Now don’t tell my dad, because he’ll think I’m an idiot, but I realized very recently that he’s not randomly starting my letters with a cute animal drawing — it’s a pun: Deer Sabra. I just thought it was coincidence.
On the carpet in front of me, like a tarot reading, are four postcards my dad has mailed to me from the excursions he went on with his wife (my mom) this summer after sending me off to summer camp. I pick up a card and read it whenever I’m dodging the task of unpacking my duffle bag and folding my fitted sheet, which means I’ve practically memorized them all. As I sift through each one, I start to notice the recurring doodle — a little deer sketched in blue pen before my name, popping up at the start of every postcard. It’s a pattern, a little mascot, his own whimsical patronus prancing across the nation from glitzy Vegas to the less glitzy Cleveland in a UPS truck, just to deliver a scrawled note on how ridiculous he thinks the new no fireworks rule at camp is.
Way back when, before things like Reese’s Puffs, Paris Hilton, and firework bans, my dad worked at said summer camp along with my aunt and mom (though she didn’t know it yet). He drove this really classic pickup truck, dusty red with mud splatter around the rims, with a friend at the wheel and a second friend in the backseat, probably smoking or whatever cool kids did in the ’90s, and looked out the window to see the sorry sight of a deer carcass, strewn across the Dairy Queen curb from some reckless asshole that hit her, leaving her dead. Super dead.
I feel quite sorry for the pretty lady. She wasn’t dry the way Spirit Halloween would have you believe dead things are, but mushy, leaky, stained a raw pink. Death is wet. Before bodies shrivel into terrifying mouth-dried-open cadavers, they’re a total splash pad for bacteria, exploding with little bubbles of pizzazz and ammonia. Nowadays, dad ties Get Well Soon 🙂 balloons to roadkill that hasn’t been removed yet — likely because he can’t get away with what he was about to do anymore.
With the mighty strength of five Dairy Queen patrons, he hauled the deer onto the truck, drove to summer camp, and placed the deer in a lawn chair on his sister’s porch. For a finishing touch, the friend, the one who was probably smoking a cigarette, put a spare Newport in her mouth, to really sell the image that she wasn’t hit by a car — she was taking a peaceful nap on a hot summer night. She was watching the fireflies reflect on her marbled eyes. She was smelling the sneaker-crushed pine needles through the morning dew collected on the tip of her nose, cracked and soft. I’d like to believe that even the dead can find joy in the simple pleasures of being.
The thing no one tells you about leaving a dead deer on someone’s porch is that it kinda makes them upset. My aunt was supposedly not pleased and got my dad in trouble — i.e. he had to hose the remains off her deck. The three perpetrators decided to take a photo commemorating their crime and pasted it in an old shack. I find it sometimes during the summer. My dad and his pals locked their jaws and giggled about the offense through closed teeth for the next 30 years, only cracking their mortis to tell their daughters with loose lips.
So maybe I told a few people.
***
Your teacher just called me,
disgusted and appalled that I was
involved with a dead deer at camp,
wtf!
??
What are u talkin about
I know what ur referring to but idk
how u found that out
Our essay writing activity today
was to rewrite a story that ur
parents told u happened before u
were born. Mine was the deer
I am in an awkward situation now
with your teacher
Are u fr
No
Ok lolz
Are you curious how I found out?
The deer 🦌
***
As fate has it, the only other daughter in the world, whose dad was maybe smoking a cigarette, was sitting in that classroom with me, 680 miles from Georgia, and 31 years later, listening to me spill her father’s secrets. She gave her father a call, who gave my dad a call, who called me asking how is it possible that us girls sit next to each other every Wednesday? Maybe it’s a coincidence, maybe it’s a deer.