The Killing

The Killing In the little light left us, we barreled along the river road, darkening clouds of old oak and hickory closing in from both sides. We were happy, full from a fine meal at a restaurant in a small town on the West Virginia line. I resisted turning on the headlights, liking, I think, the danger and the other worldly feeling of the road grinding away beneath the tires, night creeping like an animal up from the water, while we sat almost utterly still in our seats. I believe she said something offhand about deer feeding near the river, and then, as if the world were listening, there was a deer, ambling slowly across the road. I might have slammed on the brakes. Or I might have swerved. I don't know. All I remember now is how she reached across the small space of the car, 72 our private interior, and squeezed my hand, a moment's fear or assurance, just as we whizzed by the animal that barely made it in time to avoid the killing we would surely have made of its evening in the little light left, a kind of satisfaction settling in the air between us until something emerges, hungry, from the darkness to remind us that nothing is ever really safe. —Craig Crist-Evans 73 ...