A silence followed, filled with nothing but the hum of eighteen wheels on wet macadam. Then the skinny Santa spoke up. "S'pose it's not too much to ask how ya bloodied yourself up like that?"
Matt sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Fight over a girl," he said.
"Same old story," the driver snorted, shaking his head. "Girl comes along on a Friday night, and everybody thinks he's a hero."
"Buddy," Matt said quietly, "you don't know how right you are." And he stared through the window at his reflection and, beyond it, amid a break in the ghostly black pines, the unblinking eyes of a white stag.