Chapter 4 September 10th 2025

Grace pushed the big shopping cart thing and searched for the specific jar of pickles that had been eluding her for far too long. It wasn’t so much that the job of “personal shopper” at Wal-Mart was hard, it was just very dull. It did have it’s advantages, she could leave her earbud in and listen to music, and she didn’t have to talk to people.

She glanced left and two young guys whose t-shirts confessed their love of hunting and cage fighting were coming her way.

“Umm excuse me, can you help us find cliff bars,” one of them asked.

Grace would have to speak, but she had been preparing for this and lifted her larynx. “It’s in the cereal aisle, by all the granola bars. Two aisles that way,” she said.

She could see both guys’ eyes look at each other and immediately knew what was going on.

“Great thanks,” one said and they went off snickering. “See I told you man, pay up,” he said as other handed him a 5 dollar bill from his wallet.

“Fucking redneck assholes,” Grace said under her breath. She had one more item for this order and quickly found it while fighting back tears. As she pushed her cart towards the back the two guys were coming up the aisle carrying a box of cliff bars.

“Thanks, found them,” he said and then the other started giggling as they walked by.

She wanted to tell them off, but for what? They hadn’t even had the decency to misgender her, she was just a joke to them.

Grace felt the heat climb up her neck. Her throat tightened, her eyes flickering between the cart and the gleaming floor. She kept her head down. Don’t give them anything. Don’t give them the satisfaction.

She pushed the oversized blue cart toward the back, fighting the wobble in her knees. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, the whole store suddenly too bright, too loud, too exposed. She made a beeline for the breakroom and grabbed her purse out of her locker and then dashed for the restroom, ignoring the old man eating his lunch.

The moment she shut the door behind her, her breath collapsed out of her. She locked the stall, sat down on the closed toilet seat, and pressed both hands over her eyes.

The tears came immediately, hot, stupid, unstoppable.

“God, why do I keep doing this to myself,” she whispered. No answer, of course.

She dug in her purse for the small composition notebook she kept with her. A cheap one, cover peeling at the corners. She opened to the middle pages, the ones full of cramped handwriting:

Reasons to kill myself

She turned past multiple pages filled with writing.

She clicked her pen and wrote under the left column:

79. Two guys at work settled a bet on whether I was trans.

Her hand shook as she wrote it. She stared at the number, seventy-nine. She hadn’t realized it was that high.

Grace sniffed hard, wiped her face on her sleeve, and forced herself to breathe slowly. In, out. In, out.

Then she flipped to the “Reasons not to” pages.

There were fewer items there. Smaller handwriting. Things like:

I want to go to college
Hormones might help
Maybe I could move someday
The forest
She tapped the pen on the page.

Finally, she wrote:

23 . I want to learn to paint.

She closed the notebook carefully, like something fragile might spill out of it. Another shaky breath. She splashed some water on her face at the sink, trying not to look too closely at her reflection.

Her eyes were still red, but she lifted her chin anyway.

“Okay,” she whispered to the mirror. “Back to work.”

She pressed her earbud back in, turned on her music, and stepped out of the bathroom, one more order to finish, one more hour until lunch.

Grace tied the laces of her worn and stained hiking boots, a gift from her Dad. She attached the 300mm lens to her camera, another gift from her Dad, and starts walking down the gravel past her trailer. She stops to take a picture of the cows standing around in the field to her right. The Minnonites who owned the cows lived up in a house about a mile away. She saw them on their side by side every now and again, but they kept their distance and she kept hers.

In front of her the gravel road deteriorated into rough sandstone. Every so often off roaders would come out here and take the old fire road up into the hills. The early settlers named this area Palestine, which Grace always thought was funny. The Palestinians lived in exile in their own land, and she lived in exile here.

She made her way up the old road and down the first trail, following the dry creek bed. The forest was starting to get good again. The brutal summer humidity was down, the brush was drying up, and the spiders weren’t as thick. It was still green, hot and she had to brush webs off her face. Her feet seemed to be taking her somewhere without any input from her brain, but she knew where she was going. It was a two mile walk, but she had time. Eventually she came to the overlook, a place she frequently walked to.

Grace approached the edge and looked down. It was at least a 40 foot drop, probably not enough to actually kill her. Maybe if she jumped headfirst? Suddenly scared she took a step back. Grace sat down and took in a deep breath, smelling the pines that the CCC planted here 90 years ago to fight erosion. There stepping in between the pines was a deer, a large buck with great antlers. He paid Grace no attention as he slowly walked closer to the overlook.

Grace raised her camera, zoomed in, composed, half pressed the shutter to lock focus, composed again and took the photo. The deer turned and looked in her direction. Grace felt her breath catch in her throat, and took what she was sure was the greatest photo anybody had ever taken in history.

“Paint me,” the deer said clear as day though his mouth didn’t move.

Grace let the camera slowly lower and hang from the strap. She didn’t imagine that, she heard the words spoken with deep masculine authority.

Back in her trailer sitting on the ratty old couch she pulled out her notebook.

24. The Deer