Vodka Yonic features a rotating cast of women, nonbinary and gender-diverse writers from around the world sharing stories that are alternately humorous, sobering, intellectual, erotic, religious or painfully personal. You never know what you’ll find in this column, but we hope this potent mix of stories encourages conversation.
I drive my husband’s Subaru home to West Virginia because my Honda Pilot is 22 years old and tired. The car clings to the curves of I-64 while the podcast Old Gods of Appalachia plays. Its mixture of real danger and imagined monsters feels just right, especially as I’m driving in the same mountains where fuel tankers and coal trucks cross lines, but I’m expected to stay in my lane.
I’m traveling to be with my mother and sister one year after the death of my father. I miss him. It seems as if the three months he suffered — in and out of hospitals, rehab centers and his own home — lasted much longer than the 12 months he’s been gone. My mother is stooped with grief. Her due north has disappeared, and she is without direction.
I miss my dad’s stories.
He had several, and he told them on repeat. There were Walmart stories, steel mill (known around Huntington as the nickel plant) stories, small-town West Virginia stories, Army stories. It didn’t matter how many times you’d heard them — and it certainly didn’t matter if you were working on a deadline, as I often was. He was going to tell his stories to completion. You might as well get comfortable.
I’m 15 miles into West Virginia and frustrated by endless construction. I slip off the interstate and onto Route 60. Still in an interstate daze, I pass a Subaru dealership and idly wonder about replacing the 22-year-old Honda Pilot. In front of the cemetery where my best friend is buried, a caramel-colored flash and explosive thump jolt me. I careen onto the shoulder amid dips and thuds.
I call my husband, whimpering that I’ve hit a deer and I think it’s underneath me. He asks if the road is safe enough for me to get out to check on the damage. Traffic buzzes scant inches away. I should make my way to the mental health facility’s parking lot just ahead, but I don’t want to run over the deer again. My husband insists.
Fine. I inch the car forward, and it’s bumpy. I gag. I whimper. I bravely look in the rearview mirror, but see only cavernous potholes.
I step outside, shaking, taking my husband with me on speaker, describing the damage. It’s not bad, but there’s a lot of hair. A bedraggled fellow shuffles crookedly toward me from the direction of the facility and asks if I’m OK. I tell him I am.
I look over at the cemetery — a deer reclines upon the steep, grassy bank.
“Want me to see if she’s dead?” the man asks. I nod my head and tell my husband I’ll take pictures of the car to send to him. My fingers slide over my phone screen while I continue talking to my husband, watching my new friend lift the deer’s head, hold it for a bit, then release. It thumps to the ground. He does this twice more — lift, hold, thump. Lift, hold, thump.
He proclaims, “She is deceased.” There is a break between each syllable, so it sounds like he says “diseased.”
He limps back, continuing to call out, “She is deceased,” and I cry to my phone, “She’s dead!”
“Huh?” says a voice, so I repeat. “She’s dead! She’s dead!”
There is silence on the other end. “This is the veterinarian? And I was calling about Thor?”
Apparently, while I have been taking photographs, I’ve also answered an incoming call.
“Oh! Thor’s not dead, thanks to y’all. I just hit a deer and she’s dead. She’s dead!”
Silence. Then: “I think I’ve called at a bad time.”
My new friend stands by my side. I don’t have the good sense to worry about the possibility that he’s dangerous, so we talk. He wonders aloud about a pile of fur and innards in the middle of Route 60, says it’s been there for a couple of weeks. A different creature meeting the same fate as the deer in the cemetery. I wonder aloud if I should call the non-emergency number for the police. We stand in silent camaraderie. I must make him brave, because he decides to check out the pile of fur and innards in the middle of Route 60. He walks his crooked walk into the highway. I call the non-emergency number.
He stands in the middle of the road, cars whizzing dangerously close to him. With the same assurance he proclaimed the deer deceased, he hollers: “It’s a raccoon!” I hope the man doesn’t suffer the same fate as these animals.
We go our separate ways, but now I have a story. When I tell it to my mother, brightness briefly returns to her sky-blue eyes as she laughs and laughs. She repeats She is diss-eased! to me throughout my visit. I tell my sister. I tell my niece. I tell the clerk in a Huntington novelty shop, continuing to tell him even as he looks down, around, anywhere but at me. I can’t stop until the story is finished. I tell family, neighbors, friends and strangers. My audience is trapped. I cannot stop telling the deer story. And like my dad, I will tell it to its completion.
I still miss my dad. But I can miss him a little less knowing his storytelling lives on in me.
