They let it pass. The men sitting on rolled foam or piles of rags stand and scoop their bedrolls from its path, and when their palms are placed out and pulled short they feel its animal warmth. They hold their hands there, fingers splayed, stealing its heat. The line forms, men and their benedicting hands, a channel of men through which the deer walks, concerned, but certain.

Those inside the church sense something happening outside. Because of the silence they have ruled out the police, who always come wearing a mantle of noise, and so they are unafraid to stand clustered and steaming on the cement steps.

They let it pass. When it leaves them behind they do not lower their hands, do not shift or move, as if asleep.

The deer approaches the end of the channel of men, its small hooves click on the frost-hardened asphalt and steam plumes from its nose. It pauses then, preparing to leave this human forest. As it steps clear, the last man reaches out and gently places his hand flat against its fur. In an instant it is running. It jumps once, and then again. In two leaps it is over the fence. The men drop their arms and rush to the chain-link, hook their fingers and watch the deer bound down the weedy and trash-strewn slope to the freeway and into the traffic.

The first car clips its legs from under it and it flies into the air, rolled up the ramp of the windshield. The yearling lands on the hood of the second and the men hear the bone mulch. Again, for what seems an eternity, it is sent toward the leaded sky. The legs mill on broken joints, a gout of blood erupts from between the pages of its ribs. The deer is lofted once more before it falls limp on the litter-strewn shoulder, its head among the brown winter weeds where black garbage bags have caught fast and flutter like crows. The deer is dead.

Some men stare at the tangle of fur and gritty flesh, others turn but do not walk back into the soup line.

“Good job, Simon,” says one as he kicks at the broken glass by the fence’s edge. “Good job,” he mutters again.

With that they all turn in various angles of regret and spread back out over the pavement until only Simon remains at the fence. Then he, too, drifts back to the parking lot and since he has nothing to carry, moves on from their midst, crossing the street with his head down, along the alley next to the old Windsor Hotel, his face hidden in the folds of his jacket.