I was trapped...

...behind a long line of traffic that extended down the single lane behind me, disappearing over the false horizon in my mirrors. In front of me was a shitty white Datsun. The Datsun sounded like a children’s brass band. The side mirrors were cracked. The exhaust spat at me. The taillights were illegible. Strapped to a warped ski rack on top of the Datsun was a slab of inch-thick plywood. On top of the plywood was the severed head of the biggest bull elk I had ever seen. The ragged edges of the bull’s neck were flayed out around the head. The board had blackened from the blood, as though the veins had once pumped old motor oil. The glassed eyes were looking straight up to the sky. The tongue flagged out of the mouth to the side. I imagined that it would have been flapping, but it had stiffened beyond motion. From behind, it looked like the carcass of a primeval spider—the legish antlers extended skyward. The wapiti was strapped onto the roof of the Datsun with nylon cording strung from the uppermost antler point to the lowest and then hitched onto the rack. There it was, the Datsun’s aegis to the cold sun, a blood trophy and mascot, the wagon load of spoils, a hirsute and huge John the Baptist. Without the wind, a host of blue black gunmetal flies would congregate inside it to lay their eggs for the other heads of other creatures one step beyond. All the years eating water cress from the bottom of Beaver Creek, and the battles of antlers and frost, and the thin years and winter months when no Chinook found his harem. The rut and the gravity in the groin—the slicing bugle that could cut ice like a blowtorch. He had survived. So many years of knowing the Targhee better than God himself, and the final ride down a 2 lane state highway atop a sputtering, shitty Japanese compact driven by a man dressed like leaves.