The Screaming Deer

I never knew deer could cry until I heard one scream.

I had known they spoke with their bodies. Once, when my daughter found a baby deer curled under the deck, its white spots like light through a cullender, the mother stamped her hooves nearby in the forest, and I understood. We let her baby alone.

But I did not know they could shrill as sharply as saber leaves.

I had just eaten lunch in the guest house at Assumption Abbey, a Cistercian monastery in Ava, Missouri. After midday prayers and baked fish, my shoes tossed pebbles down the long, shaded drive by the woods. The spray of rocks loosened my soul from hardened crevices of too many gravel-cluttered days, and I meandered into reverie.

A jarring shriek broke into my mind, turning on full alertness to the cry of terror from the woods.

It was an impaling cry.

A wounded bird? The repeating scream pulsed up like the staccato warning of birds but louder and higher. This wail was life on the edge of death, a voice alone with no rescue, a prolonged tear of innocence.

I swiveled to the crashing sounds in the wood. The leaves parted, and suddenly, a baby deer shook just three feet away, still trembling on its legs. Its eyes flitted from road to wood.

A running black lab leapt from the trees onto the path, loudly barking at the deer.

“Get away,” I yelled and clapped my hands. It barked and swung, and I clapped and shouted again. I am known for a soft voice. A yell punched my vocal chords, but I got the lab’s attention.

The baby deer, seeing its villain was occupied, jerked through gravel and trees back into the wood, and I lost the dog’s eyes. A good chase with easy prey was just what it wanted.

They ran backstage into the woods, and I was alone. The chase had flown too deeply in the woods, and there was no human path to follow.

Where was the mother?

I could hear the fawn’s wails between barks, and then I could hear only the bark.

I had come to the monastery for peace. No internet or phone access. No meals to make. The monks kindly cook for their guests. No agenda except prayer.

I had been coming every summer for eight years, craving silence tempered by the susurrating songs of monks at morning, noon, and evening, and the sounds of leaves just outside my window. My turbulent thoughts quieted into “Peace. Be still.”

Now, on this path I had walked many times, I slumped out my stiff alertness. When your legs have gone to sleep and you move, the blood starts springing inside again, and the fire starts up your leg. Just like that, my body tingled with little jabs. I began prayers to the rhythms, little flames of petition for the innocent.

I resumed my walk to the nearby dam and watched the water ease away the sharp rocks. Normally, I lift up my eyes to the Ozark hills and praise the God who gives life. I watch the water--a still pool on one side of the road but rushing its white power on the other. I had come to the abbey so my soul would be still waters, but now, like water gushing out the dam, I could not slow my heart. After a while, it began to steady with the river farther on.

On the way back, I saw blue-tailed butterflies in a cyclone just ahead. Their funnel rose from the dust like a tower rising with wings. Closer, I could see what they were doing. One of their sisters had died on the road, crushed by a car so its wings lay all on one side, its body freshly still. One by one, its winged sisters swooped down, hovering for just a moment, and then lifting again. I don’t know how much time passed, but I saw the cycle again and again. Fly, swoop, hover, lift. I had never known butterflies had their own winged funerals. When I folded my hands like the butterfly lying in the dust, they were postured for prayer.

I left the cyclone of mourning sisters and ascended the steep hill rising from the river. Just before I reached the abbey, I heard movement in the woods. I hoped to see the fawn was still alive, but I only saw another dog—this time a brown one, picking up an armadillo with the creature’s hard-shelled back in its teeth. Then the dog dropped the shell and turned the armadillo over so it was belly-up, its long-nailed paws scratching air.

The dog’s teeth just about touched the armadillo’s gut when I started running. Maybe the armadillo’s claw pushed the mouth away, but I did not wait to see. I might as well have been walking in the void before God started creating the earth. I shut my mind’s door to the scene and tipped into the abbey like a startled deer.

The bells had just rung for compline, the evening prayers asking God for safety before the soul’s journey into the night’s darkness. Safety was supposed to be still waters, but it felt like the loud, gushing water on the other side of the dam. The whole world did not feel safe. The day’s episodes, like the dam, rushed empathy for the vulnerable lives in the world, innocents who were chased, startled as white-spotted fawns, running directionless in hope of a refuge.

Who in the world was crying this evening? Who heard nothing but barks, who found their lives turned by a predator, who saw beautiful-winged life folded in death?

The ceiling fans in the chapel swirled their gentle wind, but I could hear rumbles of a storm coming.

I bowed my head as the monks sang of wings: “He will cover you with His pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge.”

As they finished, the crucifix image trembled with nearby thunder. Christ’s arms stretched out, like a wingspan. The nails punctured his feathers, and they fell softly against our souls.

Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy.

I wept for the vulnerable who are afraid. I mourned lovely souls lying still on roads with sisters hovering over them in love. I prayed people’s bellied-up tenderness would be saved. I prayed Christ’s wounded arms would shelter those who had to leave their homes and find new life in another country. I prayed we would know how to be kind to those with eating disorders and mental illnesses. I prayed the elderly would be loved out of loneliness.

I mumbled prayers long after the monks stopped singing and turned out the lights.