So there I was covered in mud, straw, hay, soaked to the bone, and dripping in the freshest hog shit ever imaginable. My camo vest pockets were filthy with it. I was standing motionless and alone in that open field like some goddam scarecrow waiting for a forgotten autumn that never came. And if anybody ever asks of you, you tell them I said, "Yes. Fresh hog shit is as viscous, clammy, and vomit inducing as you'd expect it to be." I reeked to high hell from it and was dying to jump into the nearest lake to wash off the penetrating filth. Ice water though it was, I would have gone in, clothes and all, damn my favorite tactical vest. It was ruined as far as I was concerned.

Anyway, there I was, one sorry looking sight, a frozen sasquatch­like, shit stacked human popsicle in the breaking morning light, just standing there, frozen in place. The field was wide and yellowing, dipping and swelling here and there and I was its lone living attendant. Maybe it was my imagination but I thought I had seen a flock of blackbirds fly into the surrounding trees in morbid avian anticipation. The show was about to begin and they wanted the best seats in the house. I never once heard a “peep” or “chirp” or “caw” from the flock observers but I knew they were there watching. That idea gave me little comfort. In fact, it made me even more anxious.

I couldn't see the encroaching dead herd but I could hear them. I listened to the leg dragging and feet shuffling as they made their sorry deadhead asses toward me. The sound of their approach had such an unforgiving and distinct rhythm. I kept thinking of ways to outrun them but at every scenario I found myself on the receiving end of a frenzied deadhead feast. I thought of maybe distracting them by throwing a rock down the adjacent hill. The rustling sound would momentarily direct them away from me and would grant me just enough time and distance to make a break for it. But I knew I was already in plain sight and wouldn't make it past the initial rock retrieval.

I then thought to drop down to the yellow grass and let them walk over me. The grass was tall, dried and long. But I feared one or more would stumble over me and fall directly on top. My natural reaction would be to recoil away from the wretched and rotten flesh. It wouldn't take long for the deadhead to know exactly onto what it had just stumbled upon.

I never ran faster than how I imagined I would do it. I wanted to gallop over the grass and leap past the trees. I just wanted to run away but I had never been here in this particular field before and feared the high grass would hide away the unknown contours of the land.

When I was nine years old I played little league baseball on a field behind our church, Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini. And to no fault of the church that field was ridden with gopher holes. It made fielding a typical ground ball damn near nerve wracking. The fast approaching ball would roll over a gopher hole and pop straight up towards our cringing faces. The infield was the only part of the diamond cleared away smooth. It was laid clean with white vibrant chalk for the base lines. The entire outfield, however, was a vast mystery of hidden gopher colonies. They spread underneath like an underground honeycomb network of gopher bores that opened up here and

there.

I looked at the high grass field to the right of me and imagined how my foot would catch a hiding gopher hole, then I'd fall for sure and that would be that. They would swarm around me with calculating viciousness. I wouldn't even have the chance to process the fact that I was being eaten alive and turned inside out. It happens that fast.

With every passing moment of planning they drew closer and closer and my window of opportunity grew narrower and narrower. Finally, my mind told me, I had run out of time. I had to stay still. Tactical decision? Perhaps. But really it was fear. Other worldly, mind jarring, full body paralyzing fear. I looked up at the trees and wished I too had wings so that I may fly into the cover of the dying leaves and boney winter branches where I'd wait and watch along with the ravens and the crows.

I thought to myself that those birds, this dry yellow field and those dead moving things would be the last thing I'd ever live through. My time was up.