By Craig Crist-Evans
In
the little light left us,
we barreled along the river
road, darkening clouds
of old oak and hickory
closing in from both sides.
We were happy,
full from a fine meal
at a restaurant in a small
town on the West Virginia line.
I resisted turning on
the headlights, liking,
I think, the danger
and the other worldly
feeling of the road
grinding away beneath
the tires, night
creeping like an animal
up from the water,
while we sat almost utterly
still in our seats.
I believe she said
something offhand about deer
feeding near the river,
and then, as if the world
were listening, there was
a deer, ambling slowly
across the road. I might
have slammed on the brakes.
Or I might have swerved.
I don’t know.
All I remember now
is how she reached across
the small space of the car,
our private interior,
and squeezed my hand,
a moment’s fear or assurance,
just as we whizzed by
the animal that barely made it
in time to avoid the killing
we would surely
have made of its evening
in the little light left,
a kind of satisfaction
settling in the air between us
until something emerges,
hungry, from the darkness
to remind us that nothing
is ever really safe.