Cattle Haul

Cattle Haul is a 2012 short story by Jesmyn Ward. You can read it online here. It begins,

It's easier driving through the country, especially when you doing a cattle haul. Two lanes on one side and two lanes on the other. Switch lanes and pass. At night, like now, the signs sharp and clear. The trees like waves at the side of the road, all black and blue, coming in and going back out like a tide. Ain’t no lights to distract me, to crowd up around me. Just taillights, red lights, like ants, leading me in a line westward.

Part of me want to stop. Part of me want to pull over on the side of the road and turn the rig off and start walking back to where I come from; want to get out the rig and leave it all here in the dark. But I press the gas hard and daydream about flying past the flatlands, speeding to dry, parched Texas, and through the desert to Phoenix to drop these cattle off, but they got weigh stations and state troopers, and cars and rigs like bad potholes: they waiting just to slow you down and fuck you up. I see a deer by the side of the road, two of them, night-feeding by the pines. They don’t even flinch when I pass by.