The trees opened to allow a glimpse of the river before the road snaked down the mountain toward the bridge. I didn't risk a second look, nor did I need to. I knew the river, the Tennessee. It ran through my thoughts just as it ran through the valley ahead. I lived on a bluff overlooking it, but not here. Not yet.

Here the river flowed wide and deep. The bridge lifted for a mile over marshes, past herons and duck blinds, before it climbed to a high arch over the channel. Underneath, barges hauled coal or missiles.

I drove over the bridge, alone and on the home end of a long journey.

For miles my mind had roamed, lulled by highway sounds. Its camera played random scenes narrated by an internal voice. The lemon-green of lily pads atop black water registered on its screen as I ascended the bridge. Deep in reverie, I considered the best angle if I were to photograph —

What?

A blur, a ball? Something.

I snapped to attention. On the road just ahead, in front of my car. A kitten, white with two black spots, eyes open wide, jerking, contorted.

I swerved. Missed it.

Looked in my rear view mirror.

The car behind me straddled it, but did the kitten hit the undercarriage? I couldn't be sure. There was a car behind that car, and then another.

White fur, wide eyes, tiny pointed ears. Then gone.

I didn't brake. There was no place to pull over, not on the bridge, not with four lanes of traffic. No point in going back; it would take too long to cross the river and circle around. Besides, it was already too late, I was sure. I drove on. There was nothing else to do.

How did a kitten get on top of the bridge? Did it rebound off the blue panel truck ahead? Was it bouncing along the pavement like a stone skipping over water? What caused it to twist so unnaturally?

At the first service station past the bridge, I stopped and got out to pump gas. The car behind me, the one that straddled the kitten, pulled up at the next tank.

"Did you see the kitten?" I asked its driver, a middle-aged man in a brown knit shirt who walked with a limp. He saw it; I knew he did. He had deliberately straddled it. I didn't wait for an answer. "Where did it come from?"

"Some car, somebody up ahead tossed it out the window, trying to drown it in the river," the man said. "But it hit the railing and bounced onto the road." He unscrewed his gas cap and inserted the hose.

"Did you see it happen?" I asked.

"No, just a guess."

He appeared to look for the car, the one he hadn't seen, among those at the service station.

The man's guess was as good as any. It fit. It would explain why the kitten appeared to drop out of nowhere. Its back, or neck, or both, may have been broken, which would account for its unnatural contortions.

I watched the gallons tick by on the pump, then gazed at my car.

The car could stand a wax job. Tomorrow, maybe. Easy as drowning a sack of kittens. Where had I heard that expression? Did people really drown kittens they didn't want?

I studied all the people pumping gas. A big-bellied man in a shiny Ford pickup. A young woman with a pony tail, an unlit cigarette poised on her lip. A red-headed man with tattoos on his arms. He had a child's seat in his car.

Had one of these people thrown a kitten out a car window? Let it bump from concrete to pavement to metal until some tire crushed its tiny bones and the next one smeared it into oblivion?

I scowled at them. Even if they weren't guilty, I needed to scowl.

"In retrospect," said the man, "I should have hit it."

"Maybe," I mumbled.

But he didn't hit it. He couldn't. His reaction was to save it, the same as mine.

Would a quick death have been kinder?

It was a kitten. A little death.

Did it matter?

Miles to go, I reminded myself. I screwed on the gas cap. Back in the car, I headed home.

The sounds of the road. The hum of the engine. The camera in my head played the scene over and over: white fur with two black spots, eyes open wide, jerking...

Jennie Helderman bounces from fiction to nonfiction and 80,000 words to 800. Her first flash fiction earned a Pushcart nomination and led to a full-length narrative nonfiction manuscript now in search of a publisher. Helderman is an Alabama native, recently transplanted to Atlanta, and missing morning coffee on the banks of the Tennessee.