Midterms

“Man, can you believe that shit?” Sean was sitting at his computer watching a YouTube video someone named DoubleBack71 had posted of a capture of a Madden game. “I mean, did you see that?” He was in awe of the incredible interplay of automated, zombie-eyed football players. He was talking to John, his room-mate. who was reading on his bed in prep for mid-terms.

“What?” John needed quiet, not the bullshit interruptions he was sure to be treated to all night while he studied. He was too tired to go to the library and it was cold out. He didn’t want to go to the common area because although Sean was a smoked-out lummox, he was sure to have to bear the slapback of his slight for the remaining weeks he had to endure the idiot until the end of the semester. “I’m trying to learn something here, man.”

Sean turned to face him. He felt badly that he couldn’t control his enthusiasm, but, c’mon, this was awesome. He paused. “You know, the year my father died, when I got out of school, I used to spend a lot of time just sitting on the deck at the back of the house. I just used to sit there. and somethings my mom would come out but she never sat with me. My dad built that deck. It’s not like he knew how, he just figured it out. He was good like that, I mean, figuring things out. I was . . . I was lost, you know? My mom, she was lost, too, but somehow, we couldn’t be lost together. My dad held everything together, like he was master and commander, but not like we were his slaves of anything, but just like we wanted to follow him, like we were his crew. You know?”

John looked up at Sean. This was out of his context for Sean. He wasn’t sure what it was about, but he felt there was more, as is this was bubbling below the surface, unsaid, not just to him, but to anyone, for far too long. He didn’t know what to say, so he said, “I’m sorry, Sean. I didn’t know. That wasn’t quite the right thing to say, but he lacked anything else. He felt awkward, as if he should have had something better. He looked at the tile floor in silence.

Sean weighed this for a moment. He said, “One day, it was raining. I was cold, but even though it was April, almost May. I was sitting on the deck. The yard was still covered in leaves because Dad didn’t clean them up in the fall before because he was really sick. So, anyway, I’m sitting there, and I see a deer sitting, or lying, under the trees way back toward the end of the yard. I must’ve been sitting there a half-hour and I never saw him. Good camouflage, you know? And he’s just sitting there. So, I get up to get close to him. I don’t know why, exactly, except I wanted to. So, I move real slow and walk toward him. He has like mid-size antlers and he really looks like a deer you see in the movies. Anyhow, he doesn’t move. So, it’s not like I want to scare him, so I go really slow and he still doesn’t move.”

John was listening to Sean carefully. He was uncomfortable and wanted to be elsewhere, but he knew he had to be here.

“I tip-toed right up to him. He just stared at me. His head was huge. His eyes had rectangles for the irises instead of being round. And I thought, ‘he probably thinks I’m gonna kill him. He’s probably really afraid. And he’s all alone. Nobody to help him.” Then I realised I was talking about me as much as I was about him.”

Sean paused and his eyes scanned the floor but he was seeing the deer again. “I talked to the deer. I told him that I missed my Dad, that my mom missed him, too, that it wasn’t fair that he died, that it wasn’t fair. The deer looked at me, but I think he knew something, that he understood something. I was crying and just then the deer got up. He looked at me full on, but not like he was going to attack, but as if to say that he understood what it was like to be all alone. Then he took off.”

Sean took a great, deep breath and exhaled with a whoosh. “I don’t know why I told you that, man. I just don’t” He turned around to face his computer again, put his hands on the keyboard and started typing.

John felt a great sadness rising in him, filling his chest with ice. His face strained under the force of that sadness and he realized that he, too, was alone and lost, even with living parents and the full life of a twenty-year-old college student. He got up from the bed, put the book down and walked over to where Sean was now typing into a word processor.He put his left hand on his shoulder and said, “Listen, man, it’ll be okay. One day at a time, right? Just one day at a time.”