The doe in the the road was dying,

huddled upon itself the way they do, curled around the pain. As I got closer it tried to stand, its broken back legs folding before the deal was done. I grabbed a gear and rolled on past, the deer collapsing, a median-strip planted with something that was probably colorful in the summer momentarily screening it from view. Through this neat row of skeletal symmetry, a pair of oncoming headlights burned.

In my side mirror, steam was rising from the deer, marking its position, right in the middle of the passing lane. It saddened me to see. I couldn’t help wondering if the poor creature understood what was happening. Then I was eyes-forward again, my mandatory second’s worth of checking my six complete, telling myself I wasn’t rubbernecking. Then I looked again. The doe stayed down. The headlights came on.

It was one of those minivan taxis, the kind that makes you shake your head and wonder how it came to this. The driver was running in the left lane, him and me the only traffic for miles, jumping puddles of sickly sodium glow.

I shook my head, hating the nature of a fabricated world. My eyes flicked the mirror, searching for brakelights and not seeing them.

Asshole, I thought.

Too late, those twin red eyes flared, and the minivan lurched and veered right and swerved left and yawed back again, and did the exit stage left thing, making a drunken beeline for the trees, all in less than two seconds.

That’s how fast it happens. 

Unless you’re the doe. I guess it drags out a bit longer from that angle. No smartphone to distract you, no tweets to keep you entertained on that long highway crossing, just the cold and the sudden glaring noise and the pain, and in the end, the same confusion as us. The same futility. It comes at you in plain sight, and you miss it every time, and it rolls right over you.

I wondered if the great green pasture in the sky was a reality now, no wolves and no deep snow to bog down in. Then I wondered if the stupid taxi driver was okay. Half a mile ahead, a possum waddled across the road, one twentieth the size of a hunkered doe, and I marked its passage.

Hard to miss. Lots of things in the road are.

But we drive blindly toward whatever demands our attention, we try to hold in our hands the things we tell ourselves are important, make them real with the press of a key or the swipe of a soft finger across a touchscreen, and we miss what’s in the road.

Sometimes the movie has a fast-forward button, and if you hit it because you aren’t paying attention you go right to the end.

It’s hard to have much sympathy for that.

And from most places on the road, it’s a long way home. So I topped the hill and grabbed another gear.

SR