The Books: Hear Him Roar

Running with the deer. This is what she called it, because her dark hour was their hour also. They spent their days bedded down along the river. They would come up into the neighborhood after midnight to feed on lawns, shrubs, unfenced gardens. Each night they traveled great distances, eating every green, tender thing they could find. Before dawn they would turn toward the river again, gliding through the neighborhood like a host of spirits, dissolving back into the brush. She was the only one on the block who didn’t mind their ravenous eating. She understood that they were in trouble, multiplying as fast as the tracts and malls that were devouring their habitat and funneling them into the narrow greenbelt along the river. She understood that they were a public menace, not just for the yards they pillaged but also for the cars they wrecked, the arms and legs and skulls that cracked when people plowed into them on the roads. Every day at the insurance company she processed the claims, she heard her bosses moan about the deer, the money they were costing. She was a good employee, reliable, efficient, smart—too smart to challenge her bosses on the matter of the deer. Anyway her understanding with the deer was secret, never acknowledged openly to anyone but her boyfriend. She knew them. They knew her. She told him they ran with her, not away from her, and he believed it. She told him it wasn’t discipline that got her up and out an hour before dawn each day. She told him it was greed. For quiet. For unrestricted movement. For the sliver of each day that didn’t belong to anyone. Having that sliver helped her share the rest—with her kids, her bosses, him.