Where is WordPress based? Closer to the dateline than I am. It is officially 1:54 a.m. EST, as I post this. Thus day 9.
It was not the Amityville House but it certainly was a horror. It was a nineteenth century farmhouse with add-ons that ate paint and was reputed to be infested with rats that ate everything else.
It was also located in what the locals referred to as B.F.E. when in polite company. In less rarified company that translated out to Bum Fuck Egypt, a lovely little largely social colloquialism that takes the average Yankee a little time to get used to.
I was here looking for a man who said that he had seen a fucking reindeer. One with a red nose, no less.
Swande Salo was a grim faced, furrow cheeked ex-Yankee of Finnish descent who had come down to Old Fort by way of Mackinaw Island, Upper Michigan. Where he comes from and where his family comes from there are actually winters. Where his Dad was from there are actual reindeer.
Down here we don’t see either one.
We just have your basic garden variety split hoofed, road crossing, car-accidents-waiting to happen that the local hunters refer to as deer. White tail deer to be specific. And whilst they will eat an orchard down to stumps and a garden down to the ground, they don’t fly and they certainly do not have glowing red noses.
We just wish they did as it would make shooting them a whole lot easier.
So here I was way out in B.F.E. because the local paper saw some benefit to be reaped from a personality piece about some local codger and Rudolph.
Swande met me on his front porch, wearing a classic red plaid wool hunting jacket, a pair of boxers, and about twelve days worth of household grime. His eyes and cheeks were ruddy with the cold and the local antifreeze and his nose was nigh on sleigh beacon bright in and of itself.
I figured that what we had here was a classic case of cold weather, moonshine, and a white tailed deer romping in the man’s front yard.
I was dying to go in the house despite the reputation of the rodent population, it was an extremely bitter afternoon and fading toward a colder evening, but old Swande was having none of it.
He wanted to show me the reindeer poop. In his boxers.
I braced myself, pulled out my little voice recorder, and prepared myself for a tour of the anal expulsionary efforts of all of regional dog population.
But it was not dog shit, he showed me. It was much larger deposits. It was not deer scat either. I’ve killed enough of them to know. I was looking around for cows but not seeing any.
And one has to admit that on top of an old Plymouth Fury is a really weird place to find cow dung. So are gutters and hedge tops for that matter. I was beginning to think of my teen aged son’s kung fu monkey shirt with it’s classy “Who Flung Poo?” legend, when the old whacko grabbed me and threw me down behind a hedge and face first into the evidence.
I was some pissed let me tell you, but when I got up the old fool was shaking one fist at the sky and cursing up a blue streak.
And be damned if following his gaze I did not see a freaking reindeer, not a cute cuddly little reindeer from a Disney flick, but a big old mangy, heavy horned big shouldered Laplandic deer of the reindeer variety standing on the old man’s porch roof.
The thing was as big as a good sized horse, and as ill-tempered as a mule as it demonstrated by lifting it’s dingy brown tail and pissing a stream of rancid yellow into poor Swande’s otherwise pristine rain gutters.
“ All right,” the old man said, “That’s it, by gum. I’m going to kill that critter right now.”
And he stomped off into his living room at full old man shuffle. The reindeer pawed the shingles once and then jumped down off the porch roof to land with all four hooves on the top of my Chevy Tahoe.
The Tahoe rocked beneath it and it took a few mincing steps to gain its balance as the roof of my vehicle began to sag beneath it.
I did not even pause to think (should have though), I just grabbed a stick from near the hedge and ran at the thing.
“Get off of there. Get off of my truck.”
The reindeer gave an alarmed bleat and damned if it’s nose did not suddenly take on a ruddy red glow in the fading light.
Then it crapped all over my truck.
I threw the stick at it and was yelling some more when old Swande arrived back on his front porch, this time with his four-ten in hand.
The first shot damn near took my head off. The second sent the reindeer into terrified flight. Literally.
I do not mean it ran away. I mean it took off. Straight up and the next thing you know it was actually and actively flying off across the road toward the wooded ridge across the fields on the other side.
I was still standing there gape mouthed when old Swande fired again. The reindeer jinked in midair, it’s nose as bright as an aircraft’s beacon lights, but old Swande must have done a fair amount of duck hunting in his life because he was already correcting for the new flight path, and leading that horrible bright red nose a little bit in the bargain.
I took off toward him at a run.
“Hey! No! Don’t!” I shouted, but he had already leveled off and pulled the trigger.
There was a stupendous crash behind me as my Tahoe absorbed the extra kinetic energy off about seven hundred pounds of reindeer.
I froze wincing. And for a moment time just stood still.
Then the old Finn, apparently, having figured out exactly what he had just done, looked at me and said, “ I just shot Rudolph.”
“Yeah, I know. Way to go, man.”
“I figure that gets me onto the naughty list for sure.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“What do you think I should do about it?”
“Damned if I know.”
We both stood there looking at the mess that was my truck. Blood, reindeer poop, dead reindeer, broken glass, bent metal.
“You can use the phone in the house, you want.” Swande said to me.
“What for?” I asked.
“Call your insurance company. Call the police for the accident report. Get a ride home.”
“Accident report?” I asked. I felt completely blown away and there was a huge space between me and the words I was saying. It’s not everyday Rudolph totals your truck.
“Yeah,” Swande says, “Way I figure it, you hit this here deer and it rolled up on your roof. You might want to call an ambulance too, seeing as you must have been going pretty fast.”
“What?”
“Well, the truck’s a total loss, you must have got out of the passenger door. Other side is completely crushed in. Looks like a beer can.”
I looked at him, reason dawning.
“You complete bastard.” I said.
“Too bad I had to shoot it. Poor thing was suffering pretty badly, though.”
“You complete and total bastard.” I said as I went for him in a low body hit.
That must be when he clocked me with the gun.
When I woke up the driveway was full of cops, reporters taking pictures, and insurance people. An EMT was standing over me with a worried look on his face.
“Damn, my man, good to see you open your eyes. I was really worried for a bit there. I’m going have to take you out to Marion though, I’m pretty sure you have a concussion. Lucky that’s all you got. You must have been doing sixty at least when you hit that thing.”
And so it went. I was in the hospital for awhile. My Tahoe was totaled out. The reindeer was presumed to have escaped from some ranch or farm nearby where the farmer, not having an exotic animal permit, had never bothered to report it, and for all I know Swande Salo is sitting on his front porch, sipping shine, and smiling to himself over his very narrow escape. The bastard.