Sickly twin cones of urine-colored light lit up the dark asphalt, but just barely. Not that anybody could see much out of the windshield. It was a regular bug graveyard out there. I checked my watch. 11:23. I hoped Grandma wasn’t too pissed off. Fat Ernst hadn’t let me call her before the Sawyer brothers had dragged me out to their truck. The silence made me uncomfortable. It meant that the Sawyers were thinking. I was afraid that Junior might bring up the crash this morning. So I asked suddenly, “How’d you guys end up picking up roadkill and dead farm animals for the county?” Anything to break the silence. “Sounds like a helluva job.” “Hey, smartass, we provide a pretty goddamn valuable service here,” Junior said defensively, pointing at the grimy glass and the highway beyond for emphasis. “Shit, if it weren’t for us, folks’d be up to their eyeballs in these dead things. You couldn’t hardly drive down the highway with all the dead animals. I mean, do you have any fucking idea how long it takes for a horse to rot?”
