Brother William reports that this story was on the cover of my hometown newspaper, the Rutland Herald. There’s not too much to say about it: just your typical tale about a completely normal man and his botched dead raccoon trade such as one would find in any respectable newspaper, in any American town, on any lazy May morning. All the banal details are there, and I would almost rather not go through with the telling. But I suppose the story of a human being selling a flattened animal to another human for $20 probably is as compelling as the wacked out teledramas the kids slurp up like Slurpees these days. So here goes:

What we know so far: Mark A. Perkins, 19, resident of South Royalton Vermont, has pleaded guilty to one count of “possessing a fur-bearing animal out of season.” Perkins unloaded his first dead raccoon in April, when he sold the putrid procyonid to Jamie Lee Howe in April, for 20 bones (dollar bills). Howe says he bought the raccoon because “I was looking for a coon to train my pups.”

The whole business is too sweet to not to be sour: Howe has pups. He wants to train his pups with a dead raccoon. He catches wind that Perkins has a dead raccoon (or perhaps catches wind of the dead raccoon itself). Perfecto! Supply meets demand, some words are exchanged, a few greasy bills, and that’s that. Howe is set: He has a coon to train his pups. Perkins is set, too: $20 will buy a week’s worth of mentholated cigarettes. The logic of capitalism in action.

But Perkins got greedy. Just when he had touched the sky, he decided to shoot for the moon. I mean, later that evening Perkins got hammered on Old Crow and shot his .22 off at the distant lunar landscape for 3 hours before his wife knocked him out with a cinder block and dragged him back into their double-wide. But he also figuratively shot for the moon. See, Perkins wanted what he could never have: the moon. Also, 20 more dollar bills.

Here’s how the second deal went down: Perkins came to Howe with another raccoon, his eyes full of the Spanish bullion he knew he would dredge from the shallow sea of Howe’s pocket if he could pull off the deal. But this time he screwed up: The raccoon he brought was flat. Too flat. A flat raccoon. Too flat:

“A couple of days later [Perkins] called and asked if I wanted another coon,” Howe wrote. “I said ‘Yeah’ and he brought over a flat one — I couldn’t even skin it, it was so bad. I threw it out because it was garbage.”

Howe refused to cough up the dough. He also refused to pay for the raccoon. Perkins went home empty handed.

What happened next is lost in the infinite whirl of history, but here’s my theory: Howe was miffed that Perkins tried to pull one over on him (”one” being a flat, dead raccoon–the idiom is particularly applicable since Perkins at one point did try to drape the flat raccoon over Howe like a little blanket.) So Howe snitches to Sheriff. Sheriff comes down on Perkins, hard: Now Perkins must now complete 10 hours of community service and the charge will be dropped from his record.

So Howe comes out on top. Or does he? The final chapter of this sordid little fuckfest has yet to be completed. See, Sheriff must’ve gotten a few points with the big boys for breaking up the Perkins racket, but he’s got his eye on that cushy seat on the county board so he thinks that he’ll polish up his badge a bit more by booking Howe for buying the coon. But Howe isn’t so keen on spending the next twelve fortnights in the spitlocker, so he hoofs it out of his ratpack quick as a rebar stallion. Howe misses his arraignment on May 13th and Sheriff issues a warrant on May 5th. But Howe’s still on the lam, smacking boots and laughing a twelve-arm all the way up to Ontario every goddamn night.

Just goes to show: Life will find a way.