Spin

I remember spinning. Granted the smoldering joint lent a fuzzy haze to the experience, but the car spun. “Sandblasted Skin” brayed through blown speakers. The roads were unfamiliar. I was driving way too fast. It was perfect. But it wasn’t. I knew the doe would appear. I wasn’t certain where, but I knew it was waiting. I pulled hard on the joint, ignoring my burning lungs. I left little room for oxygen. Choking, convulsing shoulders yanked at the wheel but my eyes never left the road. I turned the music louder, taking corners blind. I pushed the needle higher. The sudden light overwhelmed me. Expectation gripped my chest. Anticipation leaned in. My reflexes were sharp. Disconcertion won as once again my eyes found comfort in the dim glow of my own headlights. “I still have the deer,” I reminded myself. Failed hope weakened as I drew nearer my destination. But then it appeared. I was taken off guard. I overcorrected. I fought Newton’s Lex II. I spun. The rear tires came to rest against the bank of high grass lining the fence. Disoriented, the surge of anger ripped me to awareness and left me numb. The frozen deer straddled the yellow lines painted on the roadway.

Loss struck hope a fatal blow. I turned the key. The grating sound startled me. Slowly I realized the engine still hummed quietly. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” The engine should have stalled. Night air should be flooding the blood soaked interior. The doe and I should be dead; our corpses intertwined amidst the shattered glass. Instead, we watched each other through a whole and clear windshield. Not wanting to repeat her brush with death, she bounded off into the trees. We were alive.

I pulled onto the road from the opposite bank. I drove until I recognized the bend where I encountered the other vehicle. Confused, I turned around. As I traveled past our morbid rendezvous, my confusion deepened. I was heading in the right direction. The same direction I was facing after the encounter. The same direction I was traveling before the encounter. “You must have just veered across the road and stopped.” But that didn’t fit what I felt. I felt myself being thrown and pulled as the grassy field to my left blurred through my vision in a panoramic action sequence. I watched the rear of the car slide to a stop against the fence. At the speed I was traveling, the angle of the back end was far more pronounced than what would have been generated from a sliding stop, even with the joint. No, this was some sort of cosmic rewind. This was direct intervention. I was pissed. I had no basis for my accusation. The facts were clear. A deer appeared in the road. I swerved and came to a stop against the fence. It was simple, nothing as dramatic as what I felt. I must be wrong. But I knew I wasn’t. I knew what I had known was erased. According to history there was no suicide attempt. I carried no guilt. I never bothered to restart the music. I drove in silence, brooding.

I found the address, parked the car, and cut the engine. Staring blankly into the darkness, I remembered the crumpled list from 8th grade. The wide ruled sheet of notebook paper nearly filled front and back with circumstances that should have killed me but didn’t. I reluctantly penned the doe on the faded blue line in my imagination. My mental moment of silence honoring failure carried me to the door. I found myself knocking.

“Where have you been? We thought maybe you weren’t going to make it.”

“Honestly, I didn’t think I was going to make it either but there was a change of plans. Here I am.”