I ran into Curtis and Duwayne last week. When I asked how the New Year was treating them, they put their heads together, whispered for a bit, and then – conference concluded – Curtis took the role of spokesperson and said, other than the cow getting pregnant when she wasn’t supposed to, it hadn’t hurt much.

Our paths had crossed because I’d taken the shortcut home from the grocery store. It seemed a good idea, because my sacks were full of perishables, and I wanted to get to the house and the fridge as quickly as possible.

Taking the alternate route, I knew I was in Curtis and Duwayne territory. But figured if luck held, I could make it home without being flagged down for a session of lean-on-shovel, chew-on-hay, kick-dirt-clumps, scratch-head, rambling chat.

No such luck.

“Gonna make us some coon stew this evenin’ and Ma’s comin’ over,” Duwayne told me, leaning in at the car window. “Got ’em caged, and Curtis gonna shoot ’em in a minute.”

Being bug-eyed horrified is pretty much my normal state whenever fate throws me together with these neighbor boys.

With voice pitched like the foreboding timbre of a flugelhorn, I blurted: “What? Shoot what?” and immediately hated myself for asking. “Listen guys, I’ve got groceries I need to get home and unload before my frozen stuff melts and …”

“Coon as in RACcoon,” said Curtis, “but we got four, so I guess more ’n one critter means we got coons as in RACcoons.”

“You don’t mean you plan to eat raccoons!” I blurted again before thinking, and knew I would not be happy with the answer.

“Why not? Our daddy did and his daddy did, and his daddy afore him did. They’s good eatin’,” Duwayne told me. “And Elvis did too. But Elvis ate his all chopped up, though, on white bread with mayonnaise. Me and Curtis, we like to spit ’em whole over a fire. We mop ’em with a secret sauce, and we ain’t tellin’, so don’t ask. But there are squirrels involved.”

In spite of my resolve to get home fast, I turned off the car engine. Feeling faint, the vision of raccoon meat being mopped with squirrel sauce and spinning on a rotisserie was too much of a country overload on my urban brain.

And even though the frozen foods in my grocery bag were melting faster than the polar ice caps, the boys’ invitation to exit the car and meet the raccoons caused me to forget mundane errands and concentrate only on the fear that any moment my head might explode.

I declined the final viewing of the condemned. But stalled as I was, with ignition off, the boys took it to mean I wasn’t going anywhere, so they offered more information about the particulars of raccoon gastronomy.

“We always dress ’em carefully, removin’ the stink glands of course, and makin’ certain there ain’t no hair left clingin’,” said Curtis. “We give the fat to Ma to make her soap, and sell the fur for sometimes up to $17.”

“Our Pa used to sell whole coons back in the 40s, dressed up nicely and everything, to this meat market down near the lake,” Duwayne added, “but because people were as untrustin’ then as they is untrustin’ now, you had to leave on one paw attached to a dressed raccoon to prove it weren’t a cat or dog you was tryin’ to pass off as good meat.”

“But don’t raccoons carry rabies?” I asked. The look they gave me was like two theology professors trying to teach an ape about God.

“All ya gotta do is soak ’em in hard cider to beat that,” Curtis said.

Duwayne added, “Of course possums is different. Got to feed a possum on milk and oats for 10 days afore skinnin’ – but even that don’t rid it of tastin’ putrid. Me and Curtis don’t cook possum. Mostly that’s just Arkansas folk – they eat pretty much anything in Arkansas.”

I had a flashback to our recent family Christmas in Fort Smith. The beef tenderloin served with a darkly rich Cabernet wine sauce and topped with a chanterelle mushroom and a thin round of pâté, the potatoes gratin Dauphinoise and the Brussels sprouts roasted with walnuts, bacon, garlic and shallots. To my knowledge, neither my daughter nor her Arkansas-born husband has a hankering for possum.

“Wanna know how we catch our coons?” asked Curtis. I wanted to scream, “Lord, No!” but he was too quick for me. “We get ’em drunk.”

“Way we discovered it was when we set out the beer to kill slugs,” Duwayne said. “Coons beat the slugs to it and drank the beer instead, then went up an oak tree to sleep. Dang idjits fell right out of that tree, stone pie-eyed. All we had to do then was pluck ’em up and cage ’em.”

“Tell you what, though, when we got a sober one, we never track it into the lake,” Curtis told me. “Once you got a man and a sober coon out together in the water, the man becomes the idjit ’cause that coon’ll wallop you silly till you drown.”

Duwayne decided to expand our culinary discussion with a change of subject. “You ever cook up jugged squirrel?”

I didn’t want to know – I really did not want to know.

“Our daddy said lots of American presidents of these United States plum craved jugged squirrel. Daddy taught us how to jug when me and Curtis was no bigger ’n horseflies.”

“Squirrels is holy hard to skin, ya know.” (I didn’t know.) Curtis went on with the instruction: “Gotta use the whole carcass when jugging, and ya gotta use fresh-killed squirrels ’cause it’s the best way to collect the blood.”

Noticing that I was once again close to swooning, Duwayne hurriedly explained that the blood – mixed with vinegar – is used for thickening the stew. “Stew? But I thought you were talking about squirrels and blood,” I mumbled in a haze of surreal incomprehension.

“We are!” they shouted together. The tone was one parents might use when explaining shoelace-tying to a backward child. In a more patient voice, Curtis said: “Ya stick the squirrel in a pot with a lid, throw in your bacon, your jalapeños, your onions, your carrots – close it up tight and cook that sucker for maybe three, four hours.”

“But today is for spitting up our masked bandits, so we better be gettin’ to the deed, brother. Them coons ain’t gettin’ any younger.” said Duwayne.

Curtis chuckled: “And they ain’t gettin’ no older neither.”

Cooking lesson ended, I started the car. They said goodbye and started walking toward the barn. The boys were not out of earshot when they exchanged a few words about their encounter with the lady of the melted Ben & Jerry’s and the spoiling packages of wild-caught salmon and deveined Gulf shrimp.

“It’s a shame to think of what happens to folks who leave the farm for the city,” Curtis said, cocking his shotgun. Duwayne nodded, and added philosophically: “Bet she ain’t never ate no muskrat neither.”

As they went into the barn, the last words I heard were: “We only do to coons what they do to our chickens. Tit for freakin’ tat, Duwayne.”

“Tit for freakin’ tat, Curtis.”

I drove on to the house.