The Miracles of Ordinary Men by Amanda Leduc

sudden blossom of its fear. The Jetta cracked and crumpled and came to a lurching halt. For an instant, only that, the world was silent. Then Chickenhead hissed and Father Jim ran a calming hand through her fur.
    â€œAre you all right?” he said, meaning Sam.
    â€œI’m fine.”
    The hood was crooked and glass from the shattered headlights shone dimly on the road. A broken moan came from in front of the car.
    Then his hands began to tingle, and everything else went out of his head.
    Sam got out and closed the car door. No one had stopped. The road was inky black, glistening with fresh-fallen rain.
    In front of his car, the deer lay dying. It was a young doe, not quite a year old. The eyes that followed Sam were large with terror. The impact had broken the deer’s collarbone— several ribs poked through its torso, the whiteness of bone gleaming stark against dark red flesh. The deer’s rear legs were bent at strange angles, the outermost leg still trapped beneath the car, and its heart pumped furiously beneath a thin layer of skin and muscle, each throb adding to Sam’s own rush of adrenaline and fear.
    He’d watched a student die once, back in his first year of teaching. A fight in the school parking lot — always about drugs in that part of the city — had ended in gunshots. He’d rushed outside in time to see the perpetrator drive away, and had held Steve’s head until the ambulance came, stroking his brow and saying three words over and over.
You’ll be okay. You’ll be okay.
The life had ebbed from the student’s eyes like a thinning swarm of fireflies. Flicker, flicker, and nothing.
    He felt the same now, crouched by the deer. Except that this time his hands tingled with fever and the air around him shone. The wings were a steady pull against his back; were he to look over his shoulder, he felt sure he’d see them glowing. The car door opened and closed. A moment later, Father Jim stood behind him.
    â€œDo you have a knife?” he asked.
    What an odd thing for a priest to say. “No.” He was out of breath, as though he’d run into the deer himself. He thought of Chickenhead. He thought of his mother. He closed his eyes and touched the deer.
    A warm rush of air, and then nothing. When he opened his eyes, the deer was dead.
    â€œI take it,” Father Jim said after the first moment of shock, “that this isn’t quite what happened with your cat.”
    Sam couldn’t speak for a moment. “No.” The deer’s eyes were still open, but the terror was gone, the surface of its eyes glassy and unfocused. It was a mess of blood and flesh and broken bones. It did not — what was it that people always said about death? — it did not look peaceful. It looked
interrupted.
It looked terrible.
    Sam stood and marched into the trees. The ground beneath his feet was spongy with moss and rotting leaves. The trees blocked much of the daylight, but the wings shone milky white, showing him all of the roots and debris on the ground. He walked until the sound of traffic was muffled almost completely, and then he stopped, and put a hand against the nearest tree. His hands were cold now, the tingling gone from his fingers. He closed his eyes and saw the deer, mangled and dead. His mother, lying cold in the morgue. And Chickenhead, alive and well, who waited in the car.
    He bent and picked a handful of earth from the ground — mud, rotting leaves, small stones. Then he arced his arm and let fly, and the debris thwacked
against the nearest tree. Again, more stones this time. And again. By the time Father Jim came to stand beside him, minutes or hours later, it was a rhythm, almost a dance. Stoop, scoop, thwack
.
    â€œSomeone stopped,” said the priest. “They’ve called the wildlife authorities, and a tow truck for the car.”
    â€œThe car will be fine.” He threw another handful of dirt. “Is Chickenhead