A Passwaters Family Gothic Roadtrip
There is something macabre in the soul of a teenage boy, but there lurks something far more sinister in the time-ripened heart of a seventy year-old woman. The Family Passwaters accompanied by our young ward, Jeffrey, was on our way to church on a brisk Sunday morning when a pleasant conversation on local wildlife took the usual menacing turn for the worst and everyone showed their true colors.

Our neighborhood is plagued by an alarmingly high suicide rate amongst small to mid-sized woodland creatures. I don't know what is so damned depressing about the South or so distressing in the life of a small to mid-sized woodland creature in Central Tennessee, but we could fill a train car with the corpses on any given day of the week. One particularly inspiring piece of roadside death brought out quite an amusing tale of ironic demise by young Master Jeffery.

He told of a road trip through the local countryside, similar to ours. His grandmother piloted their motorized carriage, carrying Jeffery's brother James to the estate of a dear friend and school chum. His grandmother was quickly losing vision as the evening neared dusk when from a nearby copse, they were accosted by what could be described as a mature, feral tomcat. The tom may have been famished out of its usually discreet mind and confused the carriage's speed and trajectory with that of a low-flying bird, albeit, an ave of abnormal breadth and width.

Whatever the intent, the outcome was obvious and the sound of the tom's head beneath the wheel of the carriage was both distinct and final. Jeffrey continued that nothing more was said of this tragedy until the following week when James returned once again to his school chum's manor. A passing conversation revealed that the friend's family cat had been struck and killed by a passing motorist. James was astounded to hear of this and revealed that his grandmother had indeed killed their family cat the week prior. In generations past, such an affront could cause a feud amongst their two families, but in the socially desensitized world of the new millennia, it only served as fodder for the morally depraved set of ambivalent ne'er-do-wells.

Their sickening peals of laughter were echoed in the cabin of our truck that brisk Sunday morning as we shared other grisly roadside deaths we had been apart of, but one of our passengers didn't share in our glorious recounting.

I could feel myself bristle even before I cast a sidelong glance to the passenger seat. In all of our joviality, I had forgotten that my mother had joined us this morn. Her countenance was held in dour, self-righteousness, all-too prepared to let us know just what her overly arched eyebrows could not convey.

"This is just morbid," she stated. Knowing full well what she meant, I still had to goad her to elaborate on her dramatized discourse. "What do you mean, mother," I taunted. "This whole conversation," she railed, "is just sickening, and it's just morbid how those two sit back there and laugh at the death of a beloved family pet."

In all truth, the conversation was a bit dark for my taste also, but who was I to pass up a perfectly good moment of levity. "Mother, what exactly are you offended by? People hunt deer and have for centuries celebrated in their killings with hunting stories and weekend parties." Aghast, she said, "Well, I think that's just wrong too. I'm not one of those people. I hunt deer with a camera!"

"A camera," I retorted. "How the hell is bludgeoning a deer to death with a camera any better than just shooting it? And what sort of bait allows you to sneak up on a deer to bludgeon it with a camera? Do you use the strap for leverage? I bet you're one of those cruel hunters who try to save money on your equipment, so you buy disposable cameras and have to kill the deer by finding a sharp plastic edge on the camera and blinding the deer in hopes its wound becomes infected, and then mercilessly stalk it over the next few days as it wanders aimlessly through the wilderness. Madam, you are a monster."