Saving Bambi

Excerpt

It was late.  Leon and I were still living at the lake then, and hadn’t started facing how it wasn’t the great move we’d expected, and I remember looking out the picture window at a full moon tangled in the Spanish moss in the live oak tree.  Our owl may have been doing his deep-throat thing right then, I don’t recall.   I said, matter of fact, “What can you see, Bambi?  Are you feeling ill?  Do you know where you’re staying?”

She’d taken a bunch of pills—prescription, not street stuff—and she was scared, and didn’t want to go back to whoever she came with.  She said “couldn’t” so I left it at that.  I never did find out who it was.  She was crying and kept spacing out, so I’d say, “Bambi, hoo-ooo, Bambi!  Stay with me, now!”  Leon gave me a head-cock and I waved him to hang on, I’d tell him after.  “Can you see a street sign?” I asked her, and when she said she couldn’t that scared me, because I’ve only been to New York twice in my life, but from what I remember you can see a street sign just about anywhere.