Stewardship.

In rural small towns of Northern Idaho that lay in the foothills of the Bitter Root Mountains, one finds it very difficult to  grow up without knowing or knowing of every singular person of the town. This can get you into some peculiar situations.

I will disclaim right here, right off the bat, that this is not my story, it is my father’s.

A number of years ago, when I lived in Arizona and my dad was living in Idaho, my Gramma asked my dad to pick my cousin, Cameron, up from school. He agreed.

They were driving down the highway when Cameron turned around in his seat.

“Max! Turn around!”

“Why?”

“There’s a dead raccoon!”

“So?”

“I Max, I want a coonskin cap! Turn around!”

When dad thinks you’re an idiot, his eyes open a little wider, his eyebrows raise, his head tilts down a little bit and shakes quickly from side to side as if to say “Who gives a shit?” without actually saying it.

“Max!” Cameron doesn’t elongate vowels to whine when someone doesn’t want to give him something he wants. A lot like his older brother, Ryan (from the knife fight), he is straight forward and demanding. “I want a coonskin cap.”

“If it’ll get you to shut up.” Dad pulls a u-turn on the highway, pulls over opposite from the raccoon, and tells Cam to stay in the car. He crosses the road and when he gets to the carcass he notices in it something like breathing. 

“Cameron, I don’t think this thing is dead,” he shouts.

“Yeah, Max, it is. Pick it up!”

Dad reaches his foot out and nudges it.

It jumps, runs into the highway, and gets hit by a semi.

It’s dead now.

He waits for the traffic to pass, picks it as he crosses the highway, and throws in the back of the truck.

“Thanks, Max.”

As they continue north on the highway, maybe a mile or so up the road, dad sees a couple walking along the side that he recognizes and pulls over. 

“You guys need a ride?”

Dad’s clocked a lot of hours hitchhiking and likes to pay it forward when he can. Of course, this time they are beyond gone on something hard.

They climb into the back of the truck. With the dead raccoon. Don’t say a thing.

Dad stops at a gas station and tells Cameron to stay in the truck. He’s perusing the refrigerators for a cheap tallboy when Cameron appears next to him with eyes wide and breath held.

“Max.”

“I told you to stay in the truck.”

“She cradling it.”

“What?”

They come out of the gas station and the woman has the raccoon tucked in her arms like an infant, rocking it and singing.

At this moment, dad chooses not to do anything. They both get back in the cab and Cameron looks my dad in the eye and says “I want my ‘coon skin cap." 

'Cause he’s Davy Crockett or some shit.

The guy tells dad to drop them off at a nearby motel and he gladly agrees. He pulls up outside the motel office and the woman gets out with the raccoon still in her arms.

Cameron is freaking out.

"Max! Max! She’s takin’ it!”

Dad gets out of the truck and catches up to them. He sees now that the woman is in tears, still singing, and shuddering violently (induced by either grief or severe drug use). 

“Look lady,” he says, “my nephew really want that raccoon. He want to make a hat or somethin’. Could you just leave it?”

Her whole face twists and distorts into some kind of iconic B-movie horror close up and she sputters her one clear, lucid phrase of the day: “I’m gonna give it a proper burial." 

With that, she walked past him toward a motel room, presumably theirs, and dad walks back to the truck. As he sits in the drivers seat and closes the door Cameron gapes at him.

"Max.”

“No." 

To my knowledge, Cameron never got a Coonskin cap, real or fake,  and probably for the better. Though he still get’s a little worked up about it when the story comes up.

The lesson: Maybe don’t pick up roadkill? Or maybe don’t pick up hitchhikers? Maybe both?

I don’t know.

He does.