EMMA AND SETH both rolled into Barbara’s parking lot at seven in the morning. Barbara had already hooked her stock trailer to her big truck and backed it up into the aisle of the little barn. The fawns watched from their stall, curious, apprehensive, aware that something different was happening in their lives. All six of them clustered together as though to take comfort from one another.
Barbara had spread a deep bed of hay in the trailer. “Right on time,” she told Seth and Emma.
“How on earth do we get them to go in that trailer?” Emma asked.
“The first thing you learn about deer is to be sneaky. I built this barn to make it easier. When we open the back trailer doors, they just fit in the center aisle and close it off. Seth, help me pull the doors back against the wall and brace them open. No escape route out the front of the barn.”
The rear door of the barn was closed, so no exit that way either.
“The only way out will be into the trailer.”
“Or back into their stall,” Seth said.
“You stand in there and block them,” Barbara told him.
She opened the door to their stall. “All righty, then, here we go.”
For several seconds, the deer merely stood inside as though they had no plans to leave. Then one of the young stags put a tentative hoof into the aisle. The other five followed carefully, ready to bolt.
One young doe came over to Emma and butted noses with her. So far everyone was calm.
The young stag, the obvious leader, stepped onto the ramp leading into the trailer. And backed out, snorting. He then backed into one of the does and she backed up into another doe. From one second to the next, calm collapsed into chaos. Seth kept them from running into their sanctuary. After a minute or so, they settled back to milling in the aisle. Emma took refuge behind the door of the stall across from theirs.
“Okay,” Barbara said. “Now to the old tried-and-true paper-sack loader.” She handed Emma a wadded-up paper sack tied onto the end of a long riding crop. “Whatever you do, don’t hit anybody. Just shake it behind them. It makes a racket that they hate. We want them to think the inside of that trailer is sanctuary.”
It worked. And quickly. After a couple of forays to try to go across Seth and back into their stall, they all walked straight up into the trailer. Seth and Barbara closed the doors and latched them. Once inside the dark trailer, the little deer settled immediately. The stag even began to nibble the hay at his feet.
“Let’s head out,” Barbara said. “We can all ride together. I’ll bring you back after we set them free. See? Easy.”
* * *
THE TRIP TOOK most of an hour, before they came to six bar gates heavily posted with Privacy and no-hunting signs. Emma noticed one that said, “All hunters will be stuffed and used for target practice.”
There was no sign of any building, but the land was beautiful, a perfect mixture of woods and rolling fields. Half a dozen deer grazed in lush spring grass on the edge of hardwood forests. They didn’t even lift their heads when the truck rolled by. As soon as the perimeter fence was out of sight, the land looked as it might have before the first trappers showed up in the nineteenth century.
Barbara pulled into a gravel turnaround large enough to turn the trailer without backing. “Now, we open the doors and stand behind them so we don’t get run over. We wait until the deer discover they’re free. Then we watch until they disappear into the trees, which should take about a minute. God, I love this part.”
Emma watched around the edge of the door as the little stag, the leader as usual, took one step down the ramp, then jumped to land on the grass. He peered around on full alert, perhaps to spot the trick in letting them go. A minute later, all six were taking off into the trees, the white tips on their tails marking their progress.
Another minute and they were gone.
Seth shouted, a pure rebel yell. Emma jumped up and down, and Barbara punched the air and echoed Seth’s yell.
They closed the doors to the trailer and climbed back in the truck.
“Will they be all right?” Emma asked.
“That is no longer in our hands,” Barbara said. “We’ve done our best to let them go in a safe place. Would they be all right if they’d never been raised by human beings? If they’d been left on the road beside their dead mothers? Humans are so dangerous. I hope they’re still afraid of us. I think they will be. But it’s their world, now, not mine or yours or Seth’s. Or even the man who owns this property.”
“Who is he?”
“Our good friend Mr. Anonymous. He lives in Memphis, but he’s dedicated this whole property as his own private preserve protected by a trust. It’s safe from development for a hundred years.” She put the truck in gear. “In a hundred years, who knows if there’ll be any animals at all, let alone human beings. Come on, y’all. Emma and I have patients waiting at the clinic.”
They did. A dozen clients with dogs on leashes and cats in carriers waited in the parking lot.
“Thank you, Seth,” Barbara said as he walked to his SUV.
“You really didn’t need me.”
“Yeah, but I would have if anything had gone wrong. You’re the designated rescuer.”
“Your mother’s coming by to look at my babies this afternoon,” Emma called to him. “If you get off in time, you’re welcome to a glass of wine.”
“Can I have beer instead?”
“Sure.”
He nodded and drove away. Emma headed for the clinic and the madhouse she was walking into.
Would she feel the same sense of joy when she turned her babies loose?
Just so long as she didn’t dissolve in tears of grief and loss. Or have hysterics with Seth watching. Men did not deal with hysterics well.
Around the corner of the building came a flash of wings and a loud squawk. “Oh, Mabel, knock it off.” She shoved by the big Canada goose. “You’re worse than a Rottweiler.”
She still hadn’t figured out how Mabel knew the difference between staff, whom she felt free to terrorize, nonclients, ditto, and clients. She never terrorized clients. Maybe she terrorized anyone who didn’t show up with an animal or smelling of an animal. Emma would have to ask Barbara.