The September 29, 2008 Baltimore Sun had several listings for older Mercedes Benzes. Only one was diesel- a 1982 240 D. Offered by its owner for $4600, it was described as being garage kept and in perfect condition. Could the "beige" color really be that yellow I like so much? Exercising restraint, I set the paper aside. Folded open to the listing. For two weeks it sat in the bathroom where I would periodically stare at it.
It was about then that my primary car, a 1999 Subaru, began to have problems. First it was just freaky bad luck.
Not one, but two deer one day hurled themselves at the 'Ru on my morning return from Montessori "drop off." I was driving windows down through undeveloped parkland, and felt pain on my left back and heard a thump. I saw the deer and shakily pulled to the side of the windy, two-laner. Two animals jittered and dropped behind my car me, at the parabola of a bend in the road.
Later I came to wonder why those deer would do such a thing, run through the woods and jump on my car. I began to believe that they were encouraged by a large truck that I perhaps didn't notice coming around a curve on the other side.
The deer were, if not babies, then teens. They still had their spots, no antlers. Graceful and clueless, one died immediately on the woods side of the road's white line, and the other took longer. He spasmed and tried to rise and bled out his mouth and more and had to be pulled back out of the road by the men in the truck at least twice.
All the while, the driver of a fish-sporting mini-van behind me was in moaning her helpless distress. Apparently she'd seen the whole thing. But she couldn't give me many details. She had towels in the van. At her urging, the men used them when they pulled the deer back from its attempts to rise and run. She was worried it would cut the men with their hooves, and while urging caution, she cried for the men to do something- i.e. kill it , put it out of its misery. The white man in the pair said that anything he could do to kill it would be messier than just letting it die. The brown man said nothing.
She fretted and was tormented and all I could think to do was to offer to pray with her which I felt emboldened to do 'cos of the fish on her van. She told me that she was someone who had a special position in her church-- the Holy Ghost spoke through her, and she was on her way back from visiting an ailing church member on a pastoral call. We held hands while she told God that she realized that animals were not on the same level as humans, but were still, maybe, part of God's creation and could he please... I interjected "shield this animal from suffering" and she prayed assent to that and added that we were asking in Jesus' name and we said Amen together.
Still the deer jerked and stared and coughed and bled on the roadside. Cars went past and the men were looking at thier truck, pulled over under that a rock outcropping on the other side of the road. We all wanted it to be over but the deer wasn't complying. We stood at the top of the bend, tending to our sharp hooved victim who eventually did stop twitching. Using the towels, the men grabbed it by the hooves and pulled it a little more toward the woods. It looked heavy. I wondered aloud if any food banks would take it.
We headed to our vehicles. Mine had a big deer sized dent in the drivers side door, and short beige hairs covered the bottom of my window.
I watched in my rearview window as the truck drove away, wondering idly if I should get information from the guys. Let's see, it was a plumbing company, I think. Maryland. Big truck. There they go.
