Like a doe in the headlights, sister blinded by affection for man-friend

Initially, this week’s column was going to be on the topic of New Year’s resolutions. And while it was a timely piece for the small percentage of people who have yet to break their annual, all-too-often unattainable goals, another current event caused me to scratch the story. It all began last Monday evening ....

“I wonder what Wendy’s doing?” I asked Mama and Daddy while we watched the evening news. Mama shrugged her shoulders as she stretched her feet forward onto a stack of pillows. And Daddy – well, he flared his nostrils and tuned me out by turning up the TV’s volume. Since neither of them knew, or responded, I decided to call my older, unwed sister to get the scoop.

“I have something to show you,” my sister said after we’d exchanged our “hello” and “how are you.”

“Well, I guess I’ll have to wait until I’m invited into your kingdom,” I replied to my somewhat reclusive sister, who hadn’t solicited my visits since last Easter.

“Why don’t you come on over now,” she responded, rallying me forth from my recliner and out the back door.

And so, I set forth for my sister’s abode.

Now, perhaps this is a fitting time to report that my sister now has a “man-friend.” And it was her man-friend who welcomed me at the door that evening.

“So what’s the surprise?” I asked the man-friend as I stepped into my sister’s sanctuary. But neither Wendy, nor the man-friend, needed to reply.

“What the devil!” I bellowed out at the brown beast that loomed above me on the living room wall.

“It’s kind of scary,” Wendy agreed, while we both stared at her latest fashion fixture – a mounted deer’s head.

“I thought you were opposed to hunting!” I reminded my sister. My sister responded only with a smile to the man-friend who’d hung his hunting trophy on her living room wall.

That’s when the man-friend flexed his muscles for us and began to speak of the manly sport of hunting wild beasts. The man-friend told tales of setting up snares and tracking down all sorts of woodland creatures. When he finished, the man-friend beamed at his stuffed trophy – that ol’ buck who’d run out of luck.

As I stared at that decapitated deer’s head hanging above me, I got the ghostly feeling that it was glaring right back at me.

And that’s when I said goodbye.

“What was the big surprise?” Mama asked as I trudged into the Eaves’ homeplace a little later. And so I told Mama of the man-friend and his mounted deer’s head hanging on my sister’s living room wall.

“She doesn’t even agree with hunting!” I scowled, as I sat down at Mama’s kitchen table for a piece of fried cornbread and some sought-after counseling.

Mama explained to me that a “man-friend” can do that sort of thing to a woman. That even my sister’s philosophy on hunting could fade away for the likes of a man-friend.

When I crawled into bed that night, I thought about my sister and the man-friend. And then I thought about that dead deer’s head – and its ghostly, glaring stare that had scared me home that evening.

“Mama?” I hollered from my bed, where I was tucked unusually tight. “Do you have a night light?”


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