Three legged deer

One time I knew a three-legged deer. She got hit by a car and her right shoulder was crushed, her leg dragged along, it was all rough and bony on the underside. Still, a buck took her in the orchard behind my house, and she had two little ones. She was quick enough to keep them from dogs, to steal some rose bush tips from the neighbor’s back fence, to take them into the mountains when the weather got too hot, and bring them down when the apples were falling. That year she raised two fine fawns. The next year, too, she raised a fine fawn. When she had raised many fawns and was an old lady deer, her poor leg was worn to bone, and she stood in the headlights of a car and was killed; still, everything dies sooner or later, and she had a good life, and her strength and courage live in her children. The three-legged deer had a mighty spirit.

One time I knew a little girl who was also hit by a car. She was riding her bicycle. The car broke her back easily, she was such a bird of a girl. That day she started a journey and fell away from her friends, who did not miss a year of school to learn to live without legs. She had pain every day, her small face and arms were electric with pain sometimes. Doctors cut her back again and again, adding things as she grew. This little girl was a girl without a herd, but she kept her heart open to everyone she saw. When she was twelve her father and I worked on an old shingle hauler. It had a motor and a bed like a little pickup, and we fitted the seat for her and put a little hand winch to pull her chair into the back. We put a large flashing yellow light on the top to warn cars, because her father and I were afraid, but she was not afraid. To thank me, she came to see me every day; everyday at mid day I’d be sure to be working where she could find me. She told me one time how angry she was when someone would look at her with pity, she would pick her nose or make a rude gesture, but otherwise, she was a happy and open person. She studied and grew and now she’s away somewhere, doing well, but I see some of her old-legged friends around. She is a woman of mighty spirit.

Everywhere around me, I see such people as the girl and the three-legged deer. There is a plum tree growing down by the creek; some bird or animal must have dropped the seed. Somehow it grows, though it struggles for sun beneath the alders, and winter snows bury it this high. Still, one fall when fishing on the creek I visited the little tree, and there was a plum, perfect and red. It was all I could do not to pick it, it was so perfect. But, of course I did not pick it, I left it for the plum to show everyone what she’d done, though her branches are broken every year, and though the sun can hardly see her. Everywhere around me are spirits who are great, while my spirit quakes within me.

My neighbor recently died. One day a few months before, I was driving down the road, and she was outside watering her roses. We wave but often don’t talk. That day I stopped and out the window of my running car I said, "how are you, Jean? Your roses are beautiful." She told me about her roses, about how her garden was coming, and she said, "this is the last garden I’ll have, so I’m going to make it a good one." I said, "Oh, no, are you moving?" She put down the hose and came out into the road to the window of my car, and she put her hand on my arm and said, "no, Mickey, I’ve got liver cancer, I’m going to die, I should be dead by late fall." I burst into tears, and she had to shut off my car and bring me into the house, because all the years, as I drove down our road, I was aware of Jean, even if I didn’t see her, and I couldn’t imagine the road without her, but she made me promise I’d shed no more tears, "not a single one," and that I would come to her house when she died, and make food with all her kin and neighbors, and that I would slaughter the kid in the pen and pick tomatoes and peppers and I would feed everyone my spicy kid, and celebrate our friendship. I saw her often, visited her at home and in the hospital, and I watered her garden and her roses, and tended the kid, and never shed a tear. When the time came I did cook the kid, I picked the tomatoes and peppers and I fed everyone, and laughed with them, but at the end of the night when the food and wine were gone, I wept many, many tears, we all did. But I celebrated Jean’s brave death, and her spirit which I believe is too mighty to die, and lives on somewhere.

I have all my limbs, I am well and stand often in the bright sun, but when I think of these people, I weep with fear. I believe that God does not take my limbs, or my sunlight, because my spirit is not as strong as the three-legged deer, it would break me. Yet I know someday some part or all of me will fall away, and so I study those mighty spirits, to try to learn their courage, so I can live with dignity that is greater than my body, that springs from a strength within me, and not my fortune.

Mickey