Deer

It's nearly midnight and there is a full moon. But tonight it shines thinly through the shallow bank of wispy clouds. A pickup truck is parked beside the gravel driveway in the grassy shoulder that gives way to the barren plowed field. Two figures are hunched in its headlights, black silhouettes in the dim light. Neither one speaks, there are far too many private thoughts that would be shattered if the spell of silence was broken.

The task at hand lies between them, a pale still form lying on the ground, warm yet as though life had not been wrenched suddenly away in less time ago than it takes a clock's hand to sweep fully around. Mortality is pondered, at least by one of the figures, and a soft sigh is caught up by the wind and spread gently over the field. In the darkness, one pair of eyes cloud with hot, stinging tears, another pair cloud with death's unseeing veil, and the third watch carefully as the knife violates the buck's soft belly.

The air is suddenly filled with the heavy tang of coppery blood. This is it then. This is the moment when there can no longer be any wishes that it was all a mistake, or a dream, that the beautiful creature will lunge upwards despite its grotesquely twisted legs to run free into the deep woods. This is the time when the irony hits, and the overwhelming sadness that this once regal buck survived the hunting season by less than a handful of days, only to be struck and killed on the open road. The hunt may be over, but the hunted still die.

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This page last updated on May 5, 2003