It was the spring of 2020. The weather was perfect. I couldn’t stay indoors. The lockdown for COVID-19 just kept going on and on, week after week, month after month. I didn’t know at the time that this would just be the tip of the iceberg.

I couldn’t follow the rules, not completely. I had never been really good with rules. I could not stay at home. I had started going for long walks a couple weeks into the lockdown. Some days or nights I walked the streets. If the weather was really nice, I walked a half mile to a local park, Pennypack, and did as many miles as my knees would permit.

This was a day to go to Pennypack, follow the path alongside the muddy green creek, relax and forget the world for a while. I owned a mask, homemade, but usually wore it around my neck when I went out. It was much cheaper to make a few masks out of old t-shirts and wash them daily than buy one–at least at the time. It was still hard to find disposable masks then, although some were beginning to crop up for sale at jacked up prices.

When I had my mask, I covered my face when people were nearby. I was not the only one doing this. There were the “always on” mask people, the “never on” mask people, and flirtatious “on and off” mask people like me. I wondered if any of this would become part of the culture after COVID-19 died down.

The park was crowded. We all had cabin fever. The city parks were still open. People could go there legally, in theory, to fish or run or walk, so long as they kept social distance and wore a mask. Swimming and barbecues were prohibited, but that didn’t mean it stopped people from doing either activity. Most people I saw in the park did not wear masks. Those that did would get teased by other outdoor enthusiasts for being “paranoid.” By the end of the year nearly three hundred and fifty thousand would be dead.

I walked alongside the creek under a canopy of trees. The natural world was doing well during the lockdown. There seemed to be more birds than in prior years. The air itself tasted fresher than I remembered.

About a mile and half into my walk the path turned. As I approached the bend in the road a tall, gaunt man came around the curve. As soon as he saw me, he stopped, started coughing violently, and spit on the road. He smiled at me and said, “You startled me.”

He appeared to be in his seventies. He was missing most of his front teeth. He wore blue jeans and a flannel shirt. He had a fedora, and was carrying a fishing rod and tackle box. He did not wear a mask.

I asked him, from a safe distance, if he had any luck fishing. He showed me two trout hooked to a chain.

“I had more, but let them go. I had too many to carry. I don’t know about you, but there is a nasty sight just around the bend. Don’t know if you have the stomach for it. If you don’t, just turn back. There’s a dead deer, a young buck, with some velvet on its head, lying on the ground. Its belly is ripped open. Guts spilled out. Some really big black birds are feeding on it.”

“Turkey buzzards?” I asked.

“That’s it. Turkey buzzards.”

“I’ve seen them circling over the park.”

“Not as many as in the mountains.”

“You’re right about that.”

“Take a look if you want. It’s just around the bend. I think it was hit by a car on the road and ran into the park. Or could be maybe an illegal bow hunter got it. Lot of people are hunting in the park these days, even though it’s against the law. It’s something to do.”

“Just around the bend? On the road or next to it?”

“Not on the path. It’s up the slope a little bit in a clearing, but you can’t miss it. You can see it from the bike path.”

I pointed to the bend in the road ahead of me. 

“Just around that bend?”

“Yeah, you can’t miss it.”

I wished the man a good day and continued my walk. I rounded the bend and looked for the deer. I didn’t see it. I didn’t see any vultures. I did see a white log, a fallen tree that had lost its bark. Its remaining branches were twisted in odd ways. I looked at the log and wondered, had the man mistook it for a deer? Yes, I thought, if you were half asleep, or looked quickly, especially if it was dark, you might “see” a deer in that tangle. Especially if you were high. But it wasn’t dark now, and the old man didn’t look high.

I kept walking, searching either side of the path, looking high and low for the fallen deer. I walked four miles. I didn’t spot any dead deer. I turned around and headed back to the entrance. I kept my eyes open for the deer. I did not see one. Anywhere. When I came back to the fallen log, I studied it again from different angles. I doubted that bunch of wood could have been mistaken for a deer.

I began to think the old man had been pulling my leg for some reason, known only to him. Maybe he just like to see how gullible people were. I should have let it go, but it made me angry. There were plenty of worthwhile things to look at in the park instead of searching for a dead animal.

While I pondered this a shadow came out of the brush. A young buck, with small velvet bump on its head, out of place in this season. It had a wound in its side, not gaping as the fisherman had described it, but it might be hard to recover from. If this was the deer the old man had been talking about, it was not dead. Maybe he’d seen it resting or stunned. There was no sign of birds circling. The deer half ran half hobbled to a place where the bank was low and crossed the stream, finding its way up the bank on the other side of the creek, and disappeared into trees and brambles.

The man had not lied. He had just exaggerated the details. I guess to make the tale more fun for him to tell or more interesting to the listener. I guess I can’t blame him embellishing the facts. We all do it to some degree. The plain truth is like plain yogurt. You need to throw some fruit in it to make it a treat.

Maybe there had been turkey vultures. Maybe a few nips from sharp beaks had given the deer the impetus to move around again.

Or maybe I had seen a different deer, a different victim of a bored hunter or careless driver or something else altogether.

Maybe.

Maybe it had been a bull story and my experience was just the result of random chance. 

Maybe.

The truth is hard to know and not always worth the trouble of finding out.

It was no longer the old man’s tale. He had left it behind, passed it on to me, a gift unasked for. .

What would I do with it?