02/20/2025 6:14 am
by Jean-Luke Swanepoel
When I was five and fretful, my uncle was the kindest man I knew. Until I watched him run over a dead raccoon on that road to the mall on the outskirts of town. During summer it was a road through a field of green stalks, but it was winter and the fields were barren. He swerved firmly to make contact with the pile of blood and bones which passed like a hiccup beneath the wheels.
When I was seven, my uncle did the same again, this time with the carcass of a squirrel. Two crows were picking bloody bits of pulp from the road, and they scattered only briefly at the approach of his truck. We were on our way to the mall again, this time to see Finding Nemo.
“Why do you always do that?” I asked. My uncle played dumb. “I mean, what you just did with the steering wheel.” But my uncle merely fiddled with the radio, as if I’d objected to the song.
The butter stained our fingertips and kernels crunched between our teeth, and squirrel bones were on my mind for much of the afternoon.
We were on our way home when my uncle said, “Never be afraid of a little blood and guts.”
When I was fifteen, I became a vegetarian, and at a Sunday barbecue my uncle said, “I’m proud of you, kid.” I didn’t laugh in his face or mention the influence of his bloody entertainments. One of his colleagues had died at 3PM that Friday aged only thirty-three. Aneurysm. The man had had a family, three children and a wife, and my uncle became doleful at the mention of this detail. Why wasn’t my uncle married yet? He was handsome and could have his pick of women.
When he was forty-eight, my uncle was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and by fifty he was on his deathbed. I was twenty-five and no longer a vegetarian. My uncle hadn’t married, or fathered children of his own, and he asked about the movie we’d gone to see when I was seven.
He couldn’t remember the title and I pretended not to, listening as he relayed stray details of the plot. I hiccuped suddenly, at which my uncle smiled, perhaps recalling that familiar jolt of his truck. He squeezed my hand and looked into my eyes. His lips were dry when he parted them to speak, and I offered him a sip of water. He cleared his throat weakly, but no words followed.
“I almost broke a tooth on a popcorn kernel that day—” I said. “I imagined that I was munching on squirrel bones, and that the butter was squirrel blood on my fingertips.”
“You never told me that,” he answered. “But your imagination has always worked overtime.” The dead squirrel imprinted so vividly in my memory must have been one of hundreds to him.
Before he died my uncle held my hand and said, “I’m roadkill, don’t you see? Half dead in the street, awaiting the mercy of a stranger in his truck. Some handsome cowboy.” And that was that. How many men he must have loved and lost, introducing not a single one. I returned home and scoured my memories for signs I must have missed, and fell asleep to Finding Nemo.
Jean-Luke Swanepoel was born in South Africa and currently lives in California with his husband. His work has previously appeared in publications including Lunch Ticket, CutBank, and Necessary Fiction. His sophomore novel, The Book of David, was published in January 2025. Find him on Goodreads at goodreads.com/jlswanepoel.
Posted by tmielkesuizu1
Categories: Fiction
Tags: flash fiction, Jean-Luke Swanepoel, Roadkill, Short Story
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Loved this – it had a wonderful sense of melancholy to it.
By matthewjrichardson on 02/20/2025 at 8:37 am
[…] Read the full story in Hawai’i Pacific Review […]
By “Roadkill” by Jean-Luke Swanepoel – A Quiet Root on 06/16/2025 at 12:49 am