I’d never seen my dad drive this fast. He now acted floppier, some beautiful slow-growing vine just ripped down off its lifelong trellis. Over there he slouched, dead-eyed, lax, hands huge, his face an unfilled order form, almost carefree, aiming us at high speeds. He used just the underside of his right wrist. Only the buckle of Dad’s plaid watchband rested on the wheel. “He’s lost interest,” I thought. His lower lip hung open. He now seemed to be breathing only through his mouth.

We passed a red barn spilling golden straw out its upper holes. We passed a low stone wall. Just ahead, one yellow diamond sign showed a black deer’s outline leaping right to left.

Hoping to slow Dad, to maybe reinvolve him in our life, I planned to tell him, for a joke: Wasn’t that the silliest thing—ever?—how some guy at a desk in Raleigh figured he could say right where a deer might cross the darn road way out here? A riot, hunh, Dad? Dad?

That same second there spun before our windshield moving right to left midair three pinkish shapes like hurled doormats carpet-sized. They funneled toward specifics and into being creatures and looked to me like tall odd dogs with bottle racks for heads. The point of one such pronged unit now turned our way. The beast had bristles on its muzzle, a wet black nose, and this became all of one live deer veering right at us and going ninety. It got closer fast but in the slowest way that all of this can happen.

I had time to know. It was going to hit us. And we, it. Time to think. That we were sitting as still as bowling pins who’ve got whole animals swimming down the alley at them. I saw two others, white-tailed, lift into the air around our car then back-move over it. But the big one, his red-blue tongue out, his longlashed eyes all damp, let his front hoof poke our windshield, as if in the politest water-temperature test. And our whole green male view went female blue with spiderwebbing then to bits then clear. All in total silence. Over the fender, other animals, back-tumbling, became a good clown act. Their speed was as great going north, as our speed grew even faster headed south and gathering them all against and over and then under us.

Dad’s right hand, still holding the cigarette, shot out, raised itself above my face. His huge hand stretched wide like a pointed star—it accepted the full spray of glass that otherwise, I knew, would now be taking my blue eyes. Dad received all sharpness; he did so—glad as any catcher’s mitt absorbing all it was designed to snag. But (no hands) the car meantime went just where it pleased. Dad stared hard my way, yelling “rightson?” (which I knew was the end of “Are you all right, son?”), and as three bumps each bigger heaved us left so hard, this is what I can’t describe. Even as I’ll try again. This was it, and I, age eight: About to go over with our car, Dad gave me one possibly final look, a look that—in the strange current of time’s slowing, of adrenaline’s emergency-brake favor to us—let me see a new man. I saw my father as some stranger might. And while I braced for impact—as I stared at him all softened up and wounded by my accusation, only now, for the first time in my life, did I understand: