PA-2021-077 · NUMINOUS · 2021 · DEMONSTRATION
The Deer at Dusk
Nelson County, Virginia
Deposition
Fictional demonstration record. Not a genuine eyewitness account.
A man, then forty-four · Demonstration deposition
We buried my brother on a Saturday. On Sunday I walked the line behind the house because the house was full of casseroles and I was not fit for them. Fog in the trees. A deer at the edge of the pasture, close enough that I should have ruined it by being there.
It did not startle. We looked at each other the way you do when both parties have decided not to perform. I said my brother’s name, not loudly. The deer flicked an ear and walked into the trees as if we had finished something.
I am not saying it was him. I am saying I was seen, and that this was the first time all weekend I did not feel like a person making arrangements. If that is only grief doing what grief does, it can still go in the file. Grief does not make a deer stay.
ALSO ON THIS HEADING
The Chair in the Kitchen
A week after a funeral, a daughter finds her mother’s chair drawn out and a chipped cup set down, as if someone had only just sat to wait for her.
Goochland County, Virginia
The Hour That Wasn't
On a rain-slick stretch of Route 29, a closed diner is passed three times in different states, and a wristwatch loses forty-seven minutes that a household clock will not give back.
Route 29, south of Lovingston, Virginia