Murder by Deer

As a country vet I did a lot of traveling, but I had never actually been to Justin's house. He shared his lane with a single neighbor, Carl, who was also in his mid-80s and living by himself. As a matter of fact, Justin and Carl were a lot alike, except that Carl was a widower and Justin had never married.

As far as I knew, Justin only had two hobbies: hating Carl, and feeding deer. As a relative newcomer to the area (9 years this spring), I only knew about the first from small-town gossip. Something about Carl stealing Justin's beau while Justin was off in WWII. The second hobby, I had witnessed myself. On at least three of the handful of wintery occasions I had visited his neighbor's small farm, I had seen Justin with his pickup truck pulled off the road, tossing bales of hay to the ground. I couldn't guess why; most farmers, even retired ones like Justin, hated deer for the damage they did to their crops.

Two days ago, however, Carl passed away. I heard about it while I was in the hardware store, stomping snow off my boots and trying to warm my hands by rubbing them together. Nancy, her head deep in a circle of people clustered around the cashier's desk, glanced up at the jingle of the bell over the door. "Doc V, you hear the news?"

I didn't think it had to do with the new calf I had just delivered, so I shook my head.

"Carl died," Nancy said. "Got in a car wreck up by his house. The sheriff just got back a few minutes ago."

I stared at her. Carl, dead? As old as he was, I had expected him to die in his sleep, not to go like this. "What happened?" I asked.

"He went off the road up by his house and hit a tree," said Nancy, shaking her head. The cluster of people around her repeated the gesture, and I noticed Justin's face among them. He looked slightly less dismayed by the tragedy than the others, and a sudden thought struck me.

"Any idea why he went off the road?" I asked, and Nancy shook her head again.

"Sheriff says maybe he swerved to miss a deer," she said. "Then with the roads all slick, he couldn't get control back."

I'm not sure where I'm going with this, and there's nothing I could go to the sheriff with. But for the first time since I had met him, I saw Justin smile.

Starting a new short story

Alright, I've had three short story ideas bouncing around in my head, but all of them seem to have difficulties. In addition, I'm starting to get motivated to return to my novel and start over with it.

However, I've finally decided to give short stories one more shot. I've picked the least-problematic one of the three, and here I go. We'll see how it turns out...