucy?”
Lucy didn’t remember giving him her name.
“Oh. Oh my dear.” The man whispered in a sobering tone. “You didn’t give me your name. I gave it to you!” In another fit of laughter, he jumped to a branch across from him and flipped around it with such grace and dexterity that he seemed inhuman.
“Who are you!?” Lucy demanded from the ground. “Didn’t you see my accident?” Her eye stabbed hard again, and she could feel herself begin to tear up in pain and confusion.
“Aye, I did see it, Lucy. I saw it fine. But I should be asking you who’s seein’ and not seein’! How come you don’t recognize me?” He sounded insulted. Lucy hadn’t noticed his brogue until he’d spoken plainly.
“Uncle Sean?”
“Why yes! There’s a good girl! Good girl. You know your old Uncle Sean right as rain!”
“What are you doing here? I…I was just on my way to see you and Aunt Millie”
“Ah, well my dear, I don’t think you’ll be seein’ half o’ what you used to. It’s a real shame too. So blue and clear, and you went and got it all dirty.”
Dirty?” She thought he was making awful light of her situation. “You mean my eye” It hurts Uncle Sean! I don’t know what’s happened to it!.” She sat up in the cold and looked clearly for the first time upon her uncle. He was standing stark naked in the cold moon, both hands bloody and blue in the lips.
“You want to know what’s happened to it?” the man asked, the giggle rising in his throat again. “Go get it. It’s right in the car where you left it, dripping with your sick.”
A terrible fear seized Lucy, and she began to gasp in panic.
“My eye? My eye, is it gone? Is it really gone!?” she whimpered between sobs. The man was suddenly face to face with her. He placed his hand gently on her face, touching her cheek.
“Aye, dear. It’s really gone” he cooed. “You were hittin’ that road awful fast, weren’t you? You got quite a pop to the head. You should probably be dead, you know. The boar is.” He grinned and touched the air above the collapsed lid, then sank his thumb deeply into the eye socket, sending a jet of blood across his already stained hands.
Lucy cried out in surprise, but soon realized that he wasn’t hurting her. She could feel his cold thumb twisting around in the socket, and a numbing sensation spread over her entire face.
“That’s me.” he said. “I had to get it out.”
“What’s you?”
“The blood. I don’t want you havin’ none of it.” The aforementioned blood poured steadily from her wound, and she began to feel faint.
“Why are you doing this to me?” she swooned.
“I wanna make sure you’re not a bad person, dear. This blood’s done some terrible things. I just wanna get it outta you.”
Lucy fell back toward the ground. Her head was starting to throb, and things were getting hazy. The man must’ve pulled his finger out, because Lucy saw him heading back toward the car.
“Funny thing about boars” he said softly, in an almost solemn voice. “Funny indeed. I’d shoot’em in my fields at night when I’d hear’em rootin’ around my Millie’s garden. They scream somethin’ awful.” Lucy began to shiver. In her spinning daze she began to hear them – boars roaring in agony.
“They scream when I shoot’em in that garden, but they don’t run. They just lie down an’ accept it. Then I have to clean’em up.”
Lucy felt herself drift off. The screams of the boars grew louder and louder.
“She’s wet herself” the man said.
She awoke with a jolting spasm in her shoulder and a terrible light in her eyes.
“Ma’am! Can you tell me your name!?”
Lucy squinted hard and felt a searing pain in her left eye.
“I think I’ve wet myself.” she replied to the voice in the light.
“She’s got head trauma. Looks like her airbag didn’t deploy. Her neck’s probably in a tender spot. Don’t move her until someone gets here with a brace.” He was speaking to someone off to the side.
“Did I hit a pig or something?” she whispered. She felt extremely groggy and numb; the screaming was like needles at the base of her skull.
“Something. Looks like you hit a coyote. It had a little baby boar in its mouth. You broke the baby’s legs, I’d guess. Now it’s just lying there screaming. I’d kill it to put it out of its misery, but I’m Muslim, and my partner’s a vegetarian.” A woman laughed nervously beside him. She bent down to peer inside the car.
“You’re a lucky girl.” she said. “We were already on our way out here when we happened to find you. A few of our units were responding to a domestic dispute just a ways down the road. Neighbors called it in. They heard gunshots.”
“She doesn’t need to hear all that.” the man scolded. “You would’ve been better off to go ahead and run straight over it in my opinion. If you hadn’t swerved, you might have spared this poor tree its life. It seems to be the only one out here.” He smirked.
“How are you feeling? That’s a pretty rough black eye. You must’ve hit it pretty hard on the wheel there.” It was obvious they were only trying to keep her talking and conscious.
Lucy suddenly realized what the woman had just said.
“You said…” Her head pounded and she started to feel sick. “You said there was a problem down the road? My uncle Sean lives down this way.”
The man’s face grew suddenly grim. “Sean O’Heanny? 213 Brekmeyer Avenue?”
Lucy began to retch as a squad car made its way toward them with its lights off. It stopped next to them. The driver lowered his window.
“Is she okay?” the officer inside inquired.
“Yeah.”
“The scene up there’s pretty grisly.” he said dully. The officer with Lucy tried to cut him off, but the driver finished before he got the message,” the woman’s dead, and the guy’s out of his damn skull. He’s bare-ass naked in 20 degrees, jumping around in a tree like…” Taking the hint, he cut himself off and looked down in embarrassment.
“Mr. O’Heanny?” Lucy grimaced.
“Yeah.” the driver concluded remorsefully. “You know him?”
“He’s my uncle. I was on my way to see my aunt. I was hoping he’d be out. We weren’t especially close.” She wiped futilely at her eyes. “My Aunt Millie… she’s dead?” She tried hard to hold back her tears.
“He…he used a shotgun. Said he heard boars in his garden. She was out there covering some plants with a blanket.” He paused, but continued despite his better judgment, “But he must’ve been close enough to recognize her, the way the wounds…” He stopped. The moment hung suspended with his unfinished thought.
A tiny scream punctured the silence.
“Is that a piglet?” the driver asked astonished. “You hit a tree to avoid that?” The officer next to him pointed out the dead coyote. “You should kill the pig. Poor thing’s probably out of its mind with pain. I can do it if you…”
“No.” Lucy responded. “Give it to me. I…think I want to help it.”
“Looks like it lost its eye too.”
Lucy felt a chill touch her face. “Which eye?”
The ambulance arrived, and paramedics came with a neck brace.
Tim Boudreau is a writer, teacher and stand-up comedian from Corpus Christi, TX