Week 7

Crafton, PA

One early, early morning, around 2 a.m., Mark comes home from work and wakes me to say, shakily, it sounds outside as if a rabbit is being eaten. I don’t know what he means, and I am barely awake to process this and try to hear for myself. 

I say, “Oh,” and go back to sleep.

Last night around midnight, as we both lie down in bed to prepare for the busy day we have tomorrow, we hear a noise. It sounds like squealing, loud, high-energy. Immediately, I think, my god, something is being eaten.

I lie still, rooting myself to the spot on the blankets, envisioning—despite my best attempts not to—a skinny, winter-starved wolf-like creature clamping on the spine of an equally thin rabbit, the wolf’s head angrily swinging from side to side, hoping to disconnect the spine and get on with the meal but too ecstatic with the catch to actually feast.

Mark finally says, “What the hell is that?” and gets up to open the nearest window to us, one that faces the backyard where it sounds like the noise is coming from. It now sounds like piglets squealing and its mom snorting, digging its snout through dirt and branches.

I am confused, and Mark is, too. He suddenly barks, a low, deep ruff like a St. Bernard, and scares me, and scares whatever animals are out there, too. All is silent but my heart’s racing.

But after a minute, the noises resume like nothing. Mark barks again, and it is silent for a couple of seconds before the noise continues again, now undisturbed by the noise--perhaps familiar, used to the noise of other dogs, who at first sound like a threat but are nothing more than an annoying background noise.

Mark gets up to get a flashlight, buried somewhere in another room. After a minute, he returns with a tiny one, opens the window more, then opens the screen, and then shines the light outside.

At first we see nothing. I am convinced at this point it is a family of pigs a neighbor has; Mark whispers that he thinks it is animal with its neck snapped, whimpering and squealing in pain and agony, slowly, slowly dying. I say, no, it’s a family of pigs.

He points the light at the ground; there’s nothing there. I say, it’s further back, and Mark mistakes what I mean and points it at the trees.

“Look!” he says. “See?”

All I see is a small blob of yellow light shining back at us, two eyes probably (I don’t have my glasses on or my contacts in at this point), and when Mark points the light a little further right, there are two distinct lights shining back, lights that move up the tree.

As the pig noises continue (I still have no idea what they were), the larger of the two sets of eyes disappears as the smaller goes further up the tree. Mark shines the light at the ground, he having never missed where the animals went, and we watch as the bulk of a cat, its ears pointed backwards, slinks quickly and unhappily away. 

Mark points the light back at the tree. The squirrel, I firmly believe it is, is gone.

February 22nd, 9:50 a.m.

It is 9:50 a.m., and I don’t want to be awake. Mark has gone to work hours before at his new job, started less than three days ago, and I am up after a night of writing a paper, one I forgot about.

I am starting to feel like it’s obvious to everyone to me that my life is chaotic, a mess I have let fester in the winter, one started ever since I moved back in July. My prized collection of CDs, the majority all work by Tori Amos, my emotional and lyrical comfort, is strewn all over the front and back seats of my car, some without cases, some now with cracked cases. (Whenever I park in an area that is less than safe, I joke with my friends, “Oh, no, somebody better not break in and take my entire collection of Tori Amos CDs. My precious!”) Sometimes I look at my backseat as I am backing out of a parking space at work and see them and sigh.

I just don’t care enough right now to pick it up and bring it inside before it gets even more damaged.

Weeks ago, when I offered to give a ride to my classmates in my publishing class to go meet with a printing place, I was embarrassed by the state of my car and spent several minutes grabbing garbage by the clumps and throwing it in my trunk.

“Whoa,” one of the girls said jokingly. “Driving Miss Daisy much?”

I’ve also been having trouble perfectly adjusting my rearview mirror. It feels as if every time I look up to see if a car is behind me, I have to adjust the mirror.

I am tired, and I need the free wifi from the McDonalds down the road in order to email my paper in. I am not happy with the work I’ve done so far for school, but I am desperate to sleep before I have to go into work tonight, so I unlock my car door, computer unsafely in my hand, and put one leg inside.

A branch snaps, and I turn my head. There is a deer, startled, at the bottom of the hill. She stares at me as I try to get into my car. I am startled, too, and we both stare at each other.

Her eyes are large and black, her legs apart, and I am amazed at how we both seem to be equally startled and afraid.

But I lose my fear quickly, as I have encountered deer quite up close before, and reach inside for the phone I hastily threw on the passenger seat. I quickly get a picture, but at this point, she has shifted her stance and looks ready for flight.

I focus the camera on my phone and take a couple of steps around the thrown-open car door window and closer to her. She keeps jerking her head toward her left, as if unsure of whether to run or keep staring. 

She keeps staring as i slowly walk forward, pull my hood down (thinking it was freezing when in reality it is quite warm, at 43 degrees). As I take pictures, I think maybe she will not be afraid of me if she sees I have hair, I am good, I am human; I think, feeling stupid, maybe she will recognize me.

But at this point I have gotten too close. She is scared and jostles away, her white tail in the air (I have been told it is a defense mechanism for deer, that if you can see the white fur, the other deer nearby can see it and know there is danger nearby), and I see there are two other deer with her, having effortlessly blended in with the surrounding. I think, it feels like October, before the chill comes, and yet they all dart away.

There are many things on my mind as they disappear into the brown of the surroundings. I think of the deer I saw when I visited my family in New York weeks ago—how they were quite fluffy, the young ones still growing, not having matched the size of their mothers, more fluffy than I’ve ever seen deer before.

I think of the deer my mother found wondering the neighbor; it had a bright red Doritos bag stuck on its face. After calling Animal Control several times, she patiently followed the doe as she stumbled along grass and twigs. A cop eventually showed up, stopping at my mother’s insistent waving, and he tentatively walked up to the deer and, reaching out, snatched the bag from her face. The doe, blinking several times, licked her lips and slowly made her way back into the forest. My mother talked to the man for several moments after; he said how terrified he was to approach the deer, fearing she would panic at his making noise so near to her and start kicking hooves like crazy. He was amazed at how calm she was.

I think of high school, needing to wake up at 5:30 a.m. every weekday to catch the bus by 6:30 a.m., how it was pitch black in the mountains, how one day as I was walking along the curve of the road, a hoard of deer, twenty does led by a buck, quickly crossed the road where I had not seconds ago walked across. I continued walking, more briskly, terrified as I realized how enormous they were, how sinewy and yet bulky the muscles under their fur were, how pitch black and large their eyes were. None of them stop on their crossing; they keep going, heads forward, never acknowledging me.

I think of a poem I read while I was doing research for my paper. I was disappointed to see the winner of Calyx magazine’s Lois Cranston Memorial Prize: “Crane Woman” by Mercedes O’Leary. 

I thought, how typical: there is a female crane; she is beautiful but aggressive.

Then there is a dream of being the crane woman.

Then the crane woman comes and wants something of the author, who cannot give. 

She turns the crane woman down. She discovers something about herself.

But as I looked at this deer here in Crafton, I feel desperate to make a connection with her, make her want to come closer and not be afraid. But why? 

I don’t understand, but I decide maybe I’ll dream about it one night. Maybe then I’ll understand. And write a poem.

Maybe one day.