Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I wish all these people from California would stop moving here.
Rising Fog
Born in a back alley on a Thursday, my nativity predisposed me to drinking; but I can’t say it had anything to do with my driving or my driving while drinking. It’s true, I’m a fetal alcohol syndrome survivor and orphan. Unfortunately, I couldn’t escape the siren call of the mild, non-genetic, intellectual, and hereditary limitations; and that’s how I ended up drunk behind the wheel, side-swiping a buck as it bolted out of the brush on a cold, foggy night making my way west on Tennessee 96 to my home in Franklin.
I open the glovebox. The fifth of bourbon sits half-empty. Instead, I grab the .38. The deer is on the side of the road. It’s lying there twitching, puffing vapor from its bloodied muzzle into the cold, foggy night. My hands shake. I close my eyes and sigh.
Miraculously, I was found by the police along a shadowy alley in downtown Nashville. The officers had stopped for a smoke. My cries rose up out of a cold, steel dumpster with the sewer vapor that puffed its way up from the storm drains. I found out later that I was left there a few hours after birth in a bundle of blankets with a note from my mom: Can’t Keep Him. I forced my foster parents to tell me about it five years ago. I couldn’t allow them to just keep hiding in the same haunted alleys as I had been forced into.
Now, outside again, the night seems colder, darker. The fog swirls around me. I shudder. The deer fidgets, hanging on to what could have been, but it’s too late. I point the .38 at him. The gunshots fade into the fog. He doesn’t move anymore. Its eye is still open, and I shine the flashlight from my phone into it. All I can see in its bulging, blackened pupil is the image of myself. I put my phone in my pocket and grab the deer by its legs. The culvert is dark, narrow. The fog is rising out of it now. With one final heave, the deer slides down the embankment. I walk away and don’t look back. The breeze blows through the darkness.
Back at my truck, I place the pistol in the glovebox and grab the bottle of bourbon. I step back out into the darkness and fling the bottle into the brush. It disappears in the fog. I climb back in the cab, shut the engine off, and lock the doors. Sleep settles over me. In my dreams, I can see the buck in a dumpster. It looks dead, but its eyes are open now, its body strong, renewed. Trembling, it stands up, jumps out. When I wake, the fog has risen. My hands no longer shake. Sighing, I start my truck and drive, leaving the memories of dark and foggy nights like this one buried with the past.
