Hope Justice

Deer on the Highway

Friday night, and it was early fall. The moon parted in a way that made the luminescent ivory cover Route 58 and blanket the September Oak leaves along the road, comforting me into a bed of thoughts on the highway. My eyes dropped to the bare ring finger of my left hand grasping the steering wheel. Broken promises. Broken dreams. Every emotion mossed over by the constant growth of regret. My mind riveted from memory to memory of the love I had lost for Adam, the man who I was supposed to marry when we finished college, the man who I had left out of fear.

Adam, I saw you there, sitting next to me in the passenger seat, fussing with the radio dials, turning up the bass, bobbing your head and puffing out your lips, dancing “old school” like you called it, with your arms above your head, snapping your fingers, singing, “You know you wish you could dance like me,” to some made up melody. I laugh; you laugh; I smile; you’re gone.

Then there was the quiet of the radio. I was in my truck; No, I’m in your basement. “Wild Horses” is playing, and we’re dancing. I’m singing. Your eyes don’t move, they just absorb mine. Your eyes are tea-colored, mine honey, and they stir in one another until your nose touches mine, and you kiss me.

Wetness on my face brings me back to the littered highway—the litter tiny fragments of loose memories gusting around my truck. Other cars passed them by, unnoticed; I watched each one out of the corner of my eye, and for each, a bead of a tear rolled down my face.

The clouds break for a moment, and the stars become your freckles—“No, angel kisses,” you would say, and I would laugh, “Nope! Freckers.” The freckles turn back to stars and the clouds smother the opening again, those tiny lights extinguished.

I drove pass a church with a vacant parking lot. Then I was sitting there with you, and it wasn’t fall, it was early summer, and the air was warm and salty by the lake. We were lying on the grass just above the rocky slope of Lake Erie behind St. Michael’s Catholic Church. The sky was clear—stars splattered everywhere—and you were crying.

“Hope, don’t leave me. I love you so much.”

“Adam—I can’t do this anymore. You just break promise after promise and you’re tearin’ me apart. What the hell is so special about gettin’ high? Am I not enough to make you happy?”

You take my hand, put it to your chest.

“You feel that?”

I nod my head.

“That’s my heart, Hope. That’s me and you. Nothin’ else okay? I can change. Give me another chance. I need you to help me through it. It’s hard. It’s been a long time since I’ve been sober. If you leave me I’ll have no reason to try to get better.”

I don’t want to cry, but I’m crying. It sounds like the truth, and I believe you.

“Hope, common. Stop cryin’. I’m sorry.”

You lift my chin with your hand, look me in the face.

“Adam don’t look at me. I’m all puffy.”

“Youre beautiful. Most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

You point up at the sky, “You see those stars? Aren’t they amazing? They don’t even come close to you baby. You’re gorgeous.”

I passed a sign that said 50mph. St. Michael’s disappeared, the summer warmth gone. It was fall again. I couldn’t shake my head clear. I was possessed by memories that kept me from moving forward with my life. I was stuck in this neutral in between, far away enough from the past to want to move on, but hurting so much I couldn’t accept my future.

I sighed—told myself, “Concentrate on driving.” Think: wheels on pavement. Further down the road I saw two lanterns floating, just headlights on the highway. A sudden movement tore my eyes from the headlights; a brown deer hurdled across the line between the grass and the pavement—that white line screaming danger. The headlights were close now, too close, and the headlights became a whole car that clipped the hind leg of the deer. I slowed fast enough to watch the deer run from its own injury across the road to the other side. The car had never slowed. Speed contained, it drove on.

The deer reached the grass and collapsed there, convulsing. Then, I didn’t understand what had made me so angry at the car that never slowed. I wanted to hit that person hard, and hurt them, make them stand there with me stopped in the middle of the road and watch that deer die. I sat in the driver’s seat of my truck, foot lightly on the break, until the deer stopped moving. The hit hadn’t looked bad, but the deer died anyway.

I parked in the middle of Route 58 and cried, because no one else cared to stop and cry for that deer. The other cars just went around me. I don’t remember how long I stayed there or the rest of the ride home that night. That deer stayed with me, and it consumed my mind.

The next night, I drove to the gas station. I was distracted again, stuck on the past I had been trying so hard to forget. I came around a curve in the road, and I had to slam on the breaks. My tires protested, squealing loudly, but I stopped before I hit the deer standing in the middle of my lane. It stared into my headlights, terrified and unmoving. I stared back and smiled. I thought about the deer I had watched die the night before, and how cruel it had been, but I had stopped, the other car hadn’t. This deer would live, but the other hadn’t. I turned off my headlights, and the deer hesitated, then moved across the street.

I realized then why I had been crying, and at that moment smiling. I was that deer standing frozen in the headlights; I was that deer lying by the roadside on Route 58, and they were me:

The deer on Route 58 had been running, hoping to cross the highway without looking to see what might be coming. That had been me for the past year, trying to run away from the pain in my back, the curve of my spine unbearable, trying to hide in Adam, letting him cradle me so that I wasn’t so afraid to be sick anymore. I wasn’t aware of a future. I was so concentrated on the ‘now’ part of my life at the time, that I hadn’t looked ahead and saw Adam fading out. That car was my health, quickly returning, unknown even to me. Health would cripple me, because I no longer would have that comfort zone. With my health had come change I hadn’t expected. I left Adam after what had happened the night he had pushed me in his basement and I ran as fast as I could away from those happy and unhappy memories. All at once the pain of change had hit me, and I lay dead on the side of Route 58, because I couldn’t move forward with my life like I had to, and there was no going back. The hit was permanent, and I had the choice to either get up and live or die there lost in memories and regret.