The Deer

Hard wood burning hot in the stove pushed me sweating into the luscious cold, my two-year-old bundle of red snowsuit bouncing beside me.

Crunchy, green grass sparkling with frost led my son and me to the tall woodpile, this year stacks of oak, where my father faultlessly swung his sharp ax beneath a ceiling of gold, red, and brown swinging leaves. Cold air rushed in circles as he stilled the ax to point a tough, chapped finger to a deer, dead, in the sapling rows. Squinting, I could see its four thin legs jutting straight at the garden fence, its white tail pointing north to the mountain.

My father rumbled away in his rusting 1979 silver Ford pick-up with rainbow stripes. We waved, making our way to the deer, down the rocky trail covered by bright yellow leaves.

On our wooded land I'd watched doe nuzzling the ground for food, white speckled fawns nuzzling doe, and wily, snorting buck nuzzling air for hints of gunpowder. I stood feet from downy, brown bodies twitching, short, wispy tails ticking off flies, delicate eyes blinking deep black, flaring nostrils bursting mist. Heard lost fawns crying in the dark for searching mothers, twin fawns playfully pawing in the sun. Watched year after year, white speckles fade into wisdom and stubby horns grow into tree branch crowns. Admired lofty ears catching sound, moving spindly legs over so-high fences with a single bounce, but I had never seen any deer too close for too long.

Avery’s hand in mine, amid his stream of chatter, we neared the fallen doe. Curiosity fled to a lump in my throat tightening my hand over his, as stillness laid on us, heavy, before passing us to the next moment.

The broken metal arrow pushed so deep in the side of its gut the deer did not spill a single drop of blood. My son moved forward and I choked on the words that would have told him not to go. Focused on the face, he ran to it crouching to chatter with the huge liquid eyes, pressed open, filmy, in a curve of dense lashes. I hoped he wouldn’t see the purple tongue twisted underneath and around its jaw that hung limp against the dirt. When the eyes didn't respond, Avery sought another part of the deer.

In the crook where its long, muscled neck met its thick chest, then down the strong front legs tipped with bitty coal-black cloven hooves, he looked with furrowed brow. The gray hair smooth over its body balanced droplets of frozen sky. I ached to touch it, to feel the slick hair, to run my fingers through the bristling white tufts of its great, black-rimmed ear where inside, soundless raindrops stiffened into ice.

I spoke warm breath, “She is dead.”
Blinking silence.
“Dead?” he said clearly.
“Yes. Dead.”
“Dead?”
Squatting, he stroked a flattened palm, so small, over the glossy gray cheek.

Moving with his courage I stroked the round, flat cheek. “It’s so hard,” is what I said.

The space between empty eyes, I touched, my fingertips sinking into thick, soft hair, to the bone. My eyes alone touched the nose, tough and scaly like the head of a black snake, the narrow mouth exhaling the foul retreat of breath. My little red bundle had trotted off to a near spruce and was huddled in amazement at the green, prickly tree half his size.

Turning again to the deer, I gently pressed my hand into its abdomen close to the hairless triangle of flesh torn by the striking arrow. It gave under my palm. I felt for the knobby legs of the fawn. Nothing moved.

Leading my son from the fledgling trees, past the deer, home, he raised a tiny finger to the long, jagged arrow.
“Hurt.”
“Mmm, yes, hurt.”
We continued.

Underneath a tree aflame with orange leaves where the ground was paved with acorns, the little boy stopped to kneel close to the earth and search. Finding the perfect acorn, he stood, turned, and took sure steps back to the deer. He placed the acorn to its lips, waiting.