Rose in a Storm (11 page)

The coyote’s look was plain—he would stand here with the lamb, fight to the death for it, bring it back to his den for his pack, to feed them, save them, get them through the night. In the killing cold, in the mounting storm, his own instincts were as clear as hers: get to food, get to shelter. Quickly. Fresh food was life-and-death to him and his pack.

The lamb had been born quietly, and Rose had not heard or smelled it through the wind and snow. But the coyotes, upwind of the barn, had been waiting and watching. The leader would have slipped in around the edge of the pole barn, sending the sheep—all but the mother—back into the corner as he grabbed the lamb by the neck. He must have killed it swiftly and taken it up the hill. The carcass, too heavy for him to carry all the way back, he would have meant to dismember there, and he and the other coyotes would bring its parts back through the storm, through the woods, to their den.

The wild dog rounded the pole barn corner and growled. Covered in ice and snow, his fur up, he began to charge up the hill toward the coyote.

*   *   *

A
LL KINDS
of pictures flashed through Rose’s mind.

One was of her fighting the coyote, trying to drive it off, returning the lamb to the flock. But the lamb was dead. The coyote would fight. The other coyotes would join in. They would not run and leave a fresh lamb in the snow, not now.

Another image was of charging up the hill with the wild dog. This image became clear, the two dogs challenging the coyotes, then it stopped. The wild dog was determined, but not strong enough. She saw him dead.

Rose pictured Sam giving commands. But he faded from her mind. He was not there. Rose’s mind flashed backward to some of the other animals she had seen die—sheep of old age, or in childbirth, cows of illness or injury. Those deaths, she recalled, had occurred beyond her ability to react. They were not her responsibility.

A different feeling, a sense of choice, came to her now. She reacted to it.

She showed her teeth, not to the coyote but to the wild dog. Surprised, he stopped. She started down the hill, backing him down, growling, challenging him with her eyes, pushing into him with her head and shoulders, watching his eyes watch the coyote.

She could see without seeing that the coyote was not fighting, was making his way up the hill with the body of the lamb, watching them as he backed away.

Rose could see that the wild dog did not understand what Rose was doing, or why she was reacting to him in this way, but he grasped what she wanted him to do. He was a working dog; he was prepared to fight. But he deferred to her. She knew that he could not challenge her notions of work. He had made decisions, too—many times—but this was hers.

Rose turned and looked back. She saw the trail of blood, a
deep red staining the snow. A moment later, the coyotes and lamb were swallowed up by the storm and the darkness.

She headed back down the hill, the wild dog ahead of her, both tired, struggling to find their footing, to lick their stinging, bloodied paws. They were greeted by the ewe, who wasn’t retreating into the corner of the pole barn but coming out with a pleading, expectant look in her eyes.

R
OSE TILTED
her head, pricked her ears forward, raised her nose in the air, looking for new signs, new signals. But she was getting the same message from everywhere: cold and fear. And the overwhelming backdrop of the monstrous storm.

She was close to the pole barn. The wild dog had gone back inside the big barn. The goats were quiet now. She wondered where Carol, the donkey, was, could not sense or hear her. There was almost too much to keep track of.

The temperature had plunged to far below zero, and the wind howled and seemed to suck the warmth, even the life, out of the farm. It would be dangerous to stop too long in this cold. She felt it in her paws, in her eyes and ears. In such weather animals that did not move or get out of the wind could die easily—frozen to the ground.

Rose looked to the woods, sensed the panic through the trees and the snow and the brush. There were surely animals dying, a few carcasses already lying out in the woods, creatures stricken by exposure to the cold and wind, by exhaustion, weakened by hunger. Perhaps the coyotes would feed on them and stay away.

This kind of cold almost made it painful to breathe. It was draining her as well as the other animals. The cold was coming
up from the ground and into her body, through her mouth, eyes and ears. She couldn’t bring herself to go back into the shelter of the farmhouse. And Sam did not seem to be coming out for now. She had seen his weariness.

She sensed her limits. Rose could not help Sam deal with the cold—that was in the other realm, the human realm of things, pipes frozen and cracked, machines, stoves, and heaters failing—but the sheep were her job, not Sam’s.

The sheep, as attuned to working dogs as the dogs are to them, seemed to sense that Rose was lost, that her world had been turned upside down. They were talking to one another, trying to soothe and be soothed, fighting off panic. In their own suffering and distraction, they had disconnected from her. Weakened and sensing danger, losing energy, terrified of the coyotes, the sheep were clinging to the warmth of one another and huddling together.

Rose made her way into the pole barn, closing her eyes against the ice, the wind flattening her ears, and stood in front of the sheep. The sheep were startled when she reappeared out of the snow and cold not five feet from where they lay. Her eyes told the sheep not to move. They didn’t.

Rose shivered in the cold, and her paws ached from the sting of it. Her eyelids were nearly frosted over, but she shook her head and her eyes swept the barn. Two or three of the sheep got up, almost as if out of respect. The others seemed beyond caring.

Rose invoked their ancient relationship. Her presence said, Trust me. Nothing else. We will do what we can. She stared at the sheep so that there could be no mistaking her message.

The Blackface got up, and, one by one, the rest of the ewes and rams followed, meeting her gaze. The sheep stood face-to-face
with Rose, and the scene on that snow-swept hill seemed to transform itself into other hills, other storms, other places, this deepest of relationships asserting itself.

The sheep calmed, settled, and began to lie down again.

Rose could not guarantee anything, not food, water, safety, or survival. But she was determined that they would respect her, honor their long history together, and, if it were their time, they would face it together. The story would not end in panic and disconnection, confusion and death. It would end with her trying to lead them, keep them safe.

As the sheep settled, Rose moved deeper into a corner of the barn to get out of the fierce wind. She came face-to-face with a ewe and her newborn lamb, which was shivering in the cold. The milk of the hungry, cold, tired mother was surely weak.

Rose, exhausted but alert, approached the mother, and sniffed the lamb. The baby, not yet knowing the ways of sheep and dogs, stumbled over to Rose and touched her nose against the dog’s.

Behind them, the snow obscured the world below.

The lamb crawled next to its mother for warmth, and the ewe nuzzled her baby. Rose turned and began the cold, wet walk back to the barn.

R
OSE WAS EXHAUSTED
, not only physically but in a new and different way. She was used to being tired but not to being so drained, challenged by so many unfamiliar and disturbing situations. And she was not yet done.

A dull-gray morning was beginning to break. It was the third day of thick and swirling snow. Rose stopped and surveyed the strange scene, adjusted her map, but failed to keep it
clear. Down below, and to the right, the farmhouse sat in the dark, the back nearly buried in snow. It was as if Sam were trapped inside now.

Nearby, the big barn, with the chickens and the strutting, pompous rooster. Next to it, the goat pen—the jeering, raucous creatures’ usual complaints softer now, muffled by the storm. One of the lambs, briefly added to the map, was now gone, the other bleating softly. Farther to the left, Brownie the steer and some of the cows stared up at her anxiously.

Rose was confused. Sam was integral to her work, but at this moment she was on her own. And it seemed that all of the animals—the stricken mother, the wild dog, the other sheep, the steers and cows, even the loud and obnoxious goats—were looking to her.

Her cherished map was in shambles—it was changing too rapidly. The storm was bigger than anything in her experience. Rose felt a sense of awe and wonder, a great stirring inside her mind. Her life and work had always been directed before, comprehensible, part of her experience, shaped by her instincts, by Sam, by the predictable routines, rhythms, and seasons of the farm. It seemed that her world was falling to pieces, like little drops of blood scattered across the snow.

S
AM WATCHED
R
OSE
as she worked her way back behind the farmhouse, the pathway nearly impassable. She got to the dog door, protected by the overhang, and dragged herself through the kitchen. Sam was now awake and dressed, sitting on the couch drinking coffee, and looking anxiously at the white outside the windows. He seemed paralyzed as the blizzard enveloped his whole life, everything he had worked for.

But yesterday afternoon’s inactivity was a momentary
pause in the battle; it would not be repeated. He had to keep trying, to fight to save what he could—every water pipe, gate, and animal.

T
HE POWER WENT OUT
as Sam walked toward the back of the house. The lamps flickered two or three times—the fur on Rose’s ruff went up at the shifting light—and then went black. After a moment of darkness, a bulb in the living room flickered on again.

“The emergency generator,” said Sam, “it kicks on automatically.” But it was diesel-powered and would last only a day or two, and it powered only a few lights downstairs plus the kitchen stove. Everything else—the power to most of the house, the barns, the well pump, the heating system—was shut down. It was better than nothing, but this was one more hard blow.

“I’m surprised it took this long,” he told Rose, “when you consider the wind.”

He was putting his coat on, looking for dry gloves, pulling up his boots. “I can’t just stay in here,” he said. “Let’s go check the snow on the barn roof. It must be getting bad. Maybe I can get a ladder up there.”

Rose did not understand these words, and Sam did not sound like he usually did when giving her commands. But still, she grasped the call to work.

She followed as he clambered out the back door, bowed his head low in the wind to keep the snow out of his face as he headed for the barn, Rose following close behind him.

*   *   *

S
AM SLID OPEN
the barn door and clambered up to the rack where the few remaining hay bales were stored. He took out a long cord and tied one bale to his belt, and then heaved it onto his back. Then he turned and waded out into the storm, up the hill, to the goat pen. The frightened goats were huddled in one of their sheds and Sam took off his gloves, grabbed his knife, and cut the hay bale, stuffing it into the shed. He went back into the barn and repeated the process, hauling enough hay into the goat shed and the adjoining feeder to last them at least a couple of days.

“To give ’em a chance,” he told Rose.

He’d been talking to her more and more in the last day or so to fend off his deepening isolation and despair. He found, a bit to his surprise, that talking to Rose, sharing his plan with her, was soothing. And although he knew she didn’t understand most of his words, she seemed to accept it as part of her job now to listen to him.

“This storm is awful,” he said. “Things will really start to get bad if it goes on like this. I hate to sit in the house and watch all of my animals freeze and die. But it’s almost impossible to move now.”

It was difficult to speak over the wind, and yet he didn’t feel as if he were talking to himself. Rose was much more a presence than he ever thought a dog could be. But still, he was struggling to keep even. He wondered if he was beginning to lose his mind. Rose was so steady, she made a difference, he kept telling himself. She did.

“Rose,” he said. “I miss Katie every day, but I’m glad she didn’t see this. This would have been awful for her.”

Sam knew there was not enough hay for all the animals for very long—he had been expecting another shipment when the
storm broke. He had converted his hay pastures to more profitable crops—corn, potatoes—and bartered for hay with some other farmers.

The animals would eat it all at once, not saving any.

There wasn’t much point in putting too much out now, anyway, as it would be covered in snow and ice, and inedible. But the goats were hardy. He had given them enough to hold them for a while. He’d do the same for the others.

He put what he could in the sheds, feeders, and pole barn. It wasn’t enough, but it was something.

And now he needed to clear the roof.

He pushed open the gate and squeezed through the opening in the sliding door, wet snow falling off him, the cats and chickens circling, hoping he was bringing food. “Stay out, Rosie,” he said, pulling out an aluminum ladder and a long rake he used to get snow off the slate roofs that covered all of the buildings of the farm. This was a ritual that she knew well, she’d seen him do it often enough. As long as he’d been a farmer, Sam had heard stories of snow collapsing roofs, especially old barn roofs, which were not always strong enough and often were not slanted steeply enough.

Sam felt energized, driven even, at the sight of enormous amounts of snow piling up everywhere. He was worried about everything on the farm, but for the moment he was focused on the rear of the big barn. It had a good slant for normal snow—it would build up, and then slide off. But he had never seen this much, and it was piling up perilously high. Five feet or more had fallen now, and it was much higher in some places from the wind. Rose watched from beside the feeder.

*   *   *

S
AM HAD DRAGGED
the ladder outside and to the rear of the barn, using his feet and a shovel to clear a flat space to plant it. Twice the gusting winds blew the ladder out of his hands and off to the side, but Sam braced the bottom with a rock and some cement blocks, packing the bottom rung in snow. When it was solid enough, he began the laborious and slippery climb up the ladder, step by step, scraping the ice off his boots on each successive rung, dragging the long snow rake up by one hand.