Thursday Night at Lucky’s Liquor Store

When the semi flipped on its side, cows were launched like bowling pins across multiple lanes. Several died inside the truck. Eventually, many uprighted like dice. The driver lay dying, his belly forming pleats on the steering wheel.

After slamming into an ice freezer, a brown-and-white heifer shook its head. Some were caught four miles down the highway, its diminishing lines going somewhere, going nowhere.

The dying driver wished his girlfriend could know the squeeze of his hand. Her stained lips that hung on his bathroom mirror would close the night for him. Maybe if he weren’t dying, she’d reconsider his question.

Outside the hooven beats padded nothing like police or ambulance. Just glacial were the fumes inflating the shattered cab. For three days she had ghosted him, through mud-turned fields, snow sugared on the windshield—even wipers lied: Come back, come back.

Even if she’d occasionally squeaked too much whiskey; never dividing equally his and hers. He was everything she didn’t want for the long ride.

Before the trailer tipped over like cows, before the cows burst through the roof like a birthday cake surprise, he remembered how he’d gifted her open stars, piped buttercream around a silver band.

The brown-and-white appeared on the other side of the shattered glass. How he wished they could see the view from his side—muted lights or setting stars, the gauzy snow lacing his eyes shut.