Cruel Mercy

Cruel Mercy

by Madison Taylor

Our Lady of the Interstate stands alone fully realized in the form of a three-foot statue with her arms spread wide, palms out, and heart open to the field across her highway. She has no congregation; cars rush past her turned back, taking no notice of the effigyAnd yet she prays.

She prays for the hunter in the nearby trees, who startled a deer with the crack of a branch and won’t feed his family tonight. She prays for the deer racing through the field, who tripped on the railing along I-75, and knocked her to the unforgiving asphalt. She prays for the truck driver with no insurance who hit the brakes one second too late and slammed into the fleeing deer.

But most of all, she prays for the tired teenager en route to his graveyard shift at McDonald’s, who took notice of the twitching deer and pulled over to find that it was still breathing.

She prays as the boy grabs the crowbar from his trunk, tears streaming down his freckled face as he delivers his act of cruel mercy without a soul to witness it. No one but the patron saint of the highwayher disembodied head laying on the blacktop, with the blood of the innocent deer running down her marble cheeks.