We’re standing in the road looking at a dead fawn. His truck facing town, mine headed toward home. It appears to be sleeping on the double yellow, curled as if in tall grass or on a down comforter in a video someone has posted on YouTube about her pet deer. No sign of collision or gunshot, garrotting, heart attack: nothing but spots, cuteness. The name on his door means he works on the natural gas pipeline that’ll run from West Virginia to North Carolina. The company that pays him has a reputation for ruin worse than syphilis. Employees have been told to stay away from locals. They stick to a h.otel near the freeway with a decor I’d call modern roach; they drink there, hone boredom, look at stars. We both crouch to make sure the fawn is dead. ‘What the fuck,’ he says, staring at the desert of my face, where there’s no rain or hope, only cactus, as I search the dry lake-bed of his. He looks back at the fawn, brings his hands together as if waiting for a Communion host, makes a scooping motion with his hands, then slides his eyes to the side of the road: I’m being asked to help save a dead fawn from the bonus carnage of traffic, the shredding that suggests life isn’t just delicate but deserves to be erased. We are the briefest couple joined by common cause, move the fawn and stand briefly as men who have respected loss for sentimental reasons. Then nod, become ghosts of a moment we are the custodians of, holders of the unholdable, wind telling the story of itself to itself.
bill hicok