A Wounded Deer Leaps Highest

When she went into The Crest at White Bluffs Nursing Home, the crème de la crème of nursing homes, according to all the reviews, there was no lying that she was ever coming home. No one besides Delilah Pollard herself thought that she would recover and live out her life somewhere else. Come home to her husband of 57 years and take the RV to Florida again, or rent the cabin they rented every summer in the Poconos, the cabin she didn’t realize they bought well over 25 years ago. Her mind was riddled with dementia, and she forgot far more than she remembered. Her life was slipping away and all that remained of her was a rapidly deteriorating body and a steadfast husband. 

"Retiring in Style!" the brochure promised above a picture of two ladies wearing sunglasses and monogrammed blue windbreakers, casually driving a golfcart on the green of the sprawling 180 acre course, 67% of which was maintained PGA quality turfgrass. Dying with dignity, it would have said if it was honest. If the "D" word was not implicitly forbidden in everything.  

The Crest at White Bluffs cost twice what Virgin Pines and three times what Willowbrook Hills cost. But Charles Pollard, that steadfast husband, liked the fact that White Bluffs was closer to home and was a much nicer facility than the others. There were more activities, better staff, and the rooms were larger, newer, and more private. Delilah had a room with a view of miles and miles of snowy pines and gentle rolling bluffs where occasionally there would be a deer. If there was one thing in the world that she loved, it was deer, and there had never been one that came into her sight of vision that she did not remark as to how beautiful it was, or how scared it looked, or how healthy or malnourished, or how vigorous or frail, all before she expressed in some emphatic way as to how much she revered them. Nor had there ever been a time that she saw a dead deer strewn across the Pennsylvania highway and not been morose because of it. It was as though every single one affected her. 

“What do you think becomes of them?” she asked Charles in 1959. It was their first year going to that cabin in the Poconos. She often covered her eyes when she saw them, but by then it was too late.  

Charles cleared his throat and straightened up in the driver’s seat. He rubbed his clean-shaven face as though to give it some consideration. He looked over at his young, beautiful wife whose head was leaning against the passenger-side window as though her neck was broken, slouched, and swaddled in melancholy. There was a silver flask between her legs that belonged to her father who died in The War. She didn’t remember him. She only remembered feeling his kindness when she was an infant.

“I don’t know, Del,” Charles replied simply. He hadn’t anything shrewd to offer.

She huffed in dissatisfaction and took another sip and rested her head back on the window glass. Charles hoped they would not see anymore dead deer, but, in a few miles, there was another and yet another until it seemed as though dead deer were Pennsylvania’s unofficial mile markers. With each one, her mood worsened, and she could not put it out of her mind, nor could she drown herself, or the feeling, with successive swigs of vodka. 

But the fact that it depressed her, or that she even thought of those deer at all, made Charles believe that she was a beautiful and innocent person in her soul, despite the imprudence of her behavior. And in such times, Charles wished he was more of a scholarly man so that he could respond in some erudite way with a pensive and abstract but wholly cheerful prophecy of Deer Heaven. To have the ability to paint pleasurable pictures with imagined words that he did not stow in any sort of well, thus, not being equipped to sow in conversation. Not like the professor who had written her all those letters, the thought of whom made Charles feel ill and less whole, but who he admonished the revival of in his mind until he faded once more and was relegated to only a creased corner in a shelved book once read and not worth reading again. A nostalgic dried flower of some sort that fell out of the binding whose pedals crumpled on the pinewood. 

“Why don’t you get some sleep, Del. We have a ways to drive, yet.”

She traded the window for his lap and nestled into him as though he were her burrow. And he petted her head the way he always did before the innocence of it was corrupted by her incessant licentiousness. She wouldn’t have survived an accident in that position, he worried. She didn’t ever wear a seatbelt. When her head wasn’t dutifully in his lap, her feet were on the dashboard or out the window. She didn’t want to survive an accident, she had confessed to him once. She said she wanted to see her daddy in such a pitiable way he could hardly argue the point of her safety without seeming brutish. Despite her age, she often seemed like she was a child, stunted in some lost year, which made her acts all the more depraved. Her dad, as mentioned, left when she was 5 and didn’t come back, swallowed up by The War.

But those days were old. Pages in another book lost and forgotten by everyone in the world besides their humble co-author, Charles Pollard, who now settled in with his wife in her luxurious room at White Bluffs and watched the snow fall from outside her picture window. Miles of humped earth and hidden golf course were now snow-covered picturesque hills, converted for the winter. And in a matter of minutes, there was one deer and then two more in their sight, and Delilah’s doe-like watery-brown eyes lit up so that they looked as they once did, always by the fire of that cabin when they escaped the madness of an ever-troubling world. When there was no distraction, no duties or obligation, which is why Charles named their beloved cabin Eden.

“Who are you?” she asked Charles confused.

“I am Charles, dear. I'm your husband.”

She smiled warmly at him, repeating in a soft languid whisper, “Charles.”

He gathered a blanket from the bed, her mother’s afghan, which had been neatly folded. He tucked her in and pushed her chair a little closer to the window so that she would have a better view of the deer.

“Do you love me, Charles?”

“I have always loved you, Delilah.”

She smiled. “Did we have a happy life together?”

“We’ve had a wonderful life together. So much so that someone ought to write a book about us. Or better yet, they ought to make a movie. Yes, sure they will. How could they not? The greatest love story ever told.”

“Maybe Cecile B. DeMille will come see us and sign the motion picture rights,” she beamed. There was a wondrous luster in her eyes.

“I’m sure of it.”

“Olivia De Havilland can play me. And Burt Lancaster can play you.”

Charles chuckled as he made coffee with the Keurig. Another advantage of White Bluffs – a Keurig and an infinite supply of K-cups came with the room. He handed her a mug with a scene from Ft. Lauderdale painted on the side, and she wrapped her cold hands around the enamel beach and pink flamingo and smiled watching him go back and make his own. She always came first and there wasn't a door he hadn’t opened for her. Or a time when she came into the room that he didn’t stand to greet her as though she were the Queen herself. He had spent years spreading layers and layers of kindness and flattery and here, at the end, it seemed to resonate.  

Charles came back to his chair and sat down, cupping a mug that read, “I love New York. ” Love expressed in the phonics of a red apple. “I think we should call up Vivien Leigh to play you, Del. Olivia De Havilland is too humdrum."

“That hussy?”

“Be kind, dear.”

“You’re right. I suppose I should be more sympathetic. Ms. Leigh is afflicted, isn’t she? A wounded deer shot full of arrows. Yes. Ms. Leigh will do finely. But do you suppose she would want the part?”

"It's an Academy Award winning role, dear. If ever this place does an old-timer’s production of Gone with the Wind, you're a shoo-in for Scarlett.”

“You’ve always been a charming man of flattery, Laurence.”

“Charles, love. And I only speak the truth. When we got married, you looked almost identical to her as she appeared in that movie, so much so that we did your hair like hers and bought you a scarlet-coored wedding dress. Like the one she wore in the final scene. You were ravishing. In fact, we named our daughter Scarlett because we both loved that movie so damn much.”

It was no exaggeration. The resemblance in her twenties to thirties was so uncanny that everyone she ever met usually greeted her by quoting their favorite line from the movie, or just by calling her Scarlett, or Ms. O'Hara. The only difference was their eyes. Delilah had Audrey Hepburn eyes. It got to the point of annoyance at times, but it was flattering, nonetheless. And there are far worse things in this world than flattery being dropped upon you. Napalm for instance. 

“Scarlett,” Delilah repeated. “I will not be in any such production! That is, unless you are my Rhett, and we can write our own ending. I never liked the finish.”

“I'm no Rhett Butler, my dear. And endings sadly do write themselves."

“But you are,” she contested. “You have it in you. You are my Rhett Butler!"

"No, dear. I've always gave a damn. Wouldn't you prefer that I was your flaxen-haired Ashley Wilkes?

"Ashley!" she balked. "I never understood why that ninny went on and on about him. What are our children’s names?”

“Theodore and Scarlett.”

“Theodore and Scarlett," she whispered nearly inaudibly. "Those are fine names."

It was clear to Charles that she did not recall them, and their names hung up and lingered there in the mist. When she did not recall something, he subtly reminded her if he felt there was any hope to retrieve it, or else he moved on. And although it is an inadequate metaphor, for the contradiction it poses to his tenderness, he engaged her as one would an opponent in a boxing match. Pawing and then striking only when the punch promised to land. Jabbing, jabbing, covering, and countering. Such was his approach with her since her diagnosis and no one else had as much luck with her as he. But in truth, no one else came but he. Everyone else she ever knew were ghosts, either by death or by the choice of indifference, however, equally absent.

“Here. Have a look.” He pulled a photobook off a shelf he had made to help her remember. That was in addition to the 100 framed pictures that hung on the walls of her room which he had spent weeks printing off in Walgreens. He once brought a box of tacks and a hammer, but a nurse caught him when he started hammering, so he went back to Walgreens and bought 100 sticky strips to hang those pictures. 

He opened the book to their wedding photographs. She held the book in her trembling hands and smiled. Tears came to her eyes, held there for a moment, then fell, which she wiped away from the plastic overlay. It made him smile because she felt something looking at the picture. She recognized him and her and although the memory might have been gone, the picture evoked emotion. It was only when she looked at something absently and numbly, did he feel sullen.

“You were so handsome,” she smiled looking over at Charles who was sipping his coffee in the seat next to hers.

“Oh, I'm still handsome,” he boasted, jokingly.

“You are,” she agreed.

“And you are still as beautiful as you were then, Del.”

She chuckled. "You always know how to make a girl feel special, you silver-tongued devil.”

Delilah flipped through the pages of the book. She looked over the faces of children and Christmas trees and Thanksgiving turkeys and Halloweens and vacations to beaches and The Grand Canyon. There were cruises and weddings and birthdays and baseball games and graduations. And in every photograph, there she was. A little older than the last. Smiling. Standing next to someone she doesn’t know anymore. But the faint glimmer of memory sparked and appeared like a spliced still frame in the film that had become of their life which played in an old theatre, with red-velvet seat cushions and a cathedral ceiling and only the two of them sitting centermost inside, lulled by the tu-pocketa tu-pocketa tu-pocketa tu-pocketa of the film reel.

“I know these people,” she declared. Her eyes poured over them, squinting in faint recognition. Her wistful words wondering from her lips so peacefully and carelessly on parade. “All these beautiful people. I know every one of them. Don’t I?”

“Yes, you do. They are our family. These are our memories. Our life in pictures. Printed memories. How’s your coffee?”

“Just as I like it. You’re a very sweet man." She paused for a moment. "What’s your name? Do you work here?"

“My name’s Charles, but you liked to call me Charlie. And I’m your husband.”

“Charlie,” she repeated, wearily again in the mist. It was kismet that a doe ran close to the window just then and found what Charles had set out for her. A feeder posted on a shepherd’s hook. He had bought it at a local Feed and Seed and the man at the register asked him how hunting was going, and Charles explained in as few words as possible that he was not a hunter and the feeder wasn’t to attract the animal to kill it by simply replying, “It’s not,” before he paid and left abruptly without another word. His wife loved deer so much it seemed abhorrent and unimaginable to kill them. 

For all the dead deer she had seen on the way to the Poconos, for all in life that had distressed her, there he was, hours earlier, an 80-year-old man setting that iron shepherd’s hook outside her window in the hard December ground and attaching the feeder and filling it with peanut butter, honey, corn, and peanuts, all while Delilah danced in water aerobics, so not to spoil the surprise. And here now, her lovely visage was his sole reward for his hard labor, for all labor is hard when you are 80. But how truly he needed nothing other than this moment and how he wished he had a camera (forgetting in his old age that his phone was a camera), so to preserve the look upon her face, and so that time might not ever rob him of this moment as it had her of so many of hers.

He wasn’t always the cheerful old man he made himself out to be with her, but he was always ceaselessly optimistic. There were moments when he was bitter and scared and deeply saddened over the inevitable loss that was already stealing pieces of their life. Surer than deer would find that feeder, death would find them and though declared religious, there still were crumbs of doubt as to what was to come. He could no more imagine a Christian Heaven as he could a Deer Heaven. The doctors had all spoken bluntly, and the gravity of her condition was not lost by him drowning on delusions of either hope or denial. Her memories would be lost and then she would forget how to use her arms and legs, how to eat, and how to speak. Then she would forget how to breathe, and her heart, how to beat. There was no cure and there was no patient in the world who had recovered. No experimental drugs to rely upon. No transplant to hope for.

She looked at that feeding doe as a child looks at the glowing candles of her birthday cake. She stared and was frozen there for such a long moment it concerned Charles. She was never more innocent than then, bar the day she was born. Then, satisfied by the deer, she looked at Charles and grinned, ever-wider, and told him that he was a fantastic husband. Not because of the feeder, or the luxurious room, but because he loved her so much they endured. He cared enough to recall that which mattered, and to forget that which didn't. 

It nearly choked him up, but he held it back and nodded his gray head and assured her that she was a wonderful wife. Snow fell. Fat wet flakes that looked as fluffy and full as marshmallows or as fleecy as tufts of wool. As though somewhere in Heaven, herds of sheep were being sheered or naughty children were tossing marshmallows from a picnic table. The doe ate what she wanted and meandered off into the night and Charles put on It’s a Wonderful Life, their yearly Christmas tradition. Another perk of White Bluffs – a DVD player and a 55-inch plasma flat screen TV in every room. They watched it every year as they decorated the tree, and this year would be no different.

"Buffalo gals won’t you come out tonight, come out tonight, come out tonight?" she sang looking out the window. 

Moments later, there was a knock on the door and Charles excused himself to answer it. Delilah could hear him muttering at the door. 

“Charlie, who is it?” she called from the window.

Charles looked back over his shoulder at Delilah and took hold of the tree and wrestled it in through the door to a tree-stand full of lukewarm sugar water. 

He smiled as he turned to Delilah, conjuring in his head a grand lie which he had mastered the sorcery of over the past half-century. 

“It was Santa Claus. Direct from the North Pole. He brought you this tree and said Merry Christmas, old girl, and that if you’re good, he’ll bring you something nice this year. Anything you want."

She beamed ecstatically as though what life there was in her was glowing hot and radiated through her paper-thin skin. The redolent smell of the pine seemed to invigorate her. All of a sudden she was 6 again and in Macy’s, standing in line to see jolly St. Nick himself, Christmas of 1945. She would ask him for her daddy, and that misty-eyed Santa, who fought in The War as a Navy gunner, gave her a hug and swore that her daddy was in Heaven with Jesus and God waiting for her. She didn't understand.

But she was now, the same girl, all life between stripped away, cleansed. They decorated the tree and she thought for a while that Charles was her father. Memories and people came sporadically with each ornament she hung the way they do to and from bus stops or transfer stations. The way they do in busy office towers and department stores. Then when they settled to watch the movie, she said she had never seen it before, but remarked that she had always wanted to see it. Charles didn’t contest. He pawed, jabbed, and covered once more, preparing to go the whole 15 rounds.

“Well, I’ve seen it. And I assure you, Mrs. Pollard, it is a very wonderful movie.”

"Who was really at the door, Charles?"

"Okay. It wasn't really Santa. It was Door Dasher. A Christmas tree delivery service."

She chuckled. "Your jokes get cornier as we get older. But I love them. I wish I had every one of them written down somewhere."

"Maybe I'll write a book someday," he said. "All about us, and full of my bad jokes."

"Be kind to me, if you do," she replied. 

They sat on the sofa and watched the movie. A bowl of popcorn sitting quietly between them. She fell asleep about the time Potter found the stash of money in Uncle Billy’s newspaper but woke back up in time for George to be declared the richest man in Bedford Falls by his war-hero brother. And she whispered, cuddling up to Charles as though he were again her burrow, that it was her favorite part of the movie, sighing a pensive, “Richest man in Bedford Falls,” as her eyes fluttered shut again.

When the movie was over, he sat with her for a while. She was again sound asleep. He liked to hear the sound of her breath. When they lived together, he liked to touch her as they slept. He would reach over and put his hand on her as though to assure himself that she was there, or to assure her that he was, and as a promise that he was never going anywhere. And his hand brought her comfort, as her body under it brought him peace. He then carried her frail body to bed and tucked her in. Her head comfortable in the most luxurious pillow he could buy her, and her body warm under the quilt he bought for her when the one that came with the room just wouldn’t do. It didn't keep her warm enough. She woke up just then and smiled at him as he tucked her in.

“We had a good life, didn’t we, Charlie?”

“We had the best life,” he replied. “We still do.”

“Why don’t the kids come?” she asked faintly.

“Oh, you know, they're just busy these days. They will come for Christmas, though. You watch. And we'll have a good-old family Christmas again. Like the old days."

 

“I hope they do," she smiled. "Do we have grandkids, Charlie?”

“Yes, dear. 7 grandkids and 9 great grandkids. Can you imagine? I can name them if you like. You know Dasher, and Dancer, Prancer, and Vixen. Comet, and Cupid, and Donner and Blitzen.”

She laughed, getting the joke of his song. He wasn’t sure that she would.

“But do you recall,” he sang on, “the most famous grandkid of all?”

She buried her face and giggled under her quilt like a little girl. Then she popped out like a jack-in-the-box and sang, “Rudolph the rednose grandkid!”

“You got it! Old Rudy! What a swell kid, that one!”

“You’re too much, Charlie! Too good. You’ve always been too good to me.”

“No. But maybe I am good enough. You get some sleep. I’ll be here in the morning.”

“Did we have a happy life, Charlie?”

“Yes. Of course. The best! All those coffee mugs in your cabinet over there. Those are all the places we’ve been. Well, most of them, anyway. Don’t think we got one in Tijuana that time. We got tattoos, though. And arrested.”

“Did we?!” she gasped.

“No,” he smiled. “We didn’t get tattoos. Got arrested, though. You danced on the tables in some tequila bar and kicked someone in the face who made a pass at you and, well, that started some trouble.”

She laughed. “I love when you tell me these things. It’s like I live them again. Was I a good wife to you, Charlie?”

“Of course. You were the best wife a man could have.”

“Was I loyal, Charlie?”

“What a silly question. Yes. Of course! Loyal as a nun. Unless you’re going to tell me something I don’t know. In which case, I’m not a priest. But there is one down the hall though if you want me to go wake him up,” he joked.

 

“No. I was good,” she smiled. “But I sometimes have these awful dreams…”

“They’re just dreams, Delilah. The mind plays tricks. But speaking of which, sweet dreams, my love! I’ll be here for breakfast. Wouldn’t miss it. It’s Christmas Eve tomorrow! We have a full day planned. I’m taking you sled riding. Then we're going to Shanghai us a couple of reindeer.”

Delilah laughed. Distracted once more by her husband’s flightiness and sense of humor which was a cure-all throughout their life. His skillful and opportune sleight-of-hand. He had become very adept in the technique over 57 years of marriage.

“Before you go, tell me again about the time we met Frank Sinatra,” she implored.

“Well, okay. So we were in Vegas, and he was there with Dean and Sammy and Peter Lawford and the whole gang, you know. Don Rickles, too. We were at his show at The Sands, and he picked you out of the crowd when he was singing one of his schmaltzy love songs. He dedicated the song to you. Then as he was signing the song, he ambles out into the crowd, proud as a peacock, and it was like he was Moses and the Red Sea parted for him. He asked you to dance with him. You were in a spotlight, and I was right there next to you in the shadows, but it was like I was a million miles away. And you said, only if my husband can dance, too. Then he laughed and everyone laughed, and you told him to get back up on stage and sing ‘Summer Wind’ because no one came to watch him flop at picking up happily-married women. Don Rickles, Sammy Davis, and Dean were at a table nearby in stitches. They gave you a standing ovation and paid our bill."

Delilah smiled. “That’s life.”

“Yes. That’s our life. You were a wonderful wife, my love. Don't ever think otherwise.”

She grinned, picturing what she could not remember. Painting abstract paintings of events in her mind.

“Good night, dear. We’ll reminisce more tomorrow.”

She shook her head. Beautiful as ever. She never changed in his eye in the least. He left and she slept, happily, humming the words to the song Frank was singing when he tried unsuccessfully to seduce her in the story. "Somethin' stupid," was the song. He told her happy things all the time. He spent the past 9 months visiting her every single day and telling her stories about their life together, some real and some make-believe. She never doubted him, in the least, and she was happy. Truly happy. Anything painful he squashed and replaced with a healthy dose of much happier fiction.

She smiled looking forward to to-morrow, happier and more content than she was ever, much in love with her beloved and loving husband, feeling almost like a newlywed in that euphoric surreality. And that was her last thought. When sometime in the night she forgot how to breathe, and her heart forgot how to beat, and the last of the grip she had on her memory unclenched its grasp. Hypnos and Thanatos wrestled their last brotherly match, the latter the victor for the first time. As a young buck nibbled at the feeder and the snow fell heavier than before, and bells rang and angels got their wings and the furnace blew tu-pockata tu-pocketa tu-pocketa tu-pocketa.  

Charles stood over her the next day. The nurse who found her left her there for him as he had asked her when she called to tell him at 5:30 in the morning. 57 years of marriage there in that bed. He held her hand for a while and went through some of her things. Letters he found that he wrote her, that he forgot he wrote her, and three words she had written in response to their life in a cheap spiral notepad which was beneath her hands and on her chest. Nothing else. Nothing more. 

Theodore and Scarlett, and all the grandchildren and great-grandchildren, were at the funeral. Besides the pastor, only Charles spoke. He talked about how wonderful a woman his wife was when it was just them, and about Eden, their cabin in the Poconos, which he sold to pay for her room at White Bluffs. He knew a person no one else knew. "We all seem to choose to see the bad in people, which is more indicative of who we are than who they are. I didn't do anything extraordinary. I just love the person I promised to love for as long as I shall live. No one is all bad or all good. Not one of us. We are all flawed people, and, despite our flaws, we all deserve love and loyalty. Love is not love if it is not loyal, nor is it contingent upon anything at all. The more we are loved, unconditionally loved, the less flawed we become. In the end, I can say that my wife was flawless. If you could have known her the last few weeks of her life, I think you would have seen her at her very best. I hope she is now with her daddy, who she longed for all her life."

Theodore's son, Gabriel, took his grandfather home from the Italian restaurant where the reception was. It was a wonderful family get-together. It wasn't a far drive for a young kid who got his license only a few months before. He was the only one who could drive that wasn't drinking so it fell upon him by default, despite the snowy roads. He admired his grandfather, though, so the task wasn’t by any means a burden. He always knew him to be a good man who never spoke unkindly of anyone, who never gossiped or complained, and he aspired to be like him because of that and because there was an unrelenting and indomitable kindness to his grandfather that no one else he knew possessed. Yet, he was nervous talking to him, so he said very little. But then his curiosity got the better of him and he couldn't help himself. 

"Can I ask you something grandpa?" Snowflakes plopped on the windshield and Gabriel nervously flipped on the wiper switch which squealed loudly across the glass. “Why did you stay with grandma? I didn't know her that well, but dad says she was not a good person and, well, you are. He said you deserved someone better than her. That she was an alcoholic and cheated on you and was cruel. And is it true that she even shot you?”

"Gabriel, when you love someone, you stay with them and love them. You don’t leave them. Vows aren’t meant to ever be broken. And yes, she shot me. But she didn't aim for my heart and I healed," he grinned. 

"Then why did you stay?"

"Because I love her. In sickness and in health."

"And now that she's gone?"

"She is not gone," Charles said. "She will always be with me."

Gabriel helped his grandfather into his house. It was full of pictures. Framed pictures hung nearly over every square-inch of the walls. That is what everyone got him for Christmas because that is what he loved most. His walls were living walls. Even the bathroom. There were hundreds of pictures of him and Delilah. Of them kissing each other and children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Every memory a person could imagine, when luckily someone had a camera. He sat in his old-red leather recliner and relaxed. Gabriel asked if he wanted him to turn on the television and he said no. He thanked him for the ride and the boy gave him a hug and told him he loved him, vowed to return tomorrow to shovel the walk, and left. 

Charles sat in that leather chair all night, watching the snow fall out the window. Hearing music that wasn't being played on the record player that rested still. Everything was still. Moonlight Serenade. Somethin’ Stupid. Summer Wind. Rhapsody in Blue. Remembering days and nights while he still could. He thought of Delilah and the orange notepad he had found under her folded hands on her chest, as though she put it to her heart. He had it in his pocket and pulled it out. Inside the notebook on the only page that had been disturbed, were only three words which made him wonder immensely if before she passed, she remembered all that he wished she had forgotten. 

"I am sorry," it simply read. That is how she said I love you. 

He certainly hoped she didn't remember, for he wished to bear that burden for her, as he had all of their life. He had saved her dozens of times from suicide, attended all her AA meetings with her, signed the divorce papers when she asked him to and remarried her two years later when she asked him to, and never disrespected her, though she made a habit of disrespecting herself. Now she could rest peacefully. Her struggle was over, yet he continued to love her, as she was. 

Around four in the morning, he was awoken by a car that barrelled down the alley by the house, its muffler rattling tu-pocketa tu-pocketa tu-pocketa tu-pocketa. And just as it passed he spotted a doe outside of his window in the light of a streetlamp, eating from a crabapple tree in the yard, something he had never seen before in their residential neighborhood. He stood up, wrapped himself in her afghan, put on his slippers, and went outside for a better look. 

The deer stood steadfast by that crabapple tree and affixed her eye upon him as he walked up to her. She stood still as he drew closer and then he put his hand upon her face, smiling with tears that nearly froze like crystals in his eyes. The deer didn't move and he could see himself in one of her beautiful large dark eyes. She was no longer wounded. She was no longer full of arrows. When he dropped his hand, she dashed away and disappeared into the cold night. He would never tell anyone about the deer. He kept that for himself and for her, everything always for her.