GOOD KILLIN'S

Seems to me an awful lot of living things get killed down here. In a state of barely three million people, there is a disproportionate amount of people who go and get themselves killed. I’ve pondered a lot of factors. It’s not that people don’t get killed a lot in California. But there are a gazillion people there and somebody’s bound to get killed somewhere in that state every day of the week. It’s just that with so many people, it’s not so in your face.

Down here, it’s often personal or at least just a little too close for comfort because chances are I know someone who knew the victim. Or at least her sister’s hairdresser knew him. Now, I’m not just talking about murders, though it is pretty scary to think of all the people who do get murdered down here and in far too many cases, nobody knows why. Money, revenge, sex and drugs are the usual motives no matter where you are. But there also are all the suspicious tractor accidents, deer hunts gone awry, falling off ladders cleaning pine needles out of gutters, getting sucked into conveyor belts at the chicken factory, big-rig versus motorcycle collisions, drownings down at the lake, and construction accidents. Then, when all is said and done, I’ll be sitting in a coffee shop somewhere and hear it straight from the man on the street that often has a better grip on it than the police.


“That old Gunther Sparks just plain needed a good killin’.”


How does one need a good killin’? And what is the difference between needing killin’ and needing a good killin’? Needing to be killed is not something you hear much of on the coast. Naturally, in order to better acclimate to my new culture, I had to find out. This is not easy because most people here grew up with the notion and don’t know why it is. It just is.

Most of it has to do with being stupid or mean. My uncle, Judge Benjamin Pavy, (Looziana side) always said there were two things he couldn’t stand, and the two things were different every time he said it but most consistently they were: 1) an ugly woman and 2) a stupid man. I really have a problem with the idea that a woman should be killed just because she’s not pageant queen material but I think it does happen. That is, she probably could have gotten away with cheating on the Little Man a lot longer if she had been pretty but it is a big hit to The Boys when a woman of little beauty, or, God forbid, excess weight gets it going with anyone other than that besainted man who took pity on her and slipped that Kmart diamond on her finger some years back. After all, what about that Southern Law of Physics: The bigger/uglier they are, the slower they run? Talk about stupid. Any man who believes that qualifies for a damn good killin’.
But on the matter of other ways of getting yourself killed---nobody down here ever just gets killed---they get themselves killed, like she bought movie tickets for the serial killer and shared popcorn with him before he took her out back and slit her throat.

Then there was the man who was setting some kind of trap for some hapless animal, could have been a duck blind but what do I know about duck blinds? He was up in a tree, got his foot caught on something, fell over backwards and dangled dead from the rope around his foot until he was found by some passing teenagers on their way to get into mischief and thus pave the road for their own future killin’s.

The chicken factory deaths defy all understanding. So you didn’t get the little metal tag around the leg of that one chicken. So what? Let the chicken slide. So you get in trouble and suspended for a day or two. Big deal. That is a bitsy little old price to pay compared to one’s life. Why anyone would hurl themselves on the conveyor belt to capture a tagless chicken and go get themselves tangled up in the thing that pitches the chicken into the chicken wrapping machine? Why, oh why? What chicken is possibly worth that? Hop aboard the Stupid Train, ya’ll!

Stupid is more about how you got yourself killed versus why you went and got yourself killed. Mean is the why of it all. Pit bull mean. Feral cat mean. Gorilla mean. Rabid poodle mean. That’s mean and folks the world over can be as mean and ugly as they are stupid but this is where the why of needing a good killin’ asserts itself in the vernacular of the American South. You just can’t interact or get anything you want without some nod to niceness. Being nice and a good Christian is big currency down here. There’s a lot of doing unto others as you would want done unto you. Lots of smiling and passing the while as you slowly make it clear what it is you really want. About the only place you make a direct order is at the fast food drive-thru. You just don’t ask to try on that $1900 dress the same way you say, “One burger, large fries, no mayo and NO mozzarella sticks.” Mean is what you do behind everybody’s back unless you are so mean it just spills out of your every pore or runs down your face like tears falling from a man who just got the death penalty pronounced on him.

What qualifies as mean is pretty much the same here as anywhere. It’s just that being mean in the South where everybody is so damn nice gets you into trouble a lot faster. Kicking dogs. Stealing pain pills from your grandma. Beating the crap out of your kids. Laughing at your daddy’s funeral. Calling Santa a fat-ass in front of the kiddies. Calling your teenage daughter a fat-ass for any reason. Cheating on your crippled wife. Embezzling from the Arkansas Children’s Hospital funds. Talking old people into buying all new windows for their double wide and then running off with the goods (of which there were none in the first place) and the money. Switching out the vodka for water in Gramps’ last bottle of Popov. Telling your son you ain’t really his daddy because no son of his could be that stupid. Making fun of people who have no teeth.

Eventually, one of those folks on the receiving end of any of that nastiness is going to get even. Or their daddy or mama or big brother or sister-in-law is going to do it for them. And it will usually involve a gun because guns are quicker and cleaner but every now and then, a knife or a baseball bat gets into the picture and it gets ugly real fast. You go and do any of those mean things I just mentioned and you just better be prepared to square off with Jesus in the near future. And, by God, you do any of this, you do need a good killin’ and not even this California girl is going to question the why or how of it all.

Except when it comes to animals. That’s where I am stumped. After all, I come from Northern California where, if a rabbit goes missing, they put out an Amber Alert. So all this whoop-de-doo about fixing to go shoot Bambi, Thumper or Donald Duck really gets to me. I even have, and probably always will, a visceral reaction to road kill. I have to tell myself that the dog, cat, possum, raccoon, armadillo or whatever is really just sleeping on the side of the road. Never mind the blood or the little bunny ears flapping in the wind to remind me where a rabbit once was.

It wasn’t but a couple of weeks ago, I saw my first dead-on-purpose deer in the back of a pickup truck. My daughter and I were enjoying a lovely Sunday drive to Petit Jean Mountain to take in the fall colors. I stopped at a convenience store gas station and when I got out of the car, I saw Bambi lying flat out, eyes open, dripping blood onto the pavement. There were two men and a woman standing there in the middle of God’s own sunshine talking real proud-like about how they took him down. My knees buckled and my head went light and funny and I made it to the bathroom just in time. When I came out, I knew not to look at the truck but there was no way I could drown out the conversation about what good chili-jerky-steak he was going to make.

Now I know that using deer for food is a good thing. It’s about as organic and clean as it gets. Killing animals to sustain life is as integral to survival as sipping water from a cool, mountain stream. It beats the hell out of frying up some packaged thing that was squashed into a corral or coop with a thousand other of its type, being fed steroids and antibiotics. At least the wild deer, rabbits and ducks get to live free and die proud, doing what they do. This is so much more humane than mass producing animal flesh. I know all this but I just can’t quite get it into my heart yet. It still just doesn’t feel right. What I probably never will get right is why people just go out and shoot squirrels and other varmints just for the sheer pleasure of the shooting. Ooooooh weeeee. You bigger and badder than that rabbit? That make you feel like a man? If so, well, like all those people on the receiving end of that nastiness I just mentioned, something out there is going to know you need a good killin’ and it’s going to get you good. Ain’t no revenge quite like Nature. Didn’t see that quicksand? Oooops. Oh yeah, thinks that Mama Bear, you smell just like that sumbitch what shot my baby.

It just goes against Nature and Jesus to go around killing stuff that doesn’t need killing. And it follows that it goes against Nature and Jesus just as bad to let people or varmints off the hook when all they need is one, swift, good killin’. It just all makes more sense to me now, in that down home kind of way.
Copyright 2008 by Judith Gardner