THE DAY OF THE DEER

My momma has always been a quiet person. The only time I’d seen her raise a hand in anger I was ten and came racing from the woods with a bloody nose, yelling at the top of my lungs. Some big boys were stoning a broken winged crow. Momma ran from the garden, passing me as we raced back up the hill.

By the time them boys circled around that poor bird realized Momma was there she’d done snatched one boy by the collar of his shirt and flung him to the side. As she reached for the second boy, those boys must’ve got a good look at Momma’s face. They rabbitted out of there, crashing through the woods in several directions.

Momma stands only an inch taller than my four-foot-eleven and at a hundred-ten, I outweigh her by five pounds. But, that day, there was something in Momma’s face…. I saw it, too. As much as I love her, I felt a shiver run over me.

That evening Daddy kissed Momma on the nose, calling her his lioness. Said she never showed her claws unless something needed protecting.

Grandpa laughed. “She’s the only lioness I’ve ever heard of that drags the critters home and heals them!”

Ever since I can remember, I’ve helped Momma with the critters that wind up at our house. Sometimes, neighbors brought possums and raccoons and squirrels injured by traps, dogs, cats and cars. Other times we found the poor things dragging themselves along ditches or down the center line of a roadway. Grandpa brought Gimp, the mongrel, home. Truckers down at the big truck depot where Grandpa worked had a bettin’ pool on and the money went to the man who ran over the little dog. Grandpa cornered Gimp, threw his jacket over the small dog and grabbed him in his arms. Gimp gave Grandpa a smart bite on the hand, but my grandpa never let go.

Occasionally, even Dad hauled a critter home. The last one was a hawk. The slipstream of the big rig ahead of Dad’s snatched the hawk as it dove for dinner along the road’s shoulder, slamming it to the ground. Momma put on a heavy pair of leather gloves and examined the frightened bird. No broken bones, just a few outraged muscles. Two months later, the four of us drove further out into the country to release Redtail.

It was the last release Dad ever did with us. Two weeks later when the brakes on his rig failed, Dad hit a sharp, West Virginia curve too fast. The state police found him and the wreckage of his rig at the bottom of a ravine.

After Dad died, Grandpa gave Momma his old .38 Smith and Wesson. He said the four inch barrel made it accurate enough to be useful. At the time, I thought Grandpa should’ve known Momma well enough not to do that. Momma doesn’t like guns.

I thought for sure that Grandpa wouldn’t be able to talk her around, but like Dad he can be what Momma calls “mulish”. Maybe that’s why she gave in when for the ten-thousandth time, he insisted she needed to have the gun. “Dag gum it, Natalie, what is the matter with you, girl? Whatever happened that you’re so agin guns?” A shrewd look settled over Grandpa’s whiskery face. “Somethin’ happen back when you was a kid? Somebody you love got kilt with a gun or maybe just bad hurt?”

“My childhood is irrelevant and you know it, Amos. Guns are for killing. I don’t like killing, that’s why I’m a vegetarian, remember?”

“Look, honey, I ain’t gonna be around here forever. You need to be able to protect yourself and Amy. Please, just humor an old man?”

Since then I’ve wondered if Grandpa somehow knew. Eight months after Dad died, Grandpa was building a new pen for Stanley, a wild rabbit with a milky film over both eyes. At the hospital, I heard Dr. Randolph tell Momma that Grandpa was gone before he hit the ground. Massive heart attack.

Grandpa’s pistol gathered dust on the top shelf of Momma’s closet ever since that day. That’s why I never expected Momma to do what she did. But, I’m getting ahead of myself now. Momma’s always reminding me to start at the beginning of things. Soo…..

The day IT happened I’d just turned twelve the weekend before. Looking at my bean pole self, nobody coulda told how old I was. I still wasn’t wearing nothin’ under my shirts. That day I was out back of our older brick house. Calling for Gimp, I grabbed a hammer and the plastic jar of nails. I needed to finish the plywood shed Momma and me had started building.

I’d wanted a horse for the longest time, but grocery store cashiers don’t make much. Besides, we had quite the collection of critters already and Momma said horses were too expensive. She didn’t see how we could stretch our budget that much further. Now, climbing between the salvaged boards of the four-rail horse fence, I slowly edged my way towards the bay filly with the white star on her forehead, trembling on the far side of the small paddock.

A few days before Momma and I had sat up till the eleven o’clock news come on trying to figure out how we could make-do so we could afford the little filly. I volunteered to wear last year’s school clothes since I hadn’t grown much over the summer. Momma suggested we could eat a few more beans and a few less veggie burgers. We knew we had to find a way to do it.

Ever since early spring, Momma had been watching this little filly on old man Hampsen’s place, five miles up the road. The filly’s field bordered the road Momma took to and from her job at Darrelson’s Grocery. By August, the last weeds in the field had been eaten. Momma said she could see the little horse getting thinner than she already was by the day.

The first week of September, school started along with the fall rains. The bony filly soon stood knee deep in muck.

That Friday night, I rode along with Momma when she wheeled her junker Ford into Hampsen’s drive. Though she ordered me to stay in the pickup, I could easily hear Momma’s usually soft voice. It wasn’t like she was shouting; something so strong in her voice carried it across the crisp September air. “You can either sell me that poor little horse or I swear I’ll call the animal welfare people and keep after them till they’re pounding on your door.”

Hampsen pulled a raggedy red bandana from the hip pocket of his dirty overalls. Loudly blowing his big, red nose, he eyed my momma as he stuffed the bandana back into his pocket. “I reckon I could let ‘er go for fifty dollars cash money.”

“Fifty dollars! I’m not goin’ to give you a dime over thirty dollars and I want a halter and lead rope, too. You should be payin’ me to take that poor creature.”

I held my breath. Then, just in case it might help, I crossed my fingers.

“Weelll….” He drawled. With an abrupt swing of his arm, the head of the ax he’d been leaning on thunked into the chopping block. “Ya gonna haul ‘er outta ‘ere on that?” He shoved his bristly chin at our truck.

Momma pulled her wallet out of her back pocket. “My daughter and I will walk her home.” We stalled her in our garage. I hand grazed her on the lawn while we built a pasture fence.

As I ran my hands down her brittle-coated sides, Momma and me had done the right thing. I was still talking to her when I heard them. Squinting towards the brown hill sloping up across the back of the twenty acres Grandpa’d left us, I watched as a slender doe staggered into sight. Even from where I stood, I saw the red stain on her shoulder.  She bounded clumsily away moments before two, orange-hatted, bow hunters lazily trailed after her.

“Momma!” I yelled. As I scrambled towards the house, the back door banged open.

Momma’s feet pounded across the wooden porch floor. “Hey! Get off my land!” Her voice rang across the autumn afternoon.

“That’s our deer.” The heavier hunter shouted back.

“I said to get off my land, now!” The boom of Grandpa’s .38 punctuated her words.

The hunters stopped, staring down the hill at us. They were close enough for me to see the angry flush on the heavy one’s face.

Momma, straddle-legged, faced them, the black pistol aimed in their direction.

“Lissen, lady, back off. I’ve already marked that deer with my arrow.” Arrogance echoed in his words as he turned to continue the slow pursuit.

The gun barked again. The shot kicked up dirt in a bare patch a few feet ahead of the hunters. “Next time it won’t be the ground I shoot.” Momma’s voice didn’t sound nothing like her. The hard edge made my stomach clench up.

The men hesitated a moment longer. The shorter man gestured towards Momma, obviously arguing with the heavier man. Finally, they turned, stepping quickly back the way they’d come.

Momma didn’t waste time watching them leave. She hurried up the hill. Stopping where the hunters had stood, she gazed down a moment then picked up the deer’s path of flight, moving off silently, quickly. It wasn’t too long before I heard the gun boom again, just once.

I waited for Momma by the porch steps when she came down the hill. She caught my eyes then glanced away towards the pens holding the raccoon we’d patched up from an arrowhead infection in his shoulder and the raucous crow whose broken wing had never healed quite right. When Momma looked back at me, her smoky-gray eyes were tear filled. She lowered herself wearily to the steps. “Wasn’t anything else to do. She was so beautiful.”

Then Momma laid the gun on the porch and buried her face in her hands. For the third time in my life, I saw her cry.

The End.

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