SHANE LOCKRIDGE

Deer camp broke up at midnight, and Shane Lockridge drove home with a ten-point buck riding shotgun, upright, seatbelted, wearing Shane's Cardinals cap. Most folks take home meat. Shane took home somebody to split the driving.

“For the checkpoint,” he said. There wasn't a damn checkpoint. There was Deputy Hargrove, who stopped him on Highway 5 for doing thirty-one in a fifty-five with his flashers on. That's the speed of a man transporting either dynamite or a covered dish he can't replace.

Shane wore a black tank top in thirty-one-degree weather and a necklace that had belonged to somebody else. God love him, he'd dressed the deer better than himself.

“His name's Gerald. He's seen things.”

“Shane, where the hell is your shirt?”

“Gerald's wearing it.”

Gerald was. Couldn't argue that part. The buck looked ready to help somebody move a couch, except for being dead and full of deer.

Shane's got a little half-smile in the Polaroid. He knows Gerald's still in the truck. He also knows who ain't fixin' to haul that heavy son of a bitch out of there: anybody present.

Nobody did. Gerald sat in impound till Sunday noon, the best-dressed thing in the lot. Shirt, cap, seatbelt. Had his shit together better than most of us.