JUDD HAMPTON is a writer and an artist. He will be published in The Unknown Writer, and his art can be viewed online at Outsider Ink, Opium Magazine, and the Aileron Literary Journal.

                                                 a season of moose head


1.            Standing on the street corner, I thought this could be any urban sprawl.  There were, however, some contrary indications: the mud stained cars, the high ration of four-wheel-drive trucks, the sweeping fields of golden stubble opening up just beyond the suburban housing.  It was garbage day—rows of black plastic bags, recyclables, giant orange sacks filled with leaves, the standard fare, and a fresh moose head deposited next to the blue box on the curb.  There was no snow.



2.         He couldn’t stop, he told me—the freezing rain, the layer of new ice.  His car brought to mind the absurdity of a cartoon, flattened by some unreasonable thing.  Flecked bristles of hair were wedged in the cracks, the folds of glass and sheet metal.  In the ditch his Malamute tore at the flesh, pulling at it like a chew toy.  The trunk already stank.  Inside lay a splinter-handled axe, a coiled towrope, and a leaking moose head.  This one’s going on my wall, he said.



3.         On Halloween I drove the children from farmhouse to farmhouse.  Their pillowcases grew heavy.  A note said to go to the house next door.  The yard was unlit, a-clutter with things.  Hidden beneath the path, a moose head snagged my foot; its proud antlers yanked me down like an unseen hand.  I landed in the snow.  Later, another house, we climbed the steps of a sagging porch.  Balanced on the splintered rail sat a bestial looking jack’o lantern, all aglow; beside it a moose head, looking mixed up, staring ahead with empty eye sockets.  Why had no one installed a candle?  The people inside offered up cheap candy.



4.         I drove a forest cut line, ploughed only as wide as my truck.  The snow looked down at me from four-foot banks on either side.  Ahead a coyote tugged at some remains far too big for it.  It looked paradoxical, like watching a cat dragging around a dog.  As I neared, the coyote fled, wading snow over its head.  There in the middle of the trail sat a moose head, not much but bone and patches of hide left hanging.  I could not bring myself to remove it.  The skull crunched under my rear differential as I passed over.



5.         I buy Moosehead beer, the local brew.  I don’t wonder about the name, I just drink and drink.

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© 2002 Judd Hampton