On a painfully bright summer day, my friend D.F. and I drove around in a dark green ‘78 Monte Carlo with a tank of medical grade nitrous oxide between us that D.F. had stolen from his dentist. He said he simply “chucked half a cinder block through a window, slid that chain
off the tank, and dragged it back out that broken window. There were
no sirens, man. Nothing.”

We inhaled and had a silly time
of it. We filled balloons that read, ‘Happy Birthday!’ and tied them to the torsos and legs of roadkill. Bloated, back-broken raccoons. Gutted, flattened squirrels. A split-open tabby housecat with a purple
collar blackened by tires. The tiny silver tag on the collar read, “Muffins.” Probably named by a baby-toothed kid in a moment of glee while the kid’s parents stood like monuments expecting an answer.
Center of attention. Memories made with that kid and that cat. Quiet purrs in laps. Nasal laughter at Muffins’ endless pursuits of a length of yarn trailed by the kid. Just to have Muffins escape to the speeding highway and get run over. The end result is always the end result. D.F. pulled the Monte Carlo over and dragged Muffins’ remains by the tail to the side of the road. He nearly got hit by a box truck that
swerved to avoid him; I watched the box sway, the rear double tires struggle to stay on the pavement; the horn break and fade away. A loud curse came from the driver. The residual nitrous inside us made us laugh at the thought of what had nearly happened. The sparse black hairs that
hung over the corner of D.F.’s lips, moved up and down as if within a seizure.
“Muffins,” he said with a stoner inflection. “Happy birthday, bud.” We laughed again.

It was D.F.’s idea. The balloons. He had a box of them he stole from the open trunk of a party store employee. He stole things. That summer day, it was 1999, the edge of the millennia, we were a few weeks removed from our high school graduation. A future lay before us like a haunted ocean-liner; docked and waiting, swaying in soft miniscule movements with the tide, only moments away from drawing anchor and chugging along to destinations unknown. D.F. had taken the ASVAB at the behest of the jock Marine recruiter our high school let hang around lunch tables. The Marine said, “S’up, blood?” to everyone, and I made fun of him behind his back for having a job where he had to
persuade teenagers to join his gang of killers. D.F. watched him do 102 pushups and then idolized him like a poster of an athlete and soon D.F. would be loading a Howitzer aimed at people he’d never meet
thousands of miles away from the roads with balloons tied to roadkill and the nitrous making it all seem hilarious and absurd. I intended to go to Community College maybe. Work a job for a while.

D.F. explained it to me, his reasoning for the balloons, while we sat in a pale laminate booth of a stale tube-bulb lit Taco Bell. Balled paper wrappings, little cubes of tomatoes, swirly lines of yellow cheese and shards of white wilted lettuce scattered across the pale pink table between us like the rubble of a war fought with produce instead of munitions. In between straw pulls from a big plastic cup of Mountain Dew, he said; “I was driving down the highway a few days ago, and I saw a female duck struggling. She was just run over by the truck in front of me, rolled to one side, and turned its head to me, utterly helpless, bones broken, waiting for me to pulverize her. I swerved to avoid her and checked my rear-view to see the car behind me roll over her like a balloon full of mud. Her guts got pushed to either side of what was left. I saw her beak open up wide like she was screaming. That moment, though, in the duck’s eyes when she rolled over and looked at me. The struggle against the forces of pain, of impending, unavoidable collision. I felt as helpless as she did. I wonder if she could’ve avoided it. Or if she waddled out there on purpose. Maybe she’d had enough. Ducks mate for life, yeah? Maybe she wanted out of it. Maybe she already lost her mate or her ducklings to the highway. Or a shotgun. I wonder if any of her memories flashed in her brain before she died or if she was just an instinct operating organism devoid of happy memories, or consciousness, or just what the hell exactly was happening to her besides pain. Do ducks recognize the moments just before death? Do they know they are about to die? Do they say a prayer to whatever god they believe? Just felt I ought to celebrate them. All the roadkill. Besides, gotta use the nitrous somehow.”