bill. Now, Frankie’s our deer, right?” The residents all nodded. “So it stands to reason we’ve got to pay his bill, right?” The nods came more slowly.
“How are we going to do that?” Kenneth, who had been a businessman, asked.
After considerable discussion, it was decided to hold a sale of cookies that they would bake in the residents’ kitchen. Also, they would take up a collection, with people contributing what they could from their meager earnings in the sheltered workshop or the small general store the patients ran on the premises. “But first, before we do any of that,” a resident named Marguerite said firmly, “we have to send Frankie a get-well basket.”
The residents’ council worked the rest of the day finding a basket, decorating it and making a card. The next day a sack of apples was purchased at the general store and each apple was polished until it shone. Mary, Marguerite and George were deputized to deliver the basket. Putting it in a plastic garbage bag so the apples wouldn’t roll down the hill if they slipped in the snow, the three of them set out. They arrived without mishap and quietly let themselves into the stable. Frankie was sleeping in the straw, but he roused when they knelt beside him. Mary read him the card, Marguerite gave him an apple to eat, George settled the basket where he could see it but not nibble it and the three of them returned to the main building to report that Frankie was doing fine and was well pleased with his present.
By the seventh day after the operation, Jean called Dr. Zolton to say it was impossible to catch Frankie and hold him still for the antibiotic injections. Dr. Zolton chuckled. “If he’s that lively,” he told Jean, “he doesn’t need antibiotics.” But he warned it was imperative that Frankie be kept inside for eight weeks, for if he ran on the leg before it knit, it would shatter again.
Concerned about what to feed him for that length of time, Jean watched from the windows of his own house in the woods and on the grounds of Glen Gardner to see what the deer were eating. As soon as the deer moved away from a spot, Jean rushed to the place and gathered the clover, alfalfa, honeysuckle vines, young apple leaves—whatever it was the deer had been feeding on. Often George helped him, and each day they filled a twenty-five-pound sack. Frankie polished off whatever they brought, plus whatever residents coming to visit him at the stable had scavenged from their own meals in the way of rolls, carrots, potatoes and fruit.
“We’d go to see him, and oh, he wanted to get out so bad,” remembers Marguerite, a roly-poly woman with white hair springing out in an aura around her head. “Always he’d be standing with his nose pressed against a crack in the door. He smelled spring coming, and he just pulled in that fresh air like it was something wonderful to drink.”
When the collection, mostly in pennies and nickels, had grown to $135, the council instructed Jean to call Dr. Zolton and ask for his bill so they could determine if they had enough money to pay it. The day the bill arrived, Mary called a council meeting. The others were silent, eyes upon her, as she opened it. Her glance went immediately to the total at the bottom of the page. Her face fell. “Oh, dear,” she murmured bleakly, “we owe three hundred and ninety-two dollars.” Not until she shifted her bifocals did she see the handwritten notation: “Paid in Full—Gregory Zolton, DVM.”
When the eight weeks of Frankie’s confinement were up, Mary, Marguerite, George, Jean and Dr. Zolton gathered by the stable door. It was mid-June, and the grass was knee-deep in the meadow. Jean opened the barn door. Frankie had his nose against the crack as usual. He peered out from the interior darkness. “Come on, Frankie,” Jean said softly. “You can go now.” But Frankie was so used to someone slipping in and quickly closing the door that he didn’t move. “It’s all right,” Jean urged quietly. “You’re free.” Frankie took a tentative step and looked at Jean. Jean stroked his head. “Go on, Frankie,” he said, and gave him a little push.
Suddenly Frankie understood. He exploded into a run, flying over the field as fleetly as a greyhound, his hooves barely touching the ground.
“Slow down, slow down,” muttered Dr. Zolton worriedly.
“He’s so glad to be out,” Mary said wistfully. “I don’t think we’ll ever see him again.”
At the edge of the woods, Frankie swerved. He was coming back! Still as swift as a bird, he flew toward them. Near the stable he wheeled again. Six times he crossed the meadow. Then, flanks heaving, tongue lolling, he pulled up beside them. Frankie had tested his leg to its limits. It was perfect. “Good!” said George distinctly. Everyone cheered.
Soon Frankie was back in his accustomed routine of waiting for Jean by the power plant at six in the morning and searching his pockets for a treat, then accompanying him on at least part of his rounds. At noontime he canvassed the terraces when the weather was fine, for the staff often lunched outdoors. A nurse one day, leaning forward to make an impassioned point, turned back to her salad, only to see the last of it, liberally laced with Italian dressing, vanishing into Frankie’s mouth. Whenever a picnic was planned, provision had to be made for Frankie, for he was sure to turn up, and strollers in the woods were likely to hear a light, quick step behind them and find themselves joined for the rest of their walk by a companionable deer. One visitor whom nobody thought to warn became hysterical at what she took to be molestation by a large antlered creature until someone turned her pockets out and gave Frankie the after-dinner mints he had smelled there and of which he was particularly fond.
In the fall, Jean, anticipating the hunting season, put a red braided collar around Frankie’s neck. Within a day or two it was gone, scraped off against a tree in the woods. Jean put another on, and it, too, disappeared. “He doesn’t like red,” Pauline said. “He likes yellow.”
“How do you know?”
“I know.”
Jean tried yellow. Frankie kept the collar on. Jean was glad of this when Frankie stopped showing up in the mornings. He knew that it was rutting season and it was natural for Frankie to be off in the woods staking out his territory. The mountain was a nature preserve and no hunting was allowed, but still he worried about Frankie because poachers frequently sneaked into the woods; Frankie might wander off the mountain following a doe he fancied.
One day a staff member on her way to work spotted a group of hunters at the base of the mountain. Strolling down the road toward them was Frankie. She got out of her car, turned Frankie around so that he was headed up the mountain, then drove along behind him at five miles an hour. Frankie kept turning to look at her reproachfully, but she herded him with her car until she got him back to safety. On another memorable day, a pickup truck filled with hunters drove up to the power plant. When the tailgate was lowered, Frankie jumped from their midst. The hunters had read about Frankie in the local paper, and when they spotted a tame deer wearing a yellow collar, they figured it must be Frankie and brought him home.
After the rutting season, Frankie reappeared, but this time when he came out of the woods, three does were with him. And that has been true in the years since. The does wait for him at the edge of the lawn, and when he has visited with Jean and made his tour of the terraces and paused awhile under the crab apple tree waiting for George to shake down some fruit for him, Frankie rejoins the does and the little group goes back into the woods.
Because the hunting season is a time of anxiety for the whole of Glen Gardner until they know Frankie has made it through safely, George and the other people at Glen Gardner debate each fall whether to lock Frankie in the stable for his own safety. The vote always goes against it. The feeling is that Frankie symbolizes the philosophy of Glen Gardner, which is to provide care but not to undermine independence. “A deer and a person, they each have their dignity,” Jean says. “It’s okay to help them when they need help, but you mustn’t take their choices away from them.”
So,
