Venison Wild

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It was a dark wet shiny night. I lay on a mattress in the back of a stolen van, a cold wind seeping in and annoying me from the loose back doors tied close with string. In the front seat driving was Lee Laws, a nineteen year old wiry blond crook, and in the double spread passenger seat besides him was first Paul K, and to his left, Alan. All three boys were in their late teens or early twenties, and all three were repeat criminal offenders. I was too, only I was much younger and my crimes much less serious. There was barely a week passed where one of us wasn't up in court, and for the two years I'd known Lee he had spent over half that time in Feltham Young Offenders Institute. In the back of the van, partitioned off from the others by a metal grille with square holes just large enough for the last inch of a joint to be fed through, I lay down smoking and looking past the ends of my feet at the motorway lights as they filed by in relentless and uniform fashion. I was fifteen and we was heading out of London, into the black of the country, to rob a house which Lee had already cased and said was safe and easy.

After getting bored watching the lights and the purple sky I closed my eyes and listened to the stories of the older boys. They talked about girls, and crimes and upcoming court appearances and arrests and how they'd replied “No reply” to three hours of intensive police questioning, no matter how heavy or mean it got. Lee Laws was especially shrewd in that way, or so his stories made him out to be, though others said he was “the biggest squealer in West London” and that being caught with him was like being caught red-handed-bang-to-rights. I didn't know what the truth was, but I know Lee Laws looked and talked the part, and I know I had visited him in prison that summer and had sat there as his girlfriend kissed a sixteenth of hash into mouth. I also know it was him who'd spun into the estate two weeks ago in this white van with all the wires under the steering wheel ripped loose and twisted back together. The truth on nights like these doesn't really matter. Stories float in and are as true and as real as the places they carry you away to. Sometimes, when the van quietened down, I'd raise myself from the mattress and on my knees make my way over towards the front of the van. From behind the partition I'd stare out at the rain and watch the windscreen wipers at work. At other times I'd focus on the motorway, miles and miles of dotted lights with black fields to either side, stretching off across wherever. Occasionally we'd pass another car or see one whipping through the wet in the opposite direction, but mostly on this black wet night it was just us, driving out of town in a stolen Sherpa van and telling stories as we hoovered up the road. In a way I wished we had no destination, that we could just drive – drive and never stop and the sun would never rise again.

“Right boys, now listen up,” said Lee, with a good inch of a joint poking out his mouth. “When we get there don't be going all fucking doolally and grabbing just any old thing. Most the antiques are pure shite, reproductions, and worth fuck all. What we want is the silver, the two carved bone ornaments in the hall, and the painting above the old fireplace. Any jewellery, money, cameras, small things like that, take 'em. But remember, leave the pots and the vases alone.”

Alan and Paul nodded away to Lee's instructions. I laid on the mattress in the back, more than blissfully stoned, smiling and thinking about taking the pots and vases anyway – struggling out into the night with a huge fake Ming vase that was no good to anyone. I started laughing out loud at this mad world of thoughts that was playing in my head.

“Oi!!! Shit for brains, r'ya listening?!” Lee shouted, darting a roach of the joint at me. “No fucking around, OK, or it'll be ya first an' last time out wiv us. Got it?”

Sucking the last bit of death out of the roach and holding the smoke, I nodded. Then I exhaled and the van was quiet and Lee and the others were intent on the road, and I wondered if the conversation had actually occurred or not.

By now we had been driving for maybe ninety minutes, maybe longer. The City was an unimaginable length of distance behind us. In my stoned mind I imagined it as resembling something like Bethlehem, only without a saviour. Even the big green reflector direction boards were not out this far, and the lighting on the motorway had changed too – was duller, darker, creepy – a row of thinly dispersed twin lamps down the central divide. Sometimes a little square of light would glare out in the black of the fields, a lone house or cottage and nothing else.

For a moment the stories and talking had ended, and the joints had stopped circling. We were all heavily stoned, sat or lain out in the hash-smoke filled van, withdrawn into our own individual existences. In moments like that the only thing we all had in common was the shiny wet road ahead. In the back of the van I now concentrated on the sound and the feel of the wheels, understanding worlds of different stuff from even the most subtle changes. It wasn't long after that that I heard a dislocated noise beneath the van, felt us slow and drift to the left, and made out the night time click-clicking of the van's indicator. It made a part of me feel sad, forlorn – I could have willingly lain in the back forever. I felt the van turn and all my insides and brain seemed to turn with it. What light there had once been from outside was suddenly quenched and the road underneath was slippery, bumpy and uneven. Trees and bushes scraped and beat on the sides of the van, and for the first time I became aware of the rain pelting down on the roof. I got to my knees and took myself to the partition, looking out the window from over Paul's shoulder. From what I could make out we was on a well travelled country lane, that may or may not have been an official route. Whatever, it had surely been cut out by smaller cars as the van had a hard time passing through and the added weight caused our wheels to sink and spin and go nowhere every now and again. The only light now was from our left headlight. We'd knocked the other one out hurtling over speed bumps in the city. The van dipped and jerked and bumped and made awful dying sounds. The few tools we had in the back jumped up and crashed back down on the metal floor. We all peered out, looking for something to show up ahead.

It was the sound of gravel under tread that initially told us we were approaching some place. At first little spurts of it and then a constant scrunching. Pestle and mortar. Up ahead, picked out by our headlight, the road widened and a few black shapes came into view. The place smelled. It wasn't unpleasant, just different, like a hamster's cage or rabbit hutch or muesli. It was a farm. The van crunched into the opening and turned right, and there, as if it had just materialized from nowhere, stood a house – perfectly still and black and empty. Lee slowed the van down, turned it around so as the back doors were facing the house and then stopped. With the engine still running he just sat there with a huge thin grin scarred across his face. I started to say something but my voice seemed so loud in the cut of night. Lee shussed me up with a raised hand and a pained expression, as if even though there was nobody around they still might hear. That's what living in the city does to you. It's a kind of paranoia. After that we all spoke in whispers, and tried to act as silent as the night.

In the front, with the cabin light on, Lee and Paul slipped into black gloves. Lee gave a quizzical look across to Alan and held his hands up and wiggled his fingers. Alan shook his head. Lee scowled, before screwing his face up in suppressed laughter at Alan's amateurish mistake. He turned my way.

“Give Alan your gloves,” he demanded.
“What? No, they're mine. I need'em. The police have my prints!”
“Give 'em over ya plum! You're not coming in with us. I want you here.. keeping dog. And if you hear so much as a ghost's fart you're to hit the fucking horn, OK.”
“But You said I could come in with you!”
“Next time. Give Alan your gloves. While we're gone get the doors open and skin up a zoobie... but don't cane it!.”

Begrudgingly I fed my gloves through the grate to Alan. He yanked them from me and was soon spreading and wriggling his thick fingers in them to get the right fit. “Perfect! Just a right good perfect fit!” he said, knowing it'd annoy the shit outta me, as if my gloves fitted him better than they fitted me. I didn't really care. My heart was beating furiously thinking of entering a strangers house and taking things. I'd really only wanted to go in so as I wouldn't be left outside alone. Finally it was the joint thing which won me over – the chance of having first dibs on one I had rolled and top-loaded myself. It was a novelty too novel to turn down. The only other time I was anything other than smoking cardboard was on those rare occasions I had a note and bought a ten pound draw myself.

 Down under the steering wheel Lee flashed a torch, turned it off and handed it to Paul. Paul took it and then did the same. Then Lee took out a second torch, flashed that one too, turned it off; and kept it for himself.

“Ok,” he said, very seriously, “we can get in round the back. All we have to do is put a small pane of glass through. There's no alarm and no dogs. Let's go.”  The boys filed out. I unstrung the back doors; went around the front and sat in the driver's seat.
“Lee,” I whispered “Can you turn the van around so as I can see better?”
“No. Never. Just incase we need to make a quick getaway.”
“Oh, Ok,” I said. Then: “Lee?”
“What?”
“Where's the hash?”

A huge grin spread out across his face. “Don't miss a fucking trick this one,” he said, taking his kit out his back pocket and handing it me. “Hash is behind the rizlas... and don't take the fucking piss!”

I took the Gary's kit, fondling the Rizlas to make sure the hash was really there. It was. I closed the door and watched in the wing mirror as the boys headed across the gravel courtyard, made their way to the right of the house and then disappeared. I sat in silence for a moment, the whole of Britain black and wet and deadly silent around me. How I'd ever see anyone in this until it was too late I didn't know, but I was dog and so dog I was.

I was sitting in the front seat, the small cabin light on, crumbling a good pinch of hash into the head of a joint that was sitting up on the dash when I heard the sound of breaking glass. I stopped what I was doing and squinted hard into the wing mirror. Another little pop rang out and a thin piece of glass shattered on the ground and tinkled like one of those Chinese wind chimes. I continued with my joint, one eye on the wing mirror. That's when I saw it, to my horror, a light flitting about high up in one of the attic windows. At first I wondered if it was the boys already in the house and up top, but no, it was too quick. The last shard of falling glass had barely stopped singing. I jumped out the van and sprinted off in pursuit of my friends. When I arrived around the back Lee was sidled right up tight against the door with a strained look on his face, his hand the other side trying desperately to locate the door latch to release it.

“There's someone inside,” I hissed, “There's a light upstairs!”
“Fuck off , Shane,” said Paul, who'd never really liked me, “you're just shitting it!”
“I'm telling yas there's someone inside! Lee, there's someone up in the fucking attic.”

Lee withdrew his arm out the door. “Where?” he asked/whispered. I led the way.

Back around the front of the house I pointed up to the window where the light had come from. Of course, now it was black and as indifferent as any other. I sensed someone looking down at us.

“Lee, I swear there was a fucking light. I din't imagine it!”

Lee stood looking up, figuring whether to take me seriously or not. He seemed to have pretty good information that the house would be empty but something was niggling him. While we were looking up at the window a very feint light then showed itself, but this time coming from the middle windows. It originated from somewhere deep in the thick of the house. This time we all saw it and went sprinting for the van. As we got in I warned Lee and Paul to be careful as my joint was sitting unrolled up on the dash. Then I regretted top-loading it. With the boys back it'd be roach supper for me again.

Lee started up the van and put his foot down. Desperate to get up some speed he kinda pushed and urged the van forward like he was giddying on a horse. Then we were up and running, skidding back through the soft wet path, me holding the doors closed as there'd been no moment to slam and tie them shut. I watched Alan take my half prepared joint and twist and screw it into a cigarette, in that clumsy brutal fashion he had. Secretly I still harboured small hopes that he'd hand it back for me to spark up, but he didn't. He lit it himself, took five or six huge holding drags and then passed it on to Paul. All the while Lee was speeding in the wet, through black roads that led to god knows where. I sat there in the back, waiting for the joint to be tossed my way, my heart pounding and thinking of blow-outs and 100ft drops into blackness.

* * *

It seemed like an eternity that we had been in the black, driving around dangerous country drops. The joint had left me completely wrecked. I was back laying on the mattress my mind chasing a million different inter-connected thoughts which I could visualize in my head. At one moment I even imagined that I was in my bedroom and it was somehow being driven around Britain. Every now and again I'd hear Lee droning on about joining a different motorway home as the police may be waiting for us along the common route. He kept saying that, over and over. I gave a look up and out the wind screen. God it was really black out there. Visibility was reduced to maybe a metre ahead by the power of one fading headlight. It felt like a film, or a video game. Everyone felt like that, I think. No one was talking. We were all staring straight ahead, tuned into the moment, focussed on the cosy light we illuminated in the dark, all in the zone, hypnotized by the road ahead as we drove on an endless spot.

I saw as little as anyone else, though being in the back I felt and heard it more. Lee had suddenly shot up straight in his seat with his foot hard pressed on the brake. His arms were out straight, gripping the steering wheel and fighting desperately to keep control of the van. Something big bounced of the driver's side and made a god-awful sound doing so. As it had happened I was hurled back on my arse on the mattress. The van skidded, trying to take a grip in the wet. And then it stopped, .the pit-patta of rain on the roof and steam converging from all sides.

“What da Jesus!” screamed Alan. “We fucking hit something... we' hit something!”
“What was it?”asked Lee. “Did anyone see it?” We shook our heads collectively.

I scuttled over to the back of the van, pushed the doors open a foot and peered out. Nothing, just darkness, the smell of wet bark and exhaust fumes.

“Maybe it was an animal,” Alan said.
“What kinda animal?” said Paul, “This is England! D'ya think it was a six foot badger?”
“Ya never know what lives out here, boy-yo. Back home there's an all manner of unknown tings, sure... live out in da forest at night which no-one dares know about.”
“Maybe it was a scarecrow,” I said, seriously.
“A fucking Scarecrow, Pffff!!!! Fuck off back to LaLa land, Shane. A scarecrow!”

That's when Lee turned an unhealthy shade of grey, the colour suddenly drained from his face. “But you know what, yeah,“ he said, ominously, “I think he's almost right. Only I don't think it was a scarecrow but a man.”
“A man? Who would be out here? Walking the rain, going nowhere?” asked Paul.
“A tramp. A local,” I said. “There must be some people who live around here and these carrot-crunchers love walking around in the splodge, kinda like watering themselves.”

Paul turned round and darted something vicious at me. It wasn't a joint roach, but a cigarette filter or something. It meant shut it! It was the peak of nerves before tension, before the van fell deadly silent for a moment. Then Lee started to speak. His face was rigid with shock, cut out against the black backdrop of the window with the windscreen wipers ever so mechanically squeaking away. When he'd finished what he had to say he was looking at us in turn, as if this was a night where our lives would change.

“I think we've killed someone,” he'd said, all trance like, “I saw the head. An eye. It took a second out to look at me like one of those weird flashed messages they're not allowed to advertise with. I really think we've killed someone.”

We all sat staring back into Lee's ghostly and handsome chiselled face of fear, the hash buzz prickling through our eyes and skin. Lee's eyes were even wider, the pupils huge and agitated and full of night tales. Swept along in the moment we were all thinking the same thing: even if it was an accident, we were in a stolen van, with one light, not a driving licence between us, we were all stoned and we all had repeat criminal offences behind us and more pending. Then there was the house we'd attempted to burgle. God, we'd be fried, even taking into account it was only a carrot cruncher we rammed down. It was Alan who broke the silence, a calming pragmatic Irish voice:

“We're gonna hafta ged'out an take a look, boys. It'll do us not a bit of fecking good sitting here, sure, imaging what we've done and scaring the bejesus outta us. And if it is a man, maybe he's not dead? Maybe we can help?”
Lee shook his head. “And what if he's not dead? He'll have seen our faces. I think we should just go.”
“We can't just drive away, Man! To do that'd make it ten times as serious. We'd be tried for being evil, man! I'll tell ya d'hat for nuffin.” Now Lee was nodding. Then we were all nodding. Lee chucked Alan a torch. “You lead the way,” he said, “I don't want to see it.”

The three older boys slipped out off the van and into the wet. I opened the backdoors and joined them as they came around the sides. Alan and Paul led the the way, I was a foot behind, and Lee behind me – though not so much as he'd be alone in the dark. We cut a long diagonal line across the road, to where whatever it was would have landed up. Alan shone the light around, showing up thick and inaccessible bush and tree to either side. The road really had no right to be here at all. And then without quite realizing it I was jogging and then pushing on between Alan and Paul who'd now stopped. The light had caught something and had opened up. And there it was, in the road, a head and a large sad eye, the rain running off it's face like tears: we'd hooked ourselves a deer.

*

The animal wasn't dead. Close to it, but not quite. It was just laying there subdued, eyes looking at gathering swamp flies, a slow and drowsy heave and fall of its chest, a composed exhaustion of life. Spilling out from its underside was blood, deep red in the yellow light and running across the road in streams with the rain. There was also blood and mud on the bedraggled fur near its front hoof.. Lee, who had practically melted at the thought of having killed a human now reformed and once more took the lead. He walked in, and without a word knelt down, clenched the deer's nose and mouth and in a loving, minute long embrace, he snuffed the remaining life out of it and then laid its head gently down and remained there like that for a moment with his eyes closed.

“Can't let the poor thing suffer on like that,” he eventually said, “That'd be the same as driving off.” And just when we thought Lee maybe had some kind of deep soft humanity, he added: “Ok, let's get the fucker in van.”

“Wha?” I or one of the others said, maybe all of us.
“The van,” repeated Lee, walking off “I'll back it up. Let's get it inside. I know a South African butcher who'll take this off our hands.”

Shocked, I looked at Paul and Alan. Paul and Alan were looking at the deer. The deer was looking at something no man can ever see.

Lee backed the van up and on rejoining us climbed in the back, stood the mattress up against the side, then hopped down. With Paul's help they dragged the deer around so as it was slumped dead longways with its head towards the exhaust. He and Paul grabbed the top end of the animal and Alan and I took either side of its middle. We tried lifting, but weighed down by death, the deer was having none of it. It sagged and got heavy in all the wrong places making it impossible to lift. Lee said we should lift it by the legs. Somehow that idea seemed too painful and no-one was very keen on doing it. Instead, in a clumsy, awkward fashion we all lifted it's top half into the back of the van and with Lee pulling on it the rest of us heaved and pushed, inching it slowly into the back of the van. When it was finally inside we all slumped down wet and exhausted staring at this thing which we had come across. Alan, Paul and Lee were laughing in amazement, and between heavy breaths talked excitedly about its size and saying how unreal it all was. Alan grabbed an old A-Z off the floor, laid it on his lap, then took out his spliff kit and began skinning up a joint. I watched Lee who was poking a twig in the deer's ear.

*

The laughing had been going on for a while before it dawned on me that the gufawing and snorting concerned me. I turned around, heavily stoned and confused. I could feel a bemused smile across my face, the smile I always got when I was stoned and baffled and fifteen and not sure if anything at all was actually happening. I tried to figure out what the joke was, but I couldn't. All I could decipher for sure was that it concerned me. “What?” I asked, “What???” When they saw my face, my stinging red eyes, they laughed harder.

“Would ya look at the state of that cunt,” said Lee, pointing at me, “he's out his fucking tree... wrecked! D'you think the Deer'll be safe back here with him?”
“Will it me bollix,” said Paul. “You seen the ways he's been eyeing it up! Oi, Sicko, no fucking dodgy business when ya think no one's watching, OK? If your hands start wandering or you try and mount the thing you'll be walking back to London!”
“Yeah Shane, go easy on her she's had a rough night!” was Alan's input. Everyone was cracking up, their laughter echoing in my stoned and cushioned head. That in turn set off my own thoughts and I was then bursting red too and laughing like a madman at the bizarre images which were playing out in my mind. And then I blinked, or breathed, or something and it was suddenly like nothing had ever happened , and I was left wondering had I just started cracking up laughing while the others were talking serious? I stared around at them for a moment, confused, but now they were with grave faces and surely they couldn't have been laughing??? Only they had been... I was sure of it. Then the words hit me. Not what they said, but what they implied... what had started their laughter.

“You must be fucking joking,” I suddenly cried, “I'm not getting in the back with that thing!”
“No?” said Lee, “then I suppose we'll see you back in London in about three days, because you'll be trotting home.”
“I don't give a fuck. I'd prefer to walk!”

Lee looked at me like you would a kid who just won't go to bed. Then his evil eyes gave way and he said I could budge in with Paul and Alan on the way home.

*

I slammed the back doors shut, tied them as tight as I could from the outside and then joined Paul and Alan in the double passenger seat. Naturally I was on the far left, squashed right up against the cold metal door and leaking, draughty window, last in line for the spliff as usual. I didn't mind. I was sitting wasted anyway. They could keep their puff, I just didn't want to lay in the back with a dead deer.

Lee started the van up and pulled off. We sat mostly silent, like we were grieving. Out the radio floated the voice of a weird talkshow host called Caesar The Boogieman. It made the journey seem fantastic and the world kinda sad at the same time. We stared at the blackness out the window, and then at a sign, and then there was a motor way – a huge concrete river that would take us home.

The ride back down the long stretch of motorway was monotonous and sleepy. All that changed was a joint was occasionally passed around and then we'd zone into the road again pondering the universe and imaging atmospheres that didn't exist. Crammed in the front, with the widows closed, the smoke went to my head and made me feel kinda hollow and strange. I didn't know whether to laugh or be petrified, or if reality was a fantastic dream or a hideous nightmare. I was wasted and didn't want to sit on it in silence as it crept up and turned me insane. I started getting lary with my older friends, saying crazy things, stoned things. The boys laughed along, but I don't think they were laughing at what I was saying.

“Skin up, you cunt,” I then said, staring at Paul. I got a slap around the head for that. Everyone laughed.
“I'm second on the zoot!” I demanded, “Don't want no skinny little roach this time!” They all laughed and the joint bypassed me anyway. Sucking on the roach of the joint I'd said I didn't want Lee looked across with red rabbit eyes and said, “What, you given up inhaling!” They all laughed. I had given up inhaling. I was too stoned. But I'd been caught and was embarrassed. I replied: “No, I could smoke the lotta you under the table. I'm not even stoned yet, just mellow!” They all cracked up again. Everything I said was one huge joke.
“Alan, you got any speed?” I suddenly asked. And now the older boys were laughing so hysterically that Lee had to pull the van over so he didn't drive it off the road. Now at a stop they all rolled up in true hysterics, laughing uncontrollably and squealing like pigs. I sat in my chair feeling hot, staring ahead with a childish smirk, feeling immature and out my depth. And then it flushed over me – pulled down like a sheet, my mouth was suddenly as dry as a desert and I thought I was gonna choke. My colour and strength drained like a bath with the plug removed. I was throwing a whitey and needed to be sick. And everyone laughed that little harder still.

After vomiting out the side door I sat there in silence sweating and praying a joint wouldn't be passed my way. Of course one was, a big fattie for me to spark up. I waved it away as my friends knew I would. Lee lit it himself, and with it sticking out his mouth like a parsnip he pulled out and drove on, soon joining the city ring road and looking for the correct exit.

By now the best part of night had fallen. It was still dark but the sky no longer had the depth of colour that it had an hour previous, and way over in the distance there was breaking light. By the time we came off the A road and landed in the city proper the joints had stopped passing and everyone was tired, dreading first light and was anxious to know what we'd do with the deer. Lee repeated that he knew a South African butcher in Hammersmith and that he'd be there now, preparing joints of meat for the day's trade. He said we'd go there, unload the deer, get paid and then get home. It seemed like a bit of a tall story, and I think Alan and Paul were with me in secretly wondering if the animal in the back could even be eaten (let alone sold), but it was worth the chance, and Lee did know some pretty dodgy people. Anyway, if the sale fell through we'd dump the thing and be home in just about the same time anyway.


Inside the city the rain had stopped but the air was still wet. It was almost 6am and now light, but kind of early morning light that is still dark and makes you think of hospital visits and bad things. There was a mist all over town and the street lights were on their last minutes of time. Lone people jittered away at bus-stops and steam poured from the tops of some buildings and drifted on out. Lee rolled up to the lights on Chiswick Highstreet. We sat there real drowsy, looking at the morning which had broke the night. And that's when all hell broke loose.

The Van suddenly started rocking and banging and scratching and thumping away, and making horrendous animal noises. Alan was thrown forward and we cracked skulls. Then what sounded like a team of panel beaters were at work on the sides of the van, but real angry panel beaters, grunting and crying in pain as they hammered out the frustrations and pains of their existence. I turned around, I think we all turned around, and the head of a deer came smashing against the grilled partition, a crazed retarded eye of an animal trapped looking through. The deer must have only been stunned and unconscious and had now come around and was trying it's damnedest to smash its way to freedom. This was its buckaroo for life.

I think our first thoughts were the police. It was 6am in a decent neighbourhood, on the highstreet, and our van was alone at the lights thumping and crashing and emitting horrendous screams that not even the damp in the air could muffle. All shook up and flustered we clambered to get out the van. The deer seemed hellbent on getting through the partition and stamping us all to death. Out in the street Paul reckoned we should just leg it and leave the van, but we didn't as our prints were all over the place, and in its two weeks under Lee's charge had been involved in a plethora of local crimes and robberies. Running away would beat the immediate problem but come 10am, when the police would have had time to apply for arrest and search warrants, we'd be fucked. So we didn't run. For a moment we didn't do anything. Just stood around in a panic as the van rocked and thumped and the back doors bounced to the tune of the trapped beastnside.

Lee rushed back to the driver's side door and searched behind the seat for something. He returned holding a length of lead piping. “Come on,” he said to me, “Come on!!!”

Round the rear of the van he handed me the lead pipe. “Take that,” he said, “and when I open the doors get ready and crack it on the head!”
“What? That thing will be all over me before I've even swung!”
“No it won't! It'll take it a moment to even realize there's an escape. Now quit stalling and get ready to hit the thing or we'll all be fucked!”
Well I couldn't, and I told Lee as much. There's no way I could bash the animals head in. It was maybe the most innocent thing in the world at that moment, and after its struggle didn't deserve that. I didn't have it in me to do. Death in a beast that size is something real and something serious, and when it isn't quick or doesn't work with the first whack it is something horrific and traumatizing. To kill a thing by brain damage is sick and I wasn't going to do it.

“You fucking pansy!” Lee said. “Give me the fucking bar and I'll do it. You open the doors.”
Ok, I could do that. I could open the doors. Secretly I thought Lee or anyone else had no chance of doing what he suggested anyway. As I moved myself in front of the doors Alan arrived alongside Lee weilding a hammer. Horrible thoughts of cracked skulls, shattered bone and animal noises went through my mind. I thought of the deer, and of rodeo ponies and of racehorses rearing up in the stalls, and then I untied the double back doors and in almost the same movement pulled them wide open and got out the way. And in that moment, in the shrill misty morning with London just waking up, there was a moment of sheer unadulterated natural beauty:

The deer burst forth out the van – a leap to freedom and life, a sleek tan flash. It landed in the road, skidded, turned real low to the ground like a motorcycle then came up straight, found its hooves and shot bolt off right down the high-street. Lee hadn't even time to think of swinging the lead pipe in his hands and Alan looked pathetic and weak and the hammer so small and insignificant against this furious and passionate piece of life that had just shot out the van. And we all saw the beauty in that, and in the same moment we knew the deer had more right than just about anything to live, and was glad for it.

In pure amazement we rushed around the van to watch the deer. It galloped across an empty crossroads, through a red light, onto the pavement, back out in the road. running like crazy.

“Fuuuuckiiing hell!!!!” is all anyone could say. Then: “Let's get the fuck outta here!”

And that's what we all wanted, but we couldn't move. We were grounded to the spot, all still staring down the road after the deer as it ran on, zig-zagged through the early morning cars, flared up then ran some more. The lights of the high-street went from amber to green and from green to red and back again, but we didn't budge, just stood there staring. And when finally the deer was out of sight we stared some more, at the calm of the empty road, at the lifting mist, at each other, wondering if it had ever happened at all.