I lug that overloaded basket of wrung out laundry outside, across the drive, down the slope and around the forsythia bush and past the stump of the fallen down apple tree – to the clothesline, thinking of those women with clotheslines right off their back stoops with considerable envy.
Why couldn’t I have a clothesline like that? What had I done wrong in my life to leave me stranded here with a clothesline half a mile from the house?
Of course, I exaggerate, and I think of what a good strengthening exercise this lugging of wrung out laundry is for my older-than-middle-aged body. I pat myself on the back, gently, metaphorically, and drop the basket to the ground beside the clothesline pole. Here, at last. Thankfully, I had remembered to grab the clothespin bag from the peg beside the door as I left the house. I have learned not to leave that bag hanging here at the pole. On the occasions that I have forgotten it out here, I’ve discovered spiders, beetles, earwigs, possibly wasps inside the bag, thinking to set up housekeeping there! We don’t want that.
I shake out the unders, the t-shirts, the aprons, pillowcases, dishtowels, and pin them to the line. The socks I match up, hang each with its mate and by the cuffs, toes all facing the same way. I read somewhere that in the days of the underground railroad, women wanting to help the runaway blacks along their route would hang socks that way, toes all pointing in the direction of safety, unless there was danger in the neighbourhood, in which case the socks would be hung higgledy-piggeldy, pointing in all which directions. I haven’t anyone to warn in this manner, except perhaps the deer. I pause in my pegging of a pair of pants to consider this thought.
Our neighbour is a hunter, of deer. A very nice man, a good neighbour who does, now and then, when his hunt is successful, gift us a gift of venison, but – those deer. What if I were to pin the socks to the line with toes pointing east on days when I see him Mr. Brewster headed out, in his camouflage and day-glo orange vest, rifle over his shoulder, heading west? Indicating to the deer that they should go east? On mornings when Mr. Brewster heads east, I could hang all the socks with their toes pointing west. How could I convince the deer to heed such symbols? I know that deer can’t see colours, or so they say but, really, who knows? My husband’s work socks that I hang on the line are all grey, with white toes. Surely the deer could see that much colour contrast?
I carry on, shaking out and pegging each item from my basket, and I ponder this question. I know that we have an over-population of deer, that Mr. Brewster is a conscientious hunter never allowing an animal to suffer from a bungled shot, that the venison he gives us is fine, nutritious meat and better by far than any of that meat one buys in the grocery store. I know all of that, but I also know the deer.
I get to know the doe and fawn who appear in the far corner of the pasture at the end of a day. When I see them there, I close the porch door very softly, I tip-toe out behind the flower beds, behind the forsythia, trying to get a better view. They are so beautiful and lithe, their eyes large and luminous, the colour of their coats changing as the seasons change the palette of the landscape. Sometimes, especially in winter, we might see ten, twelve, or even more deer in the back field, or we see their tracks through the bush. Whole herds of them moving along of their own volition, no fence keeping them in or out, truly wild. I admire them their freedom, though certainly, these days, it is a curtailed freedom. If I could just teach them how to read the socks that I hang on the line!
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