When the deer pops out, Henry steps on the brake knowing this downhill stretch
of road is covered with ice, and nothing he can do is going to save the animal, and here
is Henry who is rushing to his son’s apartment because he heard the kid was going to
sign up for the Navy to fight for God and George Bush by lobbing shells on people in
Iraq, and here is Henry screaming his horn, his car shifting sideways, and here is Henry
flashing back to his father’s suicide after the war, the sound of the pistol always there
somewhere in the backrooms of his mind, and here is Henry watching the deer that has
started to prance away, and here is Henry spinning so he is sliding backward for a
moment, and here is Henry understanding that he would never have been able to stop
his son, and here is Henry who believes in God, but doesn’t like him much praying to his
pop instead asking him to save the deer and then shifting it to Henry and shifting it
again to both, and here is Henry sliding into the ditch and finally stopping and wondering
if he hit the deer or not. He did not hear an impact, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t
happen. He takes a moment to stare out at the street making sure not to look the way of
the creature.
John Brantingham is the recipient of a New York State Arts Council grant and was Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks’ first poet laureate. His work has been in hundreds of magazines and The Best Small Fictions 2016 and 2022. He has twenty-two books of poetry, nonfiction, and fiction. Check out his work at johnbrantingham.com.
Euphony Journal 