Defiantly, her eyes locked with
mine. Not a ripple of concern in her stance or glance as she faced me while my
heart shifted to a faster syncopation. My headlights mirrored from her pupils
for a second before she dismissed me. Casually, she crossed the road with the
confidence that no harm would befall her.
My foot, stamped to the brake, eased
off to crawl my car forward. The predawn shadows complicated my search of the
path from which the doe had unexpectedly emerged. No fawns follower her, and I cruised
up to 20 MPH.
As I rounded the corner, our small
neighborhood herd waited in edgy anticipation by its morning feeding spot.
Daily, an elderly retired man dumped buckets of dried corn from the back of his
pickup truck. In long ago conversation, he’d told me that he needed to know
someone counted on him being somewhere each day. With his wife’s death, his
retirement had turned to unexpected loneliness that he filled by caring for
these deer. This morning five deer awaited his arrival.
My thoughts drifted from the doe to
an old man’s loneliness as I edged onward into my day.
Copyright 2019 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman
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