About four miles along, a guy had pulled off to the side and was standing by his car. He waved his hand to flag me down.

I stopped and rolled down my window. I noticed the car behind me had stopped, too. But not in the natural manner of someone who was just headed in the same direction, coming up, and not stopping until they were right behind me.

“There’s a deer that was hit by a car up ahead,” the guy said. He was clearly distraught. “He won’t make it. I’ve called the police to put it out of its misery.”

“Alright,” I said, “thanks,” though I wasn’t sure for what, and started moving again, slowly. When I did, the Lexus did, too. Silly game.

Around the bend, there it was. It kept lifting its head, trying to rise, to run off and live, even though it couldn’t. It had big eyes and a desperate look. More expressive, even, than the man who’d flagged me down. “Put it out of its misery.” Euthanasia. Kill it. Murder. Whatever you need to call it.

Trees fight for life. If you climb to the high, rocky places, where the soil’s been stripped by the beating of the winds, day and night, you’ll see the pines hanging on, their roots crawling into the splits between the stones and wrapping tight around them, like the crew of a ghost sailing ship, desperately clinging forever to the lines as they ride through an eternal storm.

This love of life that we go on about, how precious it is and such, is just a mechanism. Spiders and flies, blades of grass, and bacteria have it. Any form of life that doesn’t have it gets wiped out. Ipso facto, it’s built in, like spark plugs in an internal combustion engine. We spend endless hours wondering if our life will be short or long, good or bad, worthwhile or worthless, then death comes, and we have no idea at all.

—

The Lexus stayed behind me. Sure enough, when I turned off the county road, onto Shanty Road, up into the hollow, she followed.

I stopped at #46, got out, and waited, blocking the way.

It was Maddie. She stopped. I pointed at the driveway. She started to get out of her car, her mouth moving in full yelp. I shook my head, “No,” and pointed again. She started to yell, with outrage, that I had her phone and I had to give it back. I said, “If you want to talk to me at all, you’ll go in there, and you’ll wait.”

“But you have my property!”

“If you follow me up, I’ll shoot you with Miz Bloom Carter’s gun. With her prints all over it and all over the cartridges. I’ll shoot out your windshield, I’ll shoot out your headlights.”