“I don’t know,” he answered, putting the car back into drive and checking behind us for oncoming traffic. “I just got this feeling we almost there.”

IT WAS THE second deer that did it. Just as soon as we got way back high up, where mountains faced each other on opposite ends of wide valleys, the fog started messing with us again. Only the valleys of land were now giving way to valleys of water as well. I always noticed how men got quiet when they knew they were just plain wrong, as I’m sure Rasul suddenly realized now that we could barely see several feet in front of us. The windshield wipers did nothing for the condensation that collected in thin sheets, and a headlight had gone out about forty miles back. In the misty fog, as I now recall, it was just like things came up on us right after we passed them. Once it was behind us, be it another car or a pulled-over traveler or a tree that looked out of place, that’s when we noticed it had been there. There was no time to react, take a good look, figure much out, or absorb the details. There was only the time to notice it had been there and move on. But that huge deer’s timing couldn’t have been more perfect. I felt the Eldorado bump her slightly, like maybe we had only grazed her hindquarters. I had always heard people talk about being scared like a deer stuck in headlights. I would have imagined a stunned glaze of terror would take over in their eyes. But she didn’t look scared at all when her eyes met ours as she galloped across the snowy, rocky, narrow road. Maybe she had babies waiting on the other side. Because her black eyes looked calm, as if she was in control of it all. She had more control than we, because she kept running even after being hit.