Deer Crossing

Pamela McCarty

She was lying in the grass in the posture of the wounded. What she was actually doing was talking to the motionless deer, eyes parallel, ears to the ground. The deer was hurt beyond repair, leg crushed by an oncoming car as it tried to cross the road. Deer always crossed there as they came down from the forest in the early evening? we found out later that many had been killed there in that very spot. A yellow sign with the black outline of a deer in flight had been posted on that corner: Deer Crossing.

The woman was trying to comfort the deer, covering the wild head with a towel, hoping darkness would block the panic. The deer was still for a while, the woman stroking its head, soft ears under the towel. Its trembling stopped, its splintered leg bled quietly?but its heart still raced?

Where is the sun that was sinking in the west? Where are the green leaves, floating clouds, where is a shelter in the ferns?

The road hissed with cars rushing up and back, the woman spoke in hushed tones to the covered head, the passive, spotted limbs.

The woman had called the police, just as she had done so many times before. They had quickly surmised that the deer's condition was hopeless. They would have to shoot it. They lifted the towel from the creature's face. Flailing, almost bolting, it responded helplessly to light and cold and fear and pain. They grabbed it up and carried it to some bushes out of sight so that no one would see when the bullet shattered the deer's skull. Bang! The deer's eyes were open as the world swirled shut. The officers emerged with rifles raised, forgetting deer's blood on dry ground. Mercy.

I saw the police car parked across from the woman's house. I stopped to find out how the deer had collapsed on the ground. We had driven by that same spot a half an hour earlier and had seen two soft deer in her front yard. They were drawn there by a desire to eat her flowers: azaleas, roses, geraniums. My husband had looked with delight, not jaded by the abundant deer in our yard every day:

"Look at the deer!" he called to me,

and I had watched with him. In that split second as we drove by an image froze in timelessness: the gentle nodding of their heads, the dark brown and tan of their fluffy coats; they were still fawns. I saw them, I can still see them, I will always see them on that corner. Wild creatures of the forest in her cultivated yard at day's end, no sense of danger or knowledge of the bloody lawn.

When we returned from our errands and passed that corner where we had seen them I heard my husband, horrified, cry out

"Oh no! The deer!"?

He had seen the bodies on the ground; his voice was full of heartbreak. The woman and the deer.

"She's talking to the deer," he told me.

We both knew what had happened. But only I went back.

"How did it happen? I asked the woman who came out to meet me, the towel still in her hands.

"The deer ran into the road. A woman and her daughter hit?."

"Did they stop afterward, or did they drive on?" I asked.

"Well, she had her daughter in the car. She had to?" the woman tried to explain.

"Oh, I see" I said, I filled in what she did not say, knew also the panic of the mother for her child. Then I saw the rifles in the police officers' hands, the way they walked with guns?confident, proud?.the deer was dead and its eyes were still open.

"They are going to take the body to the Mission," the woman explained.

"Oh, so they can eat venison." I said. "I understand. That's good." I added. I felt sick, I was going to vomit, I was going to cry, my brain was screaming.

I know that there is some instinctive force that pulls the deer down across the road in that particular spot, some invisible path that doesn't involve automobiles or houses, I don't even think they see the marks of civilization or hear the sounds?.they only know that this is where they cross, tails flickering, ears listening to a primordial voice that leads the way.