Alexsis Johnson
The Buck
A doe and a buck emerge from the dark inside of the forest to the edge of the tree line just as Layla steps out from the dilapidated barn. She immediately adjusts her breathing to be quieter and more aware, and stops in her tracks when she sees them. They do not see her.
The two deer shuffle their noses through the thick underbrush that goes right up to the edge of the plowed earth of the soybean field. Their ears point upward, the tension in their muscles clear from across the field though their eyes are trained on the ground. Layla rolls slightly forward onto the tip of her toes to hear the sound their muzzles make in the damp leaves, but the singular rustle of the wind through the stalks that surround her for miles and miles obscures any possibility for intrusion into their private moment. As they dip their heads low to the ground, hiding their faces from Layla’s line of vision, some leafy scent draws the full-bodied buck and the smaller doe halfway into the sunlight. Where his coat meets the sun, the buck’s fur becomes golden and warm, somehow blending with the green of the soybeans around him because it is the color they will become when the summer leaves the Midwest. The doe’s coat is much darker. The black of her hooves blends into the fine hairs above them, the shine of the pelt reflecting the stark sunlight and creating a halo of light over the doe’s lower body. At the flank and shoulders the black becomes ombre and finally brown. The deep russet color of the doe’s breast, body and face appears as if it might carry the scent of chocolate rather than earth and is warm enough to be slightly red next to the coat of the much larger male. The doe steps closer to his face and flicks her tongue over his muzzle, moving then to rub her head and then body in the void under one of his front legs. Layla realizes that she is still leaning forward, poised on the balls of her feet as the doe continues to rub her coat against the buck mixing the brown and gold, black and beige, the two coats in moments becoming one shining bronze that Layla can’t move her eyes away from. Layla rolls slightly more forward onto her toes, perching herself in a position that dares her to fall just so that she might get a clearer glimpse of the two lovers. The buck rubs the doe in return, intertwining his tawny knees with the deep black of her spindly legs. There is a slight change in the wind and the two deer snap their heads up from their private moment to face Layla directly across the soybean field. The door to the barn slams behind her loudly and Layla clenches her jaw to keep from screaming. Though she refuses to turn and face the young man, the bulky body from last night as it gleamed pale pink in the moonlight flashes in her mind. By the time that Layla recovers from the interruption she realizes that she has taken her eyes off of the doe and the buck. When she looks up she is unable to find them among the solid block of green soybeans and the dark wall of pine trees that towers behind it. Though any shadow might be hiding the two animals just inches out of sunlight, not one reveals their presence.
Alexsis Johnson loves the ocean but is a Midwesterner born and raised in Champaign, Illinois. She desperately wants poor eyesight and in turn, glasses, however, she would settle for a monocle. She recently graduated from Yale University with a BA in English. She has been published in The Science Creative Quarterly.