My wife, our eight-year-old son, and myself stopped to visit an old friend of hers. Faye’s old friend had been the one who predicted she and I would get married when we met—a man who had had a crush on her in younger years, now, himself, married with three sons. I had just gotten a promotion and was set to make over 17K that year, nearly double my previous salary. I had made an arrangement with my employer to have off the last week of each year, a slow week, when I would be least missed. This enabled Faye and Vance and I—in a powder blue, Ford Escort, that was basically purchased for this purpose and which she only put 1,000 miles a year on—to journey back to Washington Pennsylvania annually to visit her family and my father, step mother and sister. Faye informed me that Ken was out of work and that we would need to bring something, so I brought a case of Stroh’s beer.

Ken lived a mile above U.S. Route 40, on a rounded hilltop, shared with two other houses. I think I recall him saying he was ten miles from the West Virginia State line. We were next to the WV panhandle, where the state was no wider than the distance from Ken’s to the line. His house was a lone frame affair with reddish wood shingles that overlooked both the road that came up from Route 40 and the crossroads of Route 40.

We arrived at dusk, the sun having just sunk beyond the Horizon over Ohio to our left as we took the country road along the side of the hill.

The driveway was occupied by three cars of the same make—Chevys.

Ken, a thin man, taller than myself, hair almost down to his eyebrows and sadly kind, met us at the door and we shook hands.

The kitchen was dark and barren, narrow, and unlit except for the dim light cast from the dining room, occupied by a large refrigerator, stove and a sink and counter, opposite of some wall-mounted cabinets.

The single source of light came from an un-shaded bulb in the dining room, casting its harsh light down upon a bare wooden table. At the table sat a short, fat woman, who might once had been pretty. She had curly brown hair, had forgotten to smile and had bare feet, blackened on the bottom.

Three boys milled about and soon swept Vance up in their turbulent energy and they were all off and playing among the various darkened rooms and halls adjoining the dining room and ultimately outside.

Ken was thrilled to have the beer and was soon breaking open the case and preparing our meal: salt. Yes, we ate salt. Sprinkling a little on the bowl formed by the spiral crease between the thumb and forefinger when one makes a fist. I still do this, although with adobo or Old Bay crab seasoning, ever since my one meeting with Ken. I had a fine time speaking with Ken about his various employment stints, the cannibalization of his two junked cars to keep the operational car running, the strange place I lived and worked…

Faye, on the other hand, was miserable. The begrimed butterball of a wife Ken had repeatedly sown with seed—apparently pregnant again by her look—simply alternated between three activities:

As Faye attempted to engage her in conversation, the woman fixated with a feral jealousy on Faye’s long, flowing tresses, the thick locks of the Dark Irish that Robert E. Howard admired so, as if contemplating a wig of boastful proportions. On at least two occasions Faye had been called upon to defend her hair from savage black women who sought to rip it from her head, so was mindful of the woman’s meaningful stare.

As Ken would describe some thing or another he did, in the course of his very innovative life of making ends meet well below the poverty line, [There was no evidence of government assistance, indeed, not a grocery item in the house. I recall feeling bad for not having brought food. ] his wife would roll her eyes, snort in disdain or smack her dirty feet on the dirty floorboards.

Whenever I would speak, Ken’s wife would eye me with a feral hunger, as if she were prepared to rape me in front of both of our spouses. Still naïve about women at this young age [Faye and Ken were thirty-one and I was 22] I was informed of the full blatant nature of this woman’s activity as we later drove away and Faye declared that we would not return, although I had quite enjoyed keeping ken company, mostly based on the acquisition of the following story.

The boys had returned inside after showing Vance the vehicles, including the “deer car.” No getting drunk, Ken showed me the one source of sustenance in the house and offered to fix it for me. Opening the top compartment of the over/under freezer/refrigerator, Ken offered to cook a leg of venison as we stayed up late into the night drinking. Faye quickly nixed that suggestion with a bogus story about needing to be somewhere urgently.

I was having fun, but declined the meal already, based on the condition of the venison, hide still on the lower portion of the leg, the meat only loosely wrapped in used wax paper. The three boys then stood eagerly about us in the kitchen as Ken described how they kept the freezer stocked.

There was a deer crossing on the straightaway just past the crossroads. The boys would keep an ear out for a deer getting hit by a car or truck. They would alert Ken, who would get into the operational “deer car” and start it as the boys pushed it downhill.

Once at the kill site, Ken could not let off the gas as he idled the Chevy or it would die and the boys could not push it uphill or really on the flat, all being 10 or under. This was a big 1969 car. Ken would stay in the car, keeping it going, as the boys heaved the deer carcass over the hood, and then piled onto the hood and held the carcass in place as Ken drove back up the hill. Ken’s butcher work was rude at best, but he was a man of innovative spirit, which his wife seemed largely unappreciative of. I have no idea how often this was done. Based on the excitement it was a new thing that Ken envisioned doing again, not a regular thing.

In 2011 I wrote Ghosts of The Sunset World, in which time-travelling, Iroquois Savant, Three-Rivers meets a character by the name of Bobby Kane, otherwise known as Road-Kill Kane, the character being a composite of Ken and a terrifying redneck who once shoved a gun in a friend’s face, for back-talking him on a township street, outside of Washington PA, who we named Killer Kane.

Ever since then, every Christmas week, usually on New Year’s Day, and occasionally on a day when I’ve run out of groceries, I will drink a beer with salt in honor of Ken, a thing I did just last night as I stayed up late to write. Stale pretzel salt is my favorite.