The Deer Gone By

a short story about the old days

photo via

Lorena didn’t want to leave home, but there was a war coming.

She would soon have to leave the beautiful village by the beach where the sun shone bright everyday, sea breeze flowed everywhere, and fruit trees gave you sweetness in every bite. She loved living there each day of her 17 years and didn’t want to leave. Mainly, though, she didn’t want to leave Robert, who made her feel loved and desired every time.

But everything ends. The war was getting closer every day. Many ends were coming for many people. And she had family over there to help her, something most here didn’t have. Like Robert.

“Only a little while,” Lorena said. “A couple years, maybe. And when everything goes back to normal, I’ll come back with some good money and we’ll build a big house.”

They were in bed when she said it. Late in the night when everything is slow and soft. Robert nodded. He didn’t think she could see him, but a streak of moonlight coming in the window betrayed him and she saw his eyes were watery. But Lorena knew the tears wouldn’t flow. She liked that about him. He could cry without crying and that made her feel safe. She was sure it would just be a few years. She imagined them reuniting looking exactly like they did now, exactly the same people, exactly the same feelings, but everything just better.

“Who will take care of Chiquita?” Robert said.

Chiquita was Lorena’s pet deer, an undersized white-tailed deer that she found injured, probably by a snake bite, when it was a baby and she wasn’t far from one herself, only nine at the time. She carried the deer home and begged her father to help it. He didn’t want to, would rather eat it. But she told him all the facts as she knew them: the baby deer was hurt, abandoned by its mother, all alone in the world, and God made her find the deer as a test of her heart. Lorena’s father rolled his eyes, stuck by the evocation of God influencing his daughter to do something that seemed good, and agreed to let the baby deer heal in their backyard on the condition she let it go when it wanted to go.

But it never wanted to go. Chiquita stayed and became a member of the family, happy to walk alongside Lorena when she walked into town. People even jokingly called her la mama venada.

“My aunt says she will look after Chiquita while I’m gone,” Lorena said.

“Let me take care of her,” Robert said. “You know I’ll take better care of her than your aunt, and she will remind me of you. Chiquita will keep me company until you come back.”

Lorena loved the idea of her two loves taking care of each other while she was away and agreed. The next morning, before she left the village, she took Chiquita to Robert’s house and kissed them both good-bye.

“Everything will be back to normal soon,” she told them.

But everything changed.

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Over there, Lorena worked and worked. She cleaned so many houses and served so much food, it was all a constant blur that seemed to erase herself and everything she knew. She kept in contact with Robert through letters, but each letter took several weeks and sometimes months to get there, and some never made it, the war getting worse, harder for letters to get to the far-off village by the sea. When Robert’s letters did arrive, his confidence and caring were not well conveyed in words on paper, he wasn’t very good at that.

She started to miss him less. She blamed it on the work. She wondered about Chiquita more than him. She blamed that on the work, too. But for some reason, the memory of Chiquita stayed in her mind more vividly than Robert. She could remember distinctly how the short, firm hairs on Chiquita’s neck felt, the musky mammal smell when she hadn’t had a bath in a few weeks. But Robert was fading. His touch, his smell, his voice were all becoming scattered shards of something she knew was once great and desperately wanted to put back together again, but was simply broken in too many pieces to do that.

She still had hope that it could be. If she went back, maybe it could. Everything like before. But then she met a man.

This man wasn’t as handsome as Robert, not as tender as Robert, but he loved her and could help her and he was there. It only made sense. Her family told her that. They didn’t need to, though, because she knew it was true. She wrote a letter to Robert telling him about it. She cried when she wrote it and her tears smeared the ink, made it almost unreadable. She didn’t send it. Sending it would mean an end to something she didn’t want to end. There was still a possibility.

On her wedding night, in bed with her husband, she thought of her last night with Robert instead. When she slept, she dreamed of being in a big house by the sea with Robert and Chiquita, everything like it was before everything changed. But when she woke, she was in a place where the sun rarely shined, the sea was thousands of miles away, and the trees bore no fruit, hardly any leaves. A grey, concrete world with grey, concrete people.

Over the next seven years, and ten years since she left her village, Lorena had a baby, then another, and was more or less happy in her big house and doting husband. She had a good life and was grateful. But as time went on, as she became more entrenched in a life of providing for others, those once faded memories of Robert came back into focus, more intense than ever.

When her children cried, when the husband complained, the memories of back there became as clear as if they just happened. Not just Robert, not just Chiquita, but everything about that time - the sun’s touch, the sea’s smell, the fruit’s taste. She remembered more. She played the thoughts in her head like a movie. Sometimes she created new thoughts.

Imagined things that didn’t happen with Robert. Imagined him bigger, stronger, more handsome than he was. Imagined a whole life with him and longing for it, like it happened before and she wanted it to happen again. Sometimes she’d catch herself feeling a real heartache for a time with him that didn’t happen. She knew it was just her mind playing tricks on her, but she liked the tricks and wanted more. She wanted as much of that life that didn’t happen as she could get, even if it meant she was a little crazy.

Nothing wrong with being a little crazy.

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When Lorena got the call from police telling her that the husband died in a car accident, it scared her how glad she felt. She cared for that man. He was a good husband and father, but her first thought was that she was free. She was sad. She was sadder for her children. But she was also free.

Back home, the war was over. Her family said things were better there now. She wanted to go back. She wanted her children to grow up happy like she did. She wanted to be happy like she was when she was a child. The dead husband was a responsible man and left her money through his savings and life insurance. She’d be able to return with the money she had hoped for and build the house she dreamed of. She hadn’t heard from Robert in years, but her heart knew he was still there. Maybe Chiquita, too. Maybe all those dreams from long ago would come true.

Lorena’s sister came to help her get ready for the move. She had just come back from a trip back home and had news to tell her.

“I saw Robert,” she said.

Lorena’s heart dipped.

“How is he?” Lorena said. “Is he married? Family? Tell me!”

Her sister laughed at her excitement.

“I only saw him for a quick moment when I was leaving, but he was walking with your little deer,” she said.

Lorena couldn’t believe it. Chiquita was still alive, after all these years, and Robert was still taking good care of her, just like he said he would. She felt a giant burst of love in her heart for them. All the love she had to stifle, push down, ignore until it went away, all of it came back in a rush. She wanted to hug Robert and Chiquita and her two little children and her 17-year-old self, everyone together again, at last. She knew it would happen. She lost faith, but she knew.

“But I have to tell you,” the sister said. “He didn’t look very good. Maybe he was sick. The war has made a lot of people look like that.”

Lorena felt her heat break. Robert was doing all he could to keep his promise of waiting for her and taking care of her precious Chiquita. And when she returned, she’d save both of them. Put them all in a big, beautiful house, just like she said she would.

Lorena arrived at her village and felt a sense of relief. Home, at last. The sun, the breeze, the fruit trees - everything like she left it. Everything was right.

She went to Robert’s house. It looked different. Less kept up. Faded and overgrown. Not like the last time she was there. She knocked on the door and Robert opened it.

He looked skinnier, paler, weaker. Still handsome, but only if you knew what was there before. What was there now frightened Lorena a little. The look in his eyes that once told her she was the most beautiful woman in the world was gone. She didn’t expect him to look at her the same way as before, not after being away for so long, but in his eyes now there was no shine, no warmth just dull weariness. She had never seen eyes like that. And then he cried.

The man who could cry without crying was now crying incessantly, almost like a panic - every muscle in his face pushing tears out with such force, he dropped down to his knees, grabbed Lorena’s ankles and put his forehead on her left foot. He was mumbling frantically as he cried. Lorena couldn’t make out the words. She bent down to help him up. Told him it was okay, she ‘s here now, she’s here to help. Everything will be better now.

“Thank you,” Robert said. He got up and hugged her. He was still strong and Lorena relished the embrace - what she had been thinking of for 10 years. And his strength gave her hope. She would be able to help him. She wasn’t too late. She would be able to do what she promised: A big house for her and Robert and Chiquita.

“Where is Chiquita?” she said.

Robert mumbled again that she couldn’t understand. He took her hand and led her inside his home. She looked around. It was smaller than she remembered, poorer, dirtier, scarcer. Plastic chairs and a wooden table, but nothing else. Bare and harsh. She looked again at Robert. Seeing him inside this place, he looked worse than just a moment ago, like a corpse just starting to rot. The man who had been living in her head was not this man at all. But who was the ghost - the man in her head or the man in front of her?

“Where is Chiquita?” she said.

Robert smiled. He had only a few teeth left, and the ones that remained were cracked and a strange color. He walked to the kitchen and came back with a plate of rotting meat covered in flies. He grabbed her hand and put the plate in it.

“We couldn’t wait anymore,” he said.

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