"Deer on the Headlights" again, an(other) essay by Nick Gregorio

“Hey, it’s me.”


There’s fur all over the side of my car. I had no idea that deer shed like startled chickens when they get struck by a vehicle.

Mom, over the phone says, “Everything alright? It’s late. You haven’t been drinking, have you?”

“I hit a—No, I haven’t been drinking.”

“Are you sure?”

Mom likes to assume that, anytime I have to call the house after 9:30pm, I’m in some sort of trouble that involves alcoholic beverages. Sure, I enjoy all sorts of beers; Victory, SlyFox, Sierra Nevada, but the fact of the matter is, considering all the factors (gasoline, clothes, haircuts, the occasional trip to the record shop), I can’t afford to drink the aforementioned beverages, much less believe that I could pay for the gas to get to a bar and expect to buy anything more than a Diet Coke. No, I haven’t been drinking. The deer, on the other hand, thinking it was a great idea to leap over a median on 309, may have been a bit sauced.

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“You know, Mom, plenty could go wrong without having any alcohol in my system. This is a
dangerous world. I could’ve run over a runner who just so happened to forget his protective reflectors on this fateful evening—”

“Nick.”

“—I could have left the keys in the ignition and gotten the car stolen by that very same runner, under different circumstances, of course, who remembered his reflectors but changed his mind about running tonight and said, ‘Huh, I’ll just jimmy-jack this moron’s car, he left the keys in the ignition’—”

“Nick.”

“I could—”

“Nick.”

“What?”

“What happened?”

“I hit a deer.”

“Another one?”

Does it really happen often enough to be asked such a question? Yeah, I’ve hit some deer in the past, so what? It’s not as if I throw on florescent orange hunting gear and say, “Hey, I’m gonna go get us some dinner,” every time I take a trip to a gas station or a convenience store. I don’t try to hit deer; they just seem to enjoy getting in my way.

“Yes. Another one.”

As the words leave my mouth, a car blows past me standing beside my car. It honks. I know what the driver’s thinking. It’s the same thing I think of anytime I pass a minor fender-bender or a pull-over: “Stupid bastard, learn how to drive!” accompanied by a good, hardy laugh. I never, however, honked at someone in this situation, afraid that the Universe will tell some hungry deer than there’s some tasty, delicious grass or some juicy berries lying directly in the middle of the lane I’m traveling in. I wish that would happen to that honker right now, in fact. The scream of the breaks, the sound of the car crumpling up like a Pepsi can, maybe even the tinkle-tinkle of glass scattering upon the macadam. The Honker, of course, wouldn’t be injured, but he’d know that he’d honked at the wrong accident. That Honker would know that the Universe just gave him a nice, swift kick to the groinal region (groinal region?).

“You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m good.”

“How about the car?”

“It’s fine. Did you know deer shed when you hit them?”

“What?”

“They shed. There’s fur all over the car.”

I should clean the car off. The last time I left the car with fur and other, let’s say, remnants, Dad completely debunked the story I told him as to how I’d come to hit my first deer. I’d said that the deer “came out of nowhere” from the right side of the road. I couldn’t slow down in time before I clipped him with the right headlight. Minor damage, you know? Nothing really too serious to worry about. No reason to mention that I’d actually fallen asleep at the wheel and opened my eyes just in time to realize that my antlered friend had had enough time to cross the entire road, coming from the left hand side, for me to strike him with the passenger-side headlamp. I figured that telling that side of the story might not be necessary because the damage really did look as if he’d popped “out of nowhere,” well, if you use my definition of the term.

The very next morning Dad said, “I want to show you something.”

He took me outside and, like David Caruso, presented me all of the forensic evidence that suggested my story was false.

“What side of the road did you say he came from?” he asked.

“The right.”

“Uh-huh, are you sure?”

“Pretty sure,” insert nervous laugh here, “I mean, I was there.”

“Uh-huh. Okay. Let’s take a look, shall we?”

“Sure.”

“See this dent here, on the fender? It’s deep. A dent like that had to come from the strongest part of the deer. You know which part that is?”

“The shoulder?”

“Correct. Now, this fact alone corroborates your story.”

“Okay. Can I go now?”

“Nope, I’ve got more. Take a look at the passenger side door. What’s all over it?”

“Green stuff, some corn?”

“Vomit.”

“Vomit?”

“Yes, vomit.”

“Okay, so the deer puked on the car.”

“Son, the only way for that deer to vomit on that particular side of the car, is if you hit him on his right shoulder, with the right hand side of your car. Meaning he’d have to have come from the left, or he’s able to do an about face in less than a second”

“Okay, so?”

“You said he came from the right, correct?”

“Yeah.”

“Impossible.”

“But that’s what happened.”

“Uh-huh. Look at this,” he holds up a broken piece of antler. “This was wedged in the wheel well. The front passenger wheel well.”

“Oh.”

“What really happened?”

Apparently, my father’s real name is Philip Marlowe, or Detective Lenny Briscoe, or Sherlock-Fucking-Holmes, I’m not certain which. However, after I’d confessed what had really taken place, I vowed to hunt that deer down with extreme prejudice. I didn’t kill him. He wasn’t on the side of the road. I heard him walk off into the woods. He was still alive, playing chicken with irresponsible motorists.

So I had formulated a plan. I would buy chloroform and a rag, find a nice, tall tree off of North Wales Road and wait. I’d wait for the deer with the broken antler. When he’d come around, I’d dive from the tree, tackle him to the ground and place the rag, drenched in chloroform over his snout and wait until he drifted off into a nice, deep, chemically induced sleep.

He’d come to in a dark room, tied to a chair, seeing only the lit cherry from a cigarette smoldering just a few yards away.

“Wh-what’s going on?” he’d say.

“You know what’s going on.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m The Cigarette Smoking Man.”

“Huh?”

“Don’t you watch The X-Files?”

“I was never a fan.”

“That’s a shame, it’s a great show.”

“Sci-fi’s not really my thing—”

“Shut up.”

“Why am I tied up? Why am I here?”

“Stop asking questions to which you already know the answers.”

“But I don’t the answers. I don’t even know what is going—”

“Shut up.” I’d clap twice and the lights would pop on. That’s when he’d know precisely what was going on. He’d see me, cigarette between my lips, holding a broken piece of antler. At that moment he’d see the wall behind me. A nicely kept brick fireplace, decorated with photos and—

“Oh, God,” he’d scream, “Oh, Jesus! Those were my friends! How can you just hang them on your walls as decorations, you sick bastards! They were my friends!”

“My father’s a hunter.”

“You’re sick, man! You’re sick!”

“SHUT-UP!”

I’d hold up the antler and say, “Does this belong to you?”

“Naw, that ain’t mine, man.”

“Don’t lie to me. Don’t you dare.”

“So what if it’s mine? It could be fake! God knows, you probably got antlers all over this place!”

“It’s yours.”

“How would you know?”

“You smashed up my car.”

That’s when the realization would sink in, “Oh, God. That was you?”

“Yeah, that was me.”

“Look, I can pay for the damages.”

“You’re lying again. Deer don’t use money.”

“Yet you assumed I watch The X-Files.”

“Everybody watches The X-Files! But that’s beside the point. Why me? Why’d you pick me? Were you out, drinking with your buddies, looking for some dangerous fun?”

“No, man, it wasn’t like that, I swear.”

“What was it like, then?”

“I worked a double shift, it was late, I wanted to get home to my kids.”

“You and I both know that deer are not monogamous animals!”

“Come on, man! What do you want from me?”

“Revenge.”

My father would step into the room, dressed in full florescent orange hunting gear, untie our antlered hostage, and open the back door. He’d say, “You’ve got sixty seconds, friend. Then I come after you.”

Mom, over the phone, says, “You get in an accident and the only thing you can think of is deer shedding?”

“No.”

I look back and see the deer I struck, lying on the side of the road. Am I supposed to feel bad? He bounded over the median. He hit me. How is this my fault? This is evidence of obvious overpopulation! My father’s favorite hobby is now justified! I do not feel bad. I feel no remorse! I—oh, dammit.

“Mom?”

“Yeah?”

“He’s got spots on him.”

“Just get home safe, okay?”

I close the car door; the car door covered in deer fur, and start the car. I wish I’d hit an older deer. A deer old enough do enjoy playing chicken with his pals. This one is just a little guy. A poor dumb little punk kid who never saw a pair of headlights before and thought, perhaps this is a delicious treat or maybe he saw the face of God, or Bambi or whomever deity choose to blindly follow.

I begin to drive, my latest victim in my rearview mirror. I’m not formulating plan, this time, to seek out revenge upon this deer. I sort of want to seek vengeance on myself. Who hits a baby damn deer with an SUV? Honestly, even if he did stupidly dive over a stone wall to come play with a bright red SUV-shaped deer, why didn’t I swerve, get out of the way. He was a baby, for God’s sake. I could have easily jerked the wheel to the right and gone over the edge of the highway. It wouldn’t have been that bad, I would’ve survived (probably). I would have been cushioned by the leaves of the tree branches the vehicle would’ve crashed through on its way to the ground. I could’ve saved that cute, spotted little woodland creature!

Police lights flash up ahead a good stretch. As I get closer to the source, the images of the deer, wide-eyed, and terrified of the oncoming, imminent tragedy of what it is to be alive as a finicky, nervous creature of the forest begin to evaporate. I’m not imagining myself driving off the road to spare the cute little bastard anymore as I realize that that Honker from earlier must have been speeding. I can see the cop bending at the hip, ducking his head into the driver’s side window of the Honker’s car.

I roll down the window and slow the car to a crawl as I reach the Honker and this wonderful public servant (or Universal servant), say, “Everything alright, officer?” and screech off into the night, manically laughing, enjoying every last second of poetic justice. The universe—oh, shit, I killed a baby deer back there.