Back on the Track
or... Why Armadillos Cross the Road

By C. C. Blewett

Tears streamed down Sonny’s face as he chewed on his grub-worm and listened to his favorite George Jones song.  Sonny dearly loved tales of unrequited love.  All the more since his honey, Lucille, had been turned into a purse for some tourist. 

He was mourning real good when he heard the disc jockey talking about races.

“Hot damn!” he thought, stopping mid-chew, “Armadillo races at the Luling Watermelon Thump.  I do believe it’s time to get caught again.”

Nothing could get Sonny fired up like an armadillo race.  Since Lucille got bagged, Sonny had been pondering the value of his own life, and the goings-on outside his four dirt walls hadn’t interested him much.    He lived under the trailer house of a beer-truck driver and other than thumping the floor of the trailer at two in the morning to hear the driver cuss, Sonny’s life had been downright boring since Lucille’s demise.  The kid was due for a thrill.

“Shoot,” he muttered.  “Luling’s where they have the armadillo race right after the cow-chip throwing contest and in the same dadgum field.”  But he was geared up now and a couple of chips weren’t gonna slow him down.

An hour later, out on RR12, he ambled along the shoulder trying to look stupid.  He kept a look-out for bikers, who supposedly did filthy things with armadillos, but the bigger hazard on the road was flying bottles.  So far, an empty Perrier had just missed him as it sailed out of a Volvo, but the Jack Daniels bottle flung out of a Lincoln took him by surprise and bounced off his tail.  Getting caught could be dangerous work.

Then he saw it coming:  a red, ’75 Ford pickup with an empty gun rack and a cowboy driving it.  Sonny feigned a dash across the highway but turned back at the yellow line.  The ploy worked; the pickup slid to a halt and the man jumped out.

Sonny, seemingly immobile, stared at the man.  The man stared back, then started creeping forward.   Sonny stifled a chuckle.  He wanted to show his stuff, so when the man was almost on him, Sonny darted top-speed about twenty feet to hide under a straggly mesquite bush that wouldn’t shade a horny toad.   There he sat, quivering with anticipation, while the man “snuck” up on him.

Suddenly, the man had him—by his tail, unfortunately—and was hauling Sonny back to the pickup, unaware of how he’d been shucked.  Meanwhile, Sonny was already planning his strategy for the race.

Then, as the man put him in a cage grabbed from the bed of the pickup, Sonny saw a sight more frightening than headlights at night.  His blood ran cold.   There, painted on the side of the pickup, was that most dreaded word “Taxidermist.”

“Oh, Lord,” Sonny prayed, “save me.  I’m too young to die and, besides, it’d be humiliating to become a purse.  I do want to see Lucille again, but not just yet.  Oh, please, Lord, don’t take me now—not in the prime of my life.

“I promise I’ll be a better armadillo.  I’ll never thump the trailer house again, and I’m truly sorry about digging up the flower bed down at the church, but it was dark and I didn’t know it was a church and you know my eyes aren’t that good.  And I swear I didn’t mean to cause that eight-car pile-up, but that girl’s bumper sticker said ‘I brake for armadillos’ and I just wanted to see if she did.  Oh, please!”

By the time they reached the taxidermy shop and the man set the cage on a counter, Sonny was plum worn out from beseeching, and he just lay there preparing to meet his maker.

“Hey, honey?”  The man was talking on the phone.  “Guess what I got?  Yep, I finally caught me an armadillo and, boy, is he pretty.  Not a scratch on him.   ’Bout the finest specimen I’ve seen.”

Sonny cringed at the word specimen.

“Yeah, honey, I’ll just leave him here ’til it’s time to get started tomorrow.  See ya in a little.”  And with that, he was out the door, leaving Sonny in shock.

“Get started on me tomorrow?  Why me, Lord, why me?  I . . . I . . . I wonder how he’ll do it?”  Sonny shuddered at the possibilities.  “I just hope it’ll be quick.”

His life started drifting before his near-sighted eyes.  He recollected how his daddy taught him to root around and his momma showed him how to curl up for protection.   He remembered his first Willie Nelson’s Fourth of July Picnic, where he’d been tossed around like a football, and his first race at the Chilympiad in San Marcos years ago and how proud he was of winning.  And he recalled the cool, delightful feel of Lucille’s nose and how cute she looked after she’d been burrowing.

Sonny sighed.  He had lived more than most of the armadillos he’d known.  Why, how many countless kin—even his own parents—had he seen belly-up on the side of the road?  Most of them had never ventured out of the county while Sonny had been all over Texas.  He had to admit; it had been a good life.  He was content.

Or so he thought as he drifted off to sleep.  But when he heard the pickup pull up the next morning, he decided there was no reason to cut such a satisfying life short.

The man seemed to disagree.  He stomped in, grabbed the cage and a .22 and off they went in the truck.

Sonny’s brain as smoking.  “A gun?  How can he shoot a hole in me if he’s gonna stuff me?   Unless he doesn’t need my head ’cause maybe they don’t put heads on purses.  But I don’t want to be a purse.  And a bullet between these eyes?  He must be a pretty good shot.  I hope he’s an incredible shot.   I hope he misses.”

The truck stopped.   The man picked up the rifle, the cage and hopped out.  Sonny closed his eyes.

The cage hit the dirt and then Sonny felt something cool being rubbed on his side—in the shape of a circle. 

“Oh, Lord, he’s drawing a bulls-eye.”  His heart pounded in his little rabbit ears waiting for his end.  Then he heard the cage door being opened and he dared to open his eyes just a mite.

“Hallelujah, I’m saved!”

For there, staring him in the face, was not the barrel of a .22 but a big, old, dried-up cow chip.  And there beside him were four other armadillos with numbers painted on their sides, ready to race.

Pow!  The gun fired and Sonny ran.  He ran like no armadillo ever ran before.  He ran like a Kenworth was barreling down on him at 90 miles-an-hour and he was loving every adrenalin-flowing minute of it.  He ran for all his life was worth.

In fact, he didn’t stop running until he hit Laredo, but that’s another story altogether.

© Cindy C. Blewett   All rights reserved
First published 11/1983 in New Texas Magazine.  Republished (without permission I might add) in their 10th anniversary issue.