From the archives...
One Buck, One Life
Man, I was caught up. Running late, I was obsessed, trapped in busy thinking. I gripped the steering wheel. I need sleep, I miss mountains, thermal shirts, hit the men's section. That's right, I was a mad woman on a driving mission. Cat food, I'm a bad person, paper towels, Pepsi, coffee, what is he doing, what am I doing. On
and on, my brain chattered. Cruising along, taking the turns too fast, I
suddenly got stuck behind a mini van that was going about twenty. So I
tailed Van Man, hoping that he would speed up. Oh yeah, toilet paper and gum.
No luck. Van Man barely rolled along, repeatedly hitting the brakes, turning into a souped-up teeter totter.
I sulked in my seat, tortoise-crawling down the road. Jesus, I said to myself, watching the brake lights blink in front of me. I turned the radio on and off.
Still, the van was barely moving in front of me.
I knew that I was going to be really late.
Then, suddenly, the Van Man came to a full stop in the middle of the road.
Startled,
I hit my brakes, assuming that Van Man was going to jump out of the car
and yell at me for tailing him. Nervous, I waited for the attack. But I
was dead wrong.
Van Man just sat there in the middle of the road.
Frozen meals. Studying
the scene a little closer, I saw a large, ghostly shape move in front
of the van. I squinted; it was a huge, majestic deer -- a king-sized
buck with an enormous set of antlers. He was beautiful, and he wasn't in
a hurry either. Slowly, he made his way across the road, one graceful
step at a time. When he almost reached the other side, he stopped,
looking up. There, he stared at me, gazing through my windshield,
seeming to look me right in the eye. He paused a little, fiercely
staring. Then, ever so calmly, he went on his way into the woods.
This world is so much bigger than me.
And
I realized that I was a trespasser in his home. If it weren't for the
Van Man holding me back, I would've hit that beautiful deer. And what a
magnificent creature he was. I believe in angels. That soul, that dignified buck. Dear god.
C.A. MacConnell
