But he’d always been afraid of his love’s volume, and he’d always been more afraid of her love’s volume.
When he was nineteen, he’d driven onto the ferry, positive he was going to break up with her and join the Marines. Distraught by his weakness, he stepped out of his car and paced the ferry’s small deck. Then he leaned over the railing and saw a herd of deer swimming alongside the ship.
“Holy shit,” he said to himself.
“Holy shit,” he said again, and counted eleven deer.
“Holy shit,” he said for the third time as the largest buck turned its head and looked at him. The deer was judging him.
Amazed, he turned to tell the three other people on the ferry. But he changed his mind. He wanted to keep the deer for himself. It was a sign, he thought. How could he leave a place where he could see miracles like this?
So, instead of leaving her on that day and going to war, he carried his hand drum into her house. And with an audience of three — her and her parents — he sang an honor song to deer. He improvised a song for deer. And as he sang it, he knew that his honor song was also a love song for her. And he’d instantly memorized it.
So, years later, as he stood in the kitchen doorway and watched his wife weeping over his ridiculous amendment of their wedding vows, he tried to comfort her.
“Sweetheart,” he said. “Even if I forget your name, I’ll still remember that deer song. Every time you come to visit me, I’ll sing you that deer song, even if I’m not sure why I’m singing it, and everything will be okay.”
He almost believed it. And she almost believed it, too.
BASIC TRAINING
George Mikan was the best basketball donkey that Carter & Sons had ever owned. You could train any donkey to let any human ride it randomly around a basketball court. But George Mikan, named for the bespectacled giant who played pro ball in the ’50s, had an affinity for the game. He always trotted directly toward the hoop regardless of the dexterity, intelligence, or size of the person he was carrying. Emery Carter, Jr., mostly known as Deuce, was convinced that George Mikan would have shot the ball if he had opposable thumbs, but Emery Carter, Sr., mostly known as Emery, scoffed at the idea.
“Donkeys got only three talents,” Emery said. “Fucking, braying, and shitting.”
“What about basketball?” Deuce asked.
“For donkeys, everything is fucking, braying, and shitting.”
Deuce wanted to tell his father that all human activity is also about fucking, braying, and shitting, but he knew his father wouldn’t appreciate the joke. His father wasn’t dumb but he lived in a world that did not include metaphors.
There comes a time in every son’s life when he thinks he is smarter than his father. But the truth is that fathers and sons are mostly equal in intelligence. Geniuses beget geniuses and idiots beget idiots. And yet, there also comes a time in a few sons’ lives when it can be proven beyond any doubt that they are very much smarter than their fathers. So, yes, Deuce was the Socrates of the Carter clan. But even Deuce knew that wasn’t saying much because the Carter clan currently consisted of himself, the elder Emery, and twelve donkeys.
Emery Sr. and Emery Jr. were the president and vice president of Carter & Sons, one of two Donkey Basketball outfits in the Pacific Northwest and one of only ten still operating in the United States. Founded by Edgar Carter in the days after he’d come limping home from WWII, it had, for over four decades, provided solid middle-class employment for Edgar, his wife Eileen, and their three sons, Edgar Jr., Edward, and Emery.
The 1950s through early 1980s were the glory days of Donkey Basketball. Every weekend, the Carters and their donkeys traveled to high schools in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, and split the gate proceeds 50/50 with the sponsoring organizations. Once in a while, they even found games in Utah, Northern California, Nevada, and western Montana. Donkey Basketball was popular. Donkey Basketball helped high schools raise money for new football uniforms or new trumpets for the band or typewriters for the business classes. Donkey Basketball helped the Masons and Elks raise money for college scholarships or give out toys to poor kids at Christmas or help a war widow fix the roof on her house. Donkey Basketball wasn’t just profitable — it was socially responsible. It was good Christian work, and the Carters happened to be the most dedicated outfit with the most friendly humans and donkeys.
Then came the late ’80s and the concept, the romantic poetry, of Animal Rights, and Donkey Basketball was soon viewed in the same way as slaughtering pigs or injecting hepatitis into lab rats or cutting open the skulls of live monkeys and studying their working brains. It wasn’t fair. The Carters loved their donkeys. They fed and bathed the donkeys. The Carters, as a family, midwifed the births of at least a hundred donkey babies. Their donkeys weren’t just pets. And they weren’t just moneymaking employees. They were family.
By 1991, Carter & Sons went Chapter 11 bankrupt. Edgar and Eileen, married for fifty years, died within days of each other. The older boys, Edgar Jr. and Edward, went looking for work in Alaska and never came back. So that left only Emery to care for a barnful of unemployable donkeys and to try and save the family business. And he’d been saving it for twenty years, gaining and losing two wives in the process, but hanging on to a son, a namesake, who was also his best friend.
After dragging the company out of bankruptcy, Emery and Deuce somehow made enough money each year to feed the donkeys and themselves and to pay for the gas to make it to the various towns that still welcomed Donkey Basketball. And once in a while, they had enough cash to rent a motel rather than sleeping in the truck or driving for hours to get back home or to the next game. Though Emery considered himself a Truman Democrat, he discovered that 99 percent of Donkey Basketball fans were now Republicans and/or reservation Indians. He figured Indians loved basketball and animals in equal measure, and he knew those rez people loved to laugh, but he didn’t understand why Donkey Basketball had suddenly become a nearly exclusive Republican tradition. He decided not to care. Money was money, after all. And his donkeys didn’t give a shit about liberal-vs.-conservative battles, so Emery decided not to care, either. If Emery had thought to own a motto or to issue a mission statement, it would have been: “Donkeys love everybody.”
And it was true. Donkeys did love everybody. And Emery loved everybody, too. He was, in an old-fashioned way, a very decent man. One might have thought to call him chivalrous if that word wasn’t loaded with a history of pistol duels.
But Deuce hated the donkeys. He’d hated them since he could walk and say the word “donkey.” But mostly he hated the fact that he had, through family obligation, dedicated his life to something as inane as Donkey Basketball. He was embarrassed that his job hampered — no, destroyed — his romantic life. After all, what’s the third question any woman asks any potential lover?
— What’s your name?
— Deuce.
— Where you from?
— North of Spokane. Little town called Chewelah.
— So what do you do for a living?
— I run a Donkey Basketball company.
— Donkey Basketball?
— Uh, yeah.
— So you teach donkeys how to play basketball?
— Well, no, we’ve trained the donkeys to carry people around the court. The people play basketball while riding the donkeys.
— So it’s like wheelchair basketball? Except the donkeys are the wheelchairs?
— Well, no, those wheelchair folks are amazing athletes. We don’t usually have athletes in our games. The people are goofs. And the donkeys just wander around the court. Mostly wander. But we got one donkey that’s a natural ballplayer.