Enjoy!
Here's an extended version of a beautiful song, "Vanishing Grace" by Gustavo Santaolalla, an Oscar-winning composer, from his latest work, a video game titled The Last of Us, to set the tone for the story. Feel free to listen while you read.
Chapter One: http://chandlerrydwrites.blogspot.com/2014/01/deer-and-daughter-chapter-one.html
Chapter Three: http://chandlerrydwrites.blogspot.com/2014/01/deer-and-daughterchapter-three.html
Tuesday
The bell tower chimed as she stepped out of her car, slowly.
She looked off into the distance, although it wasn’t a great distance—only just across the road, where the bell-tower met pavement, with hands spinning just as slowly as the gardener’s stiff movement. She could hear the time best when she was at the front of the property, near the mouth of the driveway, where she could look down the road, which is what she would do whenever she thought too deeply.
(Though one might argue that a woman can never think too deeply, so long as it is only about one thing, and so long as that one thing is not herself.)
The gardener closed her car door and pulled her backpack out of the backseat, slowly. She slung the backpack over her shoulder, adjusting, and sliding her other arm through as well, with care, too. As she locked her car, she couldn’t help but look at her reflection in the window.
She was tired, and glad she had escaped the deer without a black eye, but wanting to sleep, and she had dark bruises upon her forearms. She didn’t have a black eye, but they were shadowed, even though she rarely wore makeup to work, and she hadn’t on Tuesday. She ran a hand through her blond hair, with the streaks that looked like lowlights, and then some highlights, and when she met people she liked, she would mention how her hair was natural, if they asked. Her boss had asked, anyway.
The gardener had parked where she always did: on the driveway, near the house, but off to the side, and the house was a ways away from the road, with plenty of trees in between. She suddenly couldn’t resist, and found her hands lifting up her shirt to peer curiously at the cleft bruises marking the fair skin over her ribs. She couldn’t take her eyes off of them. And, she remarked, she should do more crunches.
(Her body was still attractive, though, and as she pulled her shirt back down, she hoped a good man wouldn’t truly care, but she wanted the appreciation, which she hoped was not a bad thing, so she thought of doing more crunches, because what’s the point of living if you don’t chase a deer every once in a while?)
She began walking, and fetched her right glove from her backpack as she walked slowly down the path, looking around, and then hopping over the short, black metal fence in a single bound. She walked over and retrieved the rake, abandoned the day before, and then found her left glove that she had dropped in the mulch after seeing the fawn.
(The deer had come down on her hard, first on her chest, and then on her face, but she had raised her arms, and kicked out blindly because her feet didn’t have eyes, and neither did her fear, and she reached for the rake with her right hand, still gloved, with the rubberized latex coating, and, by chance, grabbing the tines and whacking the deer with the rod, who yelped, and she had a moment to get out from under its weight before running. The deer did not follow.)
The first thing she did after finding her glove, and putting both gloves on (being careful to mind her new bandage on her finger,) was fix the sprinkler head in zone five. She heard the bell-tower as she walked over to the shed to retrieve a new riser and nozzle. The gardener noticed that she had missed a few branches on a lilac bush the day before, and retrieved her clippers from her backpack, and began to work with the
Click. Click. Click. Click. Because she had missed four branches. Before she put them away, however, she saw her reflection again in the shiny stainless steel blades, and paused, thinking about the bruises, wondering if they would look any different mirrored in the clippers, since the blades were slightly warped to form the curve and the edge. She put them away.
The gardener grabbed the sprinkler riser and nozzle and headed to zone five, all the while toying with the two parts, screwing them together, and curiously twirling them between her fingers as she thought. She reached the sprinkler, and, thankfully, it would be a quick job that didn’t require peeling back the layer of sod and digging up the pipe, which would take more time. She pulled out the old riser, screwed the new one in, and let it slide harshly into the sprinkler, where it would remain until that one too, broke, and was dumped. She thought about the sprinkler, and the riser, and how they were both made of plastic, and one or the other would break, or both would break at the same time, and how futile that would be in a relationship, if one or the other got dumped, especially if the grass were green, (and she thought of the deer, and how it was alone, because she didn’t want to be alone like the sprinkler really was.)
She tested the sprinkler, and it worked. For now, it would green the grass.
The gardener began to weed near zone five. She had the orange bucket by her side, and she saw worms every so often as she uprooted the weeds and dumped the unruly pants into the bucket, disturbing the rocks they were in,
Slap. Slap. Thud.
Zone five was near the house, which meant there were window-wells nearby, and she usually checked them for weeds. She looked down in the window-well—and found weeds—but she also saw a black shape in the corner, still, unmoving, and feathery.
It was a blackbird.
The gardener froze, but loosened quickly. There was no mother around.
She tossed a piece of mulch into the window-well, right next to the blackbird, to see if it would move. It did. The bird was alive.
“What are you doing down there?” she said to it. She tossed another piece of mulch, and the bird shuffled out of the corner, revealing the reason for its languid behavior. Its left wing was thin, bent, and missing several feathers—the blackbird had a broken wing. It was trapped. And, the gardener realized, she had the opportunity to save it. She reached in with her gloves, but after reaching and pulling back, reaching and pulling back, she decided on another method.
Standing quickly, she ran back to the shed to grab the rake. The gardener dashed back over the window-well, kneeling and carefully lowering the rake into the pit.
The blackbird hopped away fearfully from the rake, the gardener chasing it into a corner, and then it fluttered out over the tines, (making the gardener wince at the sight of the broken wing failing to flap correctly,) escaping back to the middle once again.
“Come on, boy. Get on the rake. I’m not going to hurt you. It’s okay. I’m going to save you.”
(But what if the bird had gone there to die?)
Then she would be saving its life, wouldn’t she?
The bird danced into another corner, but this time, it didn’t flutter away when she brought the rake close. This time, she was able to bring the bird all the way out.
The blackbird fluttered over to the grass, which was beaded with water from when she had tested the sprinkler.
If the blackbird had been down in that window-well for any amount of time, it surely would be hungry.
As she hunted in the rocks for a worm, she thought of how the bird had become trapped down there—had it flown into the window? (There was a wide first-floor pane above that particular window-well.) Had it broken its wing elsewhere, and then had jumped down there to die?
She found a worm, and tossed it over to the bird in the grass. It didn’t see the worm right away, forcing her to herd the bird into the direction of the worm, where it greedily snatched the snack out of the grass and gobbled it down.
“Icarus,” she said. “I’ll call you Icarus, because of your broken wing. You must have flown too close to the sun. But,” she realized, “that means you must have been with Daedalus. You must have been flying with your father.”
She looked to the house, empty.
The bell-tower chimed in the distance: it was nearly lunch, but she didn’t hear it clearly, only distant, like she was staring down the road, or looking at the house, like the deer: she was alone, but she didn’t want to be plastic, like the sprinkler parts, discarded when the grass is green, and Icarus alone as well, because Daedalus was gone and not coming home, (though home is relative when one has so many houses…) her thoughts wandered so, so distracted, and suddenly she felt like crying.
She had been up late last night.
Her boss, clearly, had not been, or at least she hoped he had gone to bed early, not late, please not late and just not paying her attention... (She hoped he didn’t have another gardener, at least not one like her.) Though he could have been busy, but why didn’t he answer, then? And she hoped her voice-mails were not excessive, although she knew that fourteen was excessive, even though she hadn’t left a voice-mail to every single one.
She had been up late last night.
Damn it, she felt like crying, all because of the stupid bird, and all because of the stupid bell-tower… Why did she have to cry? She was so whiny—she always seemed to be crying about something, but the tears felt warm and comforting, and tears could fix a wing to make it fly once more, so really, she wasn’t, just in her head, so she should let them come, if only he would come, and that would make it all better, or something. She was a gardener, and gardeners do something, after all.
She took off her gloves and stroked her hair as the tears rolled down her face.
Damn it, stupid bird, stupid house, stupid bell-tower, and damn the deer that had stomped on her, too.
She kicked her gloves away, and buried her face in her hands. Shit, she thought.
(Shudders — )
She wasn’t sure what time it was when she stood up once again. She was hungry. The gardener decided that regardless what time it was, she was going to eat.
She walked to the shed, mumbling, and to a passerby, like a deer, she was insecure. But she knew exactly what she was. She knew exactly what she wanted. She was curious, not insecure, and curiousity was enough security in and of itself. She believed that tears do not change a woman’s life, only alter how she sees it.
When she reached the shed, she got her lunch out from her backpack and headed back to the window-well to check on Icarus, beginning to eat her sandwich along the way.
Upon reaching the window-well, she didn’t see her bird.
“Icarus,” she called out, pretending that he could understand her, and pretending that even if he did, he would know his name and care. He didn’t. She was calling to no one.
She fanned out, determined to find him as she ate her sandwich. She hoped that food would calm her nerves, and maybe she would toss him a chunk of bread if she found him again.
She walked over beyond the house, onto the path, near where she had—
The gardener kept walking.
She saw him just on the other side of the short, metal black fence.
“Icarus!” He was holding one of her gardener’s gloves in his beak, with a playful glint in his eye.
She hopped the fence in a single bound, and he scattered away quickly. He wasn’t giving her the glove back easily. She realized that if she wanted him, she would have to chase him.
So she gave chase. She laughed as she followed behind him.
He led her away from where she fought the deer the day before, and farther still, near the boundary of the property, where a tall, thick brick wall stood guarding the fringes. Icarus stopped there.
He was near a hole in the bottom of the wall, just big enough that she knew instantly that he could squeeze through. She pulled a chunk of bread off of her sandwich, kneeling, and sticking her hand out to him, said, “I’m okay, just take the bread and leave the glove.”
Of course, he couldn’t understand her.
She couldn’t let him take it, but then again, maybe he would create his own nest with the glove, fused with her sweat, blood, and tears.
Icarus glanced at her with one eye (in which she saw an up-side-down version of own reflection,) and tilted his head. The blackbird shrugged his right wing, the one unbroken, and skittered through the hole. She did nothing to stop him.
The gardener walked back to the house, and picked up the bucket and her right glove, and finished the sandwich.
She didn’t hear the bell-tower at all that afternoon, but she did hear something different: something she rarely heard, something she wanted to hear, something she felt she needed. It was tires. Tires on gravel, coming up the driveway.
She stood up from her work.
It was an expensive car. Her boss got out—
(And he was alone, and she was alone,)
Which meant that now, neither of them had to be.
Alone, that is.
He smiled at her.
What did you think about Chapter Two? Have any suggestions for the third, and final, chapter? Leave your thoughts in the comments, and do me a solid by finding me on Facebook and Google Plus.
Video Source:
Gustavo Santaolalla. Vanishing Grace. 2013. "The Last of Us: Original Score." Youtube. Web. 13 Jan. 2014.
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