I was sixteen years old when I was driving with girlfriends after dark and turned onto the wrong road. We were in Montana, on the edge of our hometown, driving alongside grasses, trees, and the fences that delineate the occasional properties set far apart from their neighbors. I was new to driving and not very familiar with the neighborhood. When someone shouted from the backseat that I missed our turn, I slowed down and pulled onto a gravel road in order to back up. I wasn’t driving quickly and in fact had already stopped, but as soon as I heard and felt the car’s impact, I screamed and my hands flew to my face. I think we all screamed. The car’s headlights had startled a group of deer gathered just off the road. They bolted past us like a sudden swarm of bees, surrounding us on all sides, and one of the disoriented deer ran directly into my car with a terrible, startling thud. After a moment, as the movement had passed and things were silent again, we all checked in with each other and stepped out of the car to see a terrified deer laying beside the car, one of its front legs broken. It was panicked and trying but unable to move.
My friends and I had to make a decision about what to do next. None of us had ever hit a deer before. We didn’t have cell phones. We weren’t sure what was going to happen to this poor deer, but none of us felt that the right thing was just to get in the car and drive away. No cars were passing that we could flag down. A little nervously, we decided that a couple of us would stay behind in the car, and a couple of us would head to the nearest house with lights on and knock on the door for help. I think it was summertime, but it wasn’t warm outside. We were already feeling cold and I could see the frosty breath from the deer across the road as they looked on at us and their fallen relative.
We started walking down the road. The nearest house was maybe just a few minutes away, but it was dark out, and we knew no one would be expecting to hear their doorbell ring at that hour. We also had no idea who we’d encounter, and if we’d be safe. It felt risky, but we hoped, at that moment, that the kindness of strangers would prevail.
I thought of this evening over and over again in the last two weeks when sixteen-year-old Ralph Yarl knocked on the wrong door in Kansas City and was shot in the head and then again in the arm. I thought of it when twenty-year-old Kaylin Gillis turned up the wrong driveway with her friends in upstate New York and was shot and killed. That could have been me. The cheerleader who got into the wrong car: shot. The sweet sixteen birthday party: shot, shot, shot, shot; four dead and 32 injured.
Guns were a pretty regular part of my surroundings in Montana growing up, even among the very liberal community in which I was raised. Many of my friends and peers were raised hunting for meat and other family friends—liberal academics—would extoll the joys of hunting and gun ownership. A vegetarian myself and adverse to killing ants and crickets, I was not among them, but I was surrounded by the culture and encouraged to see its value. Guns were everywhere. And yet the less romantic part of this culture was of course true too. I attended the funeral of a kid a few grades below me who shot himself in the neck by mistake, joking around with his own gun, believing it to be empty. I also lost touch with an elementary school girlfriend after her mother committed suicide with a gun in the hills somewhere outside of town. There were more gun deaths that I knew of, all preventable, I’m sure.
This was before Fox News had the hold on culture that it does; it was before the fear of our neighbors was as widespread and toxic as it has become; it was a time when decency still seemed to hold hatred in check; it was before the ban on assault weapons expired.
And that night, by the side of the road with the injured deer, was in fact the first time I heard a gunshot, but it wasn’t directed at me. The door we knocked on opened up without a hint of fear. The woman who said hello asked us what we needed and called her adult daughter to come help. They welcomed us, gave us something warm to drink, and called the police to meet us. It was the cop’s gun that I heard that night as he shot the deer, once, twice, a shocking, horrifying sound that I’ll never forget. I had turned down the wrong road and ended up killing a deer. I screamed again and cried.
Quarterlife in American Today
Speaking of Missoula, Montana, a third Quarterlife lawmaker has been disciplined by their House legislature for… speaking. Rep. Zooey Zephyr, 34, was doing her job and doing it well.
Rep. Justin Jones, 27, joined Rep. Zooey Zephry and Maxwell Frost, 25, to speak about the revolution in leadership happening before our eyes: “A new generation is rising up to make America what it ought to be.”
Manuel “Tortuguita” Terán, 26, was murdered by police with 57 bullets in a veritable firing squad before an attempted cover-up. Tortuguita was protesting the construction of Cop City in Atlanta.
B Hayes, 18, was refused entry from attending their own prom at Nashville Christian School because they wore a suit instead of a dress.
Attempts to suppress college voting are real and widespread.
Quarterlife in Books
“Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” by Gabrielle Zevin is just as good as everyone says it is I couldn’t put it down and felt a little sad when it ended. This is a bestseller that lives up to the hype.
xo, Satya
Coming up: Quarterlife Book Talks
The paperback edition of Quarterlife comes out in July and I’ll have the honor of reading at some of my favorite bookstores. I would love to see you there!
Powell’s City of Books, Portland, OR - Wednesday, July 5, 7 pm
Elliott Bay Book Company, Seattle, WA - Thursday, July 6, 7 pm
Shakespeare & Company, Missoula, MT - Saturday, July 15, 10 am
Thank you for writing this! I grew up in TX and had a similar experience of gun normalization. As a waitress, it was common to serve people their lunchtime chicken friend steak and sweet tea while their gun was either in a holster or resting on the table. Now, as a New Yorker in 2023 living in a time of constant gun violence, it shocks me to return to Waco and still see guns seemingly everywhere. ❤️🩹