The Legend of Britt Bailey
We were on County Road 45 when we saw the deer—
its body skinless & splain flat across the highway’s shoulder—
& when we saw it, all we could do was scream—
shrill, bloodless like the carcass we kept driving past,
too afraid to turn back, to prove it real.
When I was nine, my mother told me the story
of Britt Bailey, one of the first 300 men
to settle Texas. At his death, he left his wife a short will:
Bury me standing by the south fence.
Beside me, place my dog
& my gun, & at my feet place a whiskey bottle.
My friend, looking back on the dark, says assume the deer
is dead. Assume someone hit it.
I turn down the radio.
Britt’s wife didn’t place the bottle beside him in the casket,
afraid he wouldn’t make it to heaven with it there.
& now he wanders Bailey’s Prairie every night, my mother said,
as bouncing light, searching—
& of course, she’d said nothing of a propensity
for killing & skinning deer, nothing about the need to fear
this segment of highway that bore his name, but still we did.
Still we kept moving, kept wondering if each approaching headlight
was him, that ghostly body ready to pull us inside its violence.
Justin Carter lives and teaches and writes in Denton, TX. His poems appear in The Adroit Journal, Bat City Review, The Journal, Redivider, and Sonora Review. He also writes about sports for various websites.
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