Greenjeans Grocery chain. It was half an hour’s drive along the highway in the dark before dawn. He had to be careful of three things: drunks, dozers and deer. Because the traffic was sparse, he could usually spot a drunk weaving from a long way off. Dozers were more problematic. A guy could be driving along with the window open to keep himself awake one minute and be dead asleep the next, swerving into Tom’s lane for a head-on with no reaction time. Deer made him drive slower than his boss would like. Tom had hit a deer once. A doe. It had taken her forty-seven minutes to die and Tom had sat with her the whole time, listening to the hollow bone-whistle of her bleat, nasal and low. He’d never forgotten the sound and didn’t want to hear it again. Bucks were a different story. If you hit a hulker you were just as likely to be the one dead. Antlers through the windshield and you’re slashed to pieces. Impaled if you were unlucky. Even with a doe, in a smaller car, the hooves could be deadly.
