Piebald
an essay by Janice Daugharty
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2010 Janice Daugharty
"Even working in microcosm, Janice Daugharty is a writer who thinks big." New York Times Book Review
In the spot in our living room where we usually raise our Christmas tree for the season, stands a dead piebald deer with all-seeing glass eyes. She keeps watch from a sleigh-shaped wooden platform scattered with pine straw, bark and wintering weeds to make the setting look natural.
To fully get the picture, you have to understand how small is our old cracker-style farmhouse: 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, living room, kitchen, utility, and a narrow enclosed side porch we call our den. Put the deer in the den, you say? No. Already there is a huge buck head and two monster bass, one with a catfish stuck in its gullet. It looks like a fish with two tails, because in the process of the bigger fish trying to gobble the smaller one, the catfish opened its fins and got pinned.
So, how did a white and liver-pied doe, in full mount, get laid to rest in my crowded little living room? And more importantly, what am I going to do with her?
My husband, the hunter, shot the piebald a while back and brought her home for every man in three counties to ooh and ahh over. I thought it was a goat! And the women—all have begun to pity me and offer solutions to my problem of how to get rid of the mount and still stay married to my husband of 42 years.
At the beauty shop, when I told the story of the deer, everybody sang out at once, “Oh, I’m so sorrry!” Same commiserating tone women use when you tell them your husband has left you for a younger woman. One hairdresser suggested that I put the deer outside and dress it up as Rudolph for Christmas, then leave it there for Valentine’s Day to decorate as Cupid. Then come Easter—Peter Rabbit. Another, knowing of my high ceilings, suggested that I suspend the doe like a bicycle on a wall mount. My son has a game room in his new house but, for obvious reasons, his wife forbids him to take it.