Dead Deer, by Brittney Uecker

“Let me put it this way, Judy... These boys without dads, they’ve got to attach to something, make themselves stand out somehow, but they all do it the same fucking way — with mommy issues.”

I confess, I’m something of a sucker for deers in stories. Stand By Me—and the Stephen King novella, “The Body,” that it was based on—is a core Burch text at this point; I wrote an essay about trying to save a deer from being stuck in the fence; the prologue of Super Dark Times, with a deer stuck in a classroom, is one of the most powerful and memorable openings to a recent movie. I got excited when, on the very day I am writing this intro, I turned the corner on my trail run and found a deer in the middle of my path.

And so, opening with the protagonist finding and having to deal with a dead deer in her yard, this story had me pretty hooked from the very first paragraph! And then… I don’t want to give anything of the story away, because I feel like some of its pleasures are in all the surprises along the way, but needless to say, this story never let me go once it had its hooks in me. I’m excited to get to share it!

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The dead deer in Judy’s yard was becoming quite the problem. She had discovered it on Saturday morning but guessed by the stench and the bloat and the way its legs stuck out straight from the balloon of its body that it had been there for a few days, ravaged by the weather’s recent cycle of freezing and thawing and freezing again. She called the animal control, the fish and wildlife department, and finally the police, but they all brushed her off.

“I mean, I didn’t kill it,” she said. “Can’t you do something?”

“Sorry,” replied the cop. “Doesn’t matter how it died. If it’s on your personal property, it’s your responsibility.”

She pressed the cold phone screen against her cheek and inched closer to the carcass. Its eyes were onyx marbles, shiny and clean, pupils indistinguishable. Its tongue, as purple and swollen as a dick, flopped out of its mouth, frozen to its cheek.

“But…what am I supposed to do?”

She could hear the officer chew and then spit, the harsh sound of a thick wad rattling at the bottom of a soda bottle.

“You got a dumpster?”

She hung up on him.

There was no way she could lift it on her own, even if the thing didn’t disgust her, which it did, or wasn’t frozen to the ground, which it was. She thought about the neighbor kids across the street, the two and six-year-old that she often babysat, and grabbed a tarp from the garage. She wasn’t ready to explain death to them. She laid the tarp over the corpse, careful not to touch it, gagging at the stench as she brought her face close, weighing the corners down with decorative rocks. Back inside, she started a pot of coffee and called her son.

“Theo, please.”

After she explained the situation, he didn’t sigh, but paused just long enough to show an uncharacteristic lack of enthusiasm. Typically he was eagerly helpful, bringing her loaves of homemade bread or stopping by to watch Survivor with her, nerding out over hidden immunity idols while chewing on fresh sourdough. Even on the phone, their conversations easily meandered, twisting a tight knot around their relationship. This indifference wasn’t necessarily concerning, but it did frustrate her.

There was a muffled whisper on the other end, a scratch of sheets, a laugh, more muffling, Theo’s hand on the receiver.

“Who is that?”

Theo cleared his throat. “I’ll be over in a bit, mom.”

As she waited, she texted the group chat of her coworkers at the library where she worked part-time shelving books and making photocopies. She initially typed out the entire story, all the gory details about the onyx eyes and the bloat, emphasized with the green puking face emoji. She replaced it with the x’d out eyes emoji, then erased the whole thing and typed, Out sick today. Terrible cold I picked up from the neighbor kids. So stuffed up. Sry.

She tidied the house while she waited, not that the house was ever very messy. Judy had lived alone for over a decade, since her husband left her for their son’s biology teacher. She enjoyed her carefully assembled life, solitary and answering to no one. Her days were simple, routinized, time carved out for each of her hobbies and responsibilities and obligations, of which there were few. She did one load of laundry a week and owned only four dinner plates. She had Theo, who lived just a few blocks away, whenever she needed help or company. There were few things she wanted, fewer she knew she was missing out on.

When an unfamiliar Subaru pulled up in front of the house, she was surprised to see Theo in the passenger seat, another head bobbing next to him on the driver’s side. They emerged from the car simultaneously, like hands sliding through the arms of a coat.

Theo entered as he normally did, without knocking. The mother in Judy registered that he looked exhausted, sallow clammy skin and dark hollows under his eyes, his hair greasy and mussed up.

“Mom, this is Sarah,” he said before a greeting, immediately taking the bull by the horns.

The girl with him stuck out a hand. “Hey, mom.”

She was taller than either of them, striking in a way that was the opposite of delicate. Thick muscles popped beneath her hooded sweatshirt and Carhartts and white blond hair snaked out from beneath her beanie. She had a wide, animal smile, what seemed like a dozen teeth too many cranked into a ventriloquist dummy’s grin. Her beauty was specific and strange and calamitous, more energetically wresting than beautiful. She made the lights flicker, induced tinnitus.

“So there’s what now? A deer?” Theo asked, scratching the back of his head in a veiled attempt to smush his hair into place.

“Yes, a dead one, in the flowerbed. It must have been hit by a car and wandered into the yard.”

Sarah’s hand landed on Judy’s arm, a fierce grip that shocked her, that she couldn’t help but imagine grabbing Theo by the neck or squeezing on his cock.

“I bet it was a hot tub. Hot tub chemicals.” Her voice was deep and oscillating, reminding Judy of the percolating burble of the coffee maker. It matched the muffled laugh Judy heard earlier on the phone.

“A hot tub?”

“Yeah, people leave the cleaning chemicals out and deer get into them. They go apeshit for that stuff. Get wasted as fuck on it and then —” She pulled back her hand and drew a thick finger across her throat with her tongue out, insinuating the deer’s gruesome death.

“Oh,” Judy replied, her voice small.

Theo faked a yawn, an attempt to draw back the attention. His words came out big and rounded around his gaping mouth. “So, you want me to move it?”

Judy nodded. “Yes. The officer said there was nothing they could do. He said to put it in the dumpster but I can’t lift it.”

“And you think he can?” Sarah grabbed onto Theo’s upper arm the way she’d grabbed onto Judy’s. “Have you seen these twigs?” She erupted into a staccato laugh that made Theo dip his head and rosacea climb up his cheeks.

Judy was silent, somewhat stunned.

“I’ve got some work gloves in the car,” Sarah continued. “I’ll be right back.”

She left the front door open behind her, a rush of cold air seeping into the house. Theo gently closed it.

“Who the hell is she?” Judy asked in a sharp whisper.

Theo fixed his eyes on the muddy boot prints he and Sarah tracked onto the beige carpet.

“I met her at the bar last night.”

This was also uncharacteristic. Not just a girl like Sarah, but bringing a girl home at all. Judy was just as offput as any mother would be about her adult son’s sex life, but she had the awareness to know Theo wasn’t much of a catch. He had her sharp beak of a nose and his father’s lazy eyes, a lumpy body grown soft by a decade away from high school sports. He was shy and withdrawn, didn’t know how to adequately keep conversation, talking too slow or too fast if he talked at all. Judy had assumed he was more interested in violent video games and weird foreign films than finding a girlfriend. Maybe Sarah had strong-armed him into bringing her home, into sex, and into, apparently, accompanying him to get rid of the deer.

“Are you sleeping with her?” Judy hissed.

He rubbed his temples. “Mom, come on…”

“Why is she here?”

“She insisted on coming. There was no stopping her.”

There was a thud as the door knob flew into the wall, kicked open by Sarah’s boot.

“Let’s do this shit!” she shouted.

Judy glanced at Theo, expecting a laugh that mirrored the one forming in her own throat, but Theo was expressionless. They followed her outside, Sarah leading the way through the yard and around the house with authority, as if this were her problem.

They watched motionless, helpless, as Sarah lowered into a proper squat, her back straight as a broomstick, the lines of her thigh muscles defined through her pants. She grabbed the top feet in one hand and cranked them down to meet the bottom. Judy flinched, afraid that the bloated body would pop and release its rotting insides like a pinãta, but Sarah lifted it like it was nothing. The corpse battered against her torso as she walked it to the dumpster in the alley. She dropped the body to the ground in order to open the lid, then grabbed its feet again and heaved it inside. The deer left a trail of dark juice — blood? Decomposition fluids? — across the front of her coat.

And just like that, the deer problem was solved.

Judy continued to stand there, silent and awkward. She knew she should thank her, but how does one properly thank somebody for such a gruesome task, one they didn’t even ask them to do?

“Theo, you should go get some bagels,” said Sarah as she dug in her pocket and tossed him the keys. He stumbled, but caught them before they disappeared in the snow. “Mom and I will chill here.”

Theo nodded unquestioningly and walked around the yard while Judy followed Sarah inside. Judy didn’t like the way Sarah bossed him around, so rapid and unpredictable, but she was also slightly impressed with it, jealous perhaps. She thought about the way her ex-husband used to have her walking on eggshells. If she could have stood up for herself just once, maybe the whole trajectory of her life would be different.

Inside, Sarah made herself at home, removing her muddy boots, stripping off her coat to reveal a tank top.

“How do you like your coffee?” Judy asked as she went to the kitchen to pour herself a cup.

“Gross, I hate coffee,” Sarah replied. “Do you have, like, a Red Bull or something?”

Judy definitely didn’t have a Red Bull, but she found a Vitamin Water in the depths of the refrigerator and brought it out with her. Where she expected to find Sarah sprawled out on the couch, her body stretched dramatically, there was no one. Momentary panic spiked through her, like when a baby suddenly disappears and you worry first not about their safety but about their potential for destruction. She looked up the stairs to see the door to Theo’s old bedroom ajar and followed.

Inside, Sarah was leaned back in Theo’s desk chair, tipping precariously onto the back legs, a flashy vintage comic book in her hands.

“So you found Theo’s old room,” Judy remarked, carefully feigning surprise.

She set the drinks down on the dusty nightstand and lowered herself onto the bed’s threadbare comforter. She’d left the room essentially untouched when Theo moved away for college. She had enough space that she didn’t need to clear it out to create a home gym or a craft room or a guest bed. Her only guest was Theo. And now, possibly, this blonde foreign creature.

For a moment, Judy let herself imagine what it may have been like to have a teenage daughter, or at least a child completely different from her own. Theo never swore in front of her. Theo never sprawled. His room was neat as a pin, comic books alphabetized, cords wrapped neatly around video game controllers, every scrap of clothing folded or hung on evenly spaced hangers. Maybe a girl would have been less tidy, less suffocating. She pictured nail polish and boy bands and singing over the radio, tampons and makeup and tears, opportunities to impart motherly wisdom and feminine support.

Sarah lazily flipped a page. “So, I’m supposed to ask what Theo was like as a kid and shit, right?”

“I mean, you certainly could. I love talking about when Theo was a boy.”

Sarah sneered. “Just so you know, Theo is still kind of a boy.”

Judy wasn’t sure whether to laugh along, like it was some little mother-daughter secret they held, or to defend him.

“Theo was quiet, kept to himself a lot,” she began. “As he is now. I’m sure you’ve recognized that.”

She flipped another page. “Yep.”

“Computers, video games, reading. Solitary activities. I suppose it was easier for him, after switching schools.”

Sarah glanced up to meet Judy’s eyes, something sparking her attention. She slapped the comic book shut.

“Why did he switch schools?”

Judy hadn’t wanted to get into it, to feel the heat of their difficult past, but Sarah had an enigmatic way of making her want to keep talking. She took another slow sip and tempered her words, distilling them down to the indisputable.

“Theo’s father and I divorced when he was in junior high. He took it hard. He was at a very impressionable age and that school was just…an unhealthy environment.”

The most painful parts flashed in a reel that Judy had refined to the most critical elements over the years, making it as short and potent as possible. The decisive look at a parent teacher conference, the overt flirtation. Her engagement ring on the other woman’s finger. That baby bump on full display in a sundress on the first day of school. Theo’s bloody fist the first time someone reminded him that his teacher was fucking his dad.

Sarah leaned forward. Her elbows were ashen and flaky where they pressed into her knees. A Band-Aid, dirty and gray from some forgotten injury, flapped from her forearm.

“So you just pulled him out of school?” she asked.

“We tried different things, different interventions. Therapy, conferences. I considered homeschooling.”

“Thank god you didn’t do that, right? That shit will fuck you up faster than anything.”

Was she right? Would that have been worse?

Judy looked into her coffee, swirling the dredges. She wondered what Sarah’s childhood had been like, whether her family was as conventionally broken as Theo’s or something unimaginably more awful, but felt like it would probably be worse to know.

“These things are complicated, Sarah.”

“Sure, but it totally makes sense with Theo, the way he’s a complete mama’s boy.” She smirked, a furtive glint in her giant, dark eyes. “He told me about your Survivor nights.”

Something twisted in Judy’s gut, some knot of betrayal. “Is…is there something wrong with that?” she asked.

“Nah, not necessarily. It’s kind of adorable, the way he’s attached to you in a codependent, Stockholm-syndrome way. A helicopter-mom way. It’s sort of hot, actually.”

“Excuse me?”

Sarah picked up a framed photograph from the desk, one from when Judy took Theo to Disneyland the summer after the divorce. He was fourteen years old, all gangly white limbs and crooked teeth that he hid behind a reluctant grin, a smile that he’d cover as soon as it peeked out, as if he was ashamed to feel happiness. He’d put up a typical teenage objection about the trip, having supposedly matured beyond Disney, but cried the day they left, crushed by having to go back to the void of home. The whiplash of his emotions eviscerated and exhausted Judy, to the point where she got drunk on the flight home, threw up in the claustrophobic airplane bathroom, and made Theo, just fresh out of driver’s education, drive them home from the airport. That picture was the one of the last smiles he had issued on that trip, the last vacation they had been on together. Sarah turned the photo around and around in her hands, their floating heads swirling and nauseous, the colors of the background blurring together.

“Let me put it this way, Judy. I’ve been with a lot of guys, okay? And they are all like this. These boys without dads, they’ve got to attach to something, make themselves stand out somehow, but they all do it the same fucking way — with mommy issues.”

A sharp, humiliating anger at the accuracy of this observation shot through Judy. She didn’t want Sarah to be this astute, and she didn’t want it to apply to her son, which would only speak to her own inadequacy as a mother.

“You can’t talk about my son that way,” said Judy, her anger inoculating her with righteousness. “What do you know?”

Sarah stopped turning the photo for a moment and stared at it, tracing her finger around the edge of the frame. Judy watched a dimple deepen in her cheek, the slight smirk she was already sick of peeking out the side of her mouth, and wanted to slap it off her face.

After a moment, she laid the photo down on the desk with a clatter and spoke.

“I’ve got a kid, you know.”

Judy froze, her teeth grinding against one another, taken aback. She waited for the punchline, but nothing came.

“You do?”

Sarah scoffed. “Should I take it as a comfort or an insult that you’re surprised?”

“I…I don’t mean it like, it just…”

“I mean, it is weird, I guess. I was only fourteen.”

Judy’s sour coffee sprung back into her throat. She replayed the words in her mind, making sure she heard what she thought she heard. “Did you say…fourteen?”

Sarah nodded and looked out the window. There was almost a wistfulness to her gaze, a sudden crystallization of respect. “What’s that saying? Old enough to bleed —”

Judy held up her hand, cutting her off. “That’s…that’s…”

“Child abuse? Yeah, I know.”

It was one of those words, like suicide or miscarry, that wasn’t profane, but through its proximity to pain made you want to whisper it. The way Sarah uttered it with such casualness and surety made Judy’s shoulders cinch into a knot.

“Sarah, I, I don’t even know what to say.”

Sarah shrugged again. “It’s cool. I’m seriously over it.”

A million questions flashed through Judy’s head, a condition so complex and unexpected that she couldn’t map one thought onto another. It seemed impossible that there existed a world in which herself and this girl had motherhood in common, a world where the degrees of separation between them were being severed one by one. She didn’t want to be this close to her.

Judy began multiple times to stammer out a comment but the words refused to form themselves.

Sarah stood and walked to the dresser, where she lazily fingered each of the objects sitting upon it. These things — a brush from when Theo’s hair was long; a seashell from God knows where, he’d never been to the ocean; a stuffed animal Judy had gotten him for Valentine’s Day — hadn’t been touched in years, dust and strands of hair layered upon them like fossils, innocence cast in amber. Judy flinched as Sarah’s hands danced over them, contaminating them, displacing their purity. She suddenly, desperately, needed to know more about this girl, to place all of this in some kind of context that made sense, that made her blameless and less uncomfortable, but she was afraid of what she would hear.

Sarah picked up the bear and squeezed it. Judy nearly jumped from the bed to snatch it before Sarah started speaking again, her boisterous voice suddenly small.

“I lied.”

“What?”

Sarah looked up at Judy with tears in her eyes. “I lied.  I remember Theo. From junior high, before he switched schools. I knew about the whole thing.”

“You mean, the divorce and —”

“His dad. And the hot biology teacher. Yeah, everyone knew about it.”

Judy pressed her molars together, hard, an involuntary response anytime the situation was brought up.

“I guess that doesn’t surprise me.” Of course, it didn’t. Maybe at one time she had been naive enough to believe that the spectacle could be minimized, that the drama could stay under wraps, but at some point, she eventually had to accept that a story this juicy, a trope this satisfying, would leak out all over the place.

“No offense to you or anything, I mean, he is your ex-husband I guess, but the guy was a creeper.” She paused, pinching the bear’s half-moon ears between her fingertips. “No, not a creeper. A fucking predator.”

Judy ground her teeth together even harder, pressing until pain shot through her jaw.

“A what?”

Sarah’s chin crumpled into something ugly, a dimpled lump beneath her thin lips. Judy felt a hot discomfort. She began to wonder if this was actually happening.

“It’s a good thing you left him, you know.” Sarah continued. “Before he did any more damage.”

“What are you insinuating? That I am damaged? That Theo’s damaged?”

Sarah tipped her chin, thinking.

“No, no, just that — that guy was bad news.”

Judy swallowed. Her jaw was throbbed and her teeth felt loose in their sockets.

“I don’t think this is an appropriate —”

“I mean, it didn’t stop what he did, but at least you dodged a bullet.”
Judy stood now, plucked the bear from Sarah’s hand, and set it back on the dresser, between the hairbrush and a gritty sand dollar. Sarah’s knee brushed against her thigh.

“Sarah, I think that’s enough.”

Sarah’s words came out in a whisper, breaking open a secret as delicate as a baby bird’s shell.

“I have a kid, remember?”

“Yes, what does that have to do with anything?” The puzzle pieces were sliding into place. Judy was nauseous, free-floating and out-of-body.

“Let’s just say,” — Sarah’s voice as sharp and exacting as a surgical blade, deliberately cutting right where she intended — “he likes students as well as teachers.”

Judy’s jaw dropped. She froze. Was this girl saying what she thought she was saying? She looked up at Sarah, unable to formulate words. Before tears blurred her eyes, she saw Sarah watching at her, that hint of a smirk snaking across her face. She nodded gently as confirmation. Judy fell back onto the bed.

She knew she should feel anger, disgust even, but it was first guilt that washed over her, blanching her like a ghost, churning the sour coffee in her stomach. She should have known. She should have fucking known, and she should have stopped it.

Could he have hurt Theo? Other students? The neighbor kids flashed through her mind, despite the anachronism, and made her want to throw up. She remembered his eyes, icy blue and piercing, something untrustworthy always percolating behind them. She remembered his hands, fat and impeccably clean and heavy against everything they laid on. She wanted to run to Sarah, embrace her in love and safety and tell her she’s sorry, so so sorry, that she didn’t protect her, that she didn’t know, but she was paralyzed, stuck motionless on the edge of the bed.

She wiped away tears and without thinking about it, moved to wrap Sarah in a hug, but was confused to see her leaning back, clutching her belly, laughing so hard she wasn't even making a sound.

Sarah waved her hand, dismissing her. “I’m just fucking with you, Judy!”

She paused. “You what?”

Sarah’s barking laugh was loud and mean and turned her face an ugly crimson.

“It’s a joke! You should see your fucking face.”

More waves hit — relief, confusion, red hot anger — and the turbulence in her stomach exploded. Vomit kicked up in her throat, burning all the way up, but she swallowed it back down as she stood. Sarah was laughing so hard that her breaths were scraping through in silent wheezes. When her eyes finally met Judy’s, they were wide and fearless, oblivious as a deer in the middle of a thoroughfare, ready to die but confident you’ll crash your car to save her.

Judy was surprised at the sound her hand made as it connected with Sarah’s baby cheek, like a crack shooting through ice. Sarah didn’t even blink.

“Get the fuck out of my house,” Judy hissed through clenched teeth. Redness welled up on Sarah’s cheek, matching the heat prickling Judy’s palm. Sarah’s lip was fat and wet, a bead of thick saliva hanging on, and Judy was thankful that she finally had nothing to say. She went downstairs.

Suddenly, the Subaru appeared in the front window, pulling up against the curb. Theo came in the front door just as Judy was wiping away a tear and Sarah was plodding heavily down the stairs. He was slow and quiet as he removed his boots and set a greasy paper bag on the coffee table. He either didn’t recognize the palpable tension in the room or was too scared to call it out. Judy couldn’t find a way that either was better.

“I’m ready to go home,” said Sarah, talking to Theo, but her eyes sharp on Judy. “Drop me off?”

Theo had a chunk of blueberry bagel halfway in his mouth, a smear of cream cheese on his lip. He must have been eating in the car. “Don’t you want —”

“Nah, let’s go.”

Theo shrugged but obeyed. They gathered their coats and Theo took the bag of bagels he just brought, not thinking to ask his mom if she’d like one.

“You need anything else, mom?”

His sweet crackle of a voice was a salve. Judy shook her head.

She wrapped her arms around him. He was still so small, so fragile. His hair still smelled greasy and his glasses were dirty. He needed to be taken care of.

Judy and Sarah made loaded eye contact during which Judy could tell she was thinking the same thing — that Sarah held the power. Despite the fact of her motherhood, it was Sarah who had the power to change Theo, to take him, lie to him, break him, make him an asshole, and Judy didn’t know whether this was more sad for herself or for Theo. It was a gross humiliation, merely kicking the can of heartbreak further down its pockmarked road.

Without warning, Sarah turned to Theo and kissed him. A hard, dramatic kiss, her face smashed against his so that their noses smushed like clay against each other. She gripped his neck, pressing her dirty fingernails into his skin. An unattributed tongue flashed, wet and glistening.

Judy watched through the front window as they trudged through the snow, down the driveway that Theo would normally offer to shovel, if he wasn’t distracted by the prospect of fucking this girl again. Judy wondered if he would really take her home, or if they would go back to his house, spend the rest of their Sunday getting high and having sex. She wondered if he would get attached, if they would date, if this terrifying creature would come back into her house again, if she would shovel the driveway, if Theo would be stolen or made useless.

Just as they pulled away, a deer walked into the yard, indistinguishable from the one now festering in the dumpster. It stared at Judy, its dark marble eyes wet and stone still. There would always be another one. They multiplied effortlessly just out of view. They really were beautiful, deer. A nuisance, but beautiful.

STORY:
Brittney Uecker (she/her) is a freshly divorced librarian and it's all she can write about these days. Her work has been published in HAD, Taco Bell Quarterly, the Daily Drunk, the Bitchin' K, and others. She is @bonesandbeer on the internet. 

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ART:
Pancho Muñoz, or @greenpotion, is a mexican artist said to be born from the ashes of a cursed playstation 1 controller.

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Next Tuesday, we’ll feature an interview with Brittney about this story, the inspiration of dead deers, and more!

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