Rose in a Storm (19 page)

In a few minutes, the hay was gone. Brownie and the cows had consumed two bales by themselves, and were now out in the back, already dusted with snow again. Half the sheep were inside the barn, half out.

There was no more hay, except in the upper reaches of the loft, and no way to get to it.

Rose’s map was in shambles.

Some of the sheep, exhausted, were lying down. Some milled outside in the snow, still protected by their thick coats. One had died, crushed by the cows. A second ewe had gone into labor, straining. Rose could hear her heartbeat, and the lamb’s. She added the baby to her map, removed the sheep killed by the cow.

The cows stood by the rear of the barn with Brownie.

Rose glanced now at the wild dog—he had staggered over to a pile of straw, collapsed, and fallen asleep in a corner of the barn—and tried to get her bearings.

Sam was on her mind. But her sense of Sam and his role in her life seemed muddled. He had left, yet there was still so much work to do.

*   *   *

D
OWN FROM THE HILL
, by way of her exquisite sense of smell, came fresh news—coyotes. They were nearby, and they were hungry. Tonight, they would come for the sheep, for the lambs. They would come for her.

R
OSE LOOKED
back up at the hill, for the ewe in labor that had remained behind. She hadn’t forgotten, and she turned to begin the trek back up, leaving the wild dog in the barn.

The ewe was still struggling to give birth, circling in the wind and snow, then lying down in a near collapse, drained from cold and hunger. Rose smelled her fear and heard the struggle in her belly.

The ewe’s turning had gouged a hole in the snow.

Rose could not hear the heartbeat of a lamb inside of her, though she did hear the ewe’s own weakening heart. She listened to her cries, a sound she had heard a few nights before when she had awakened Sam.

Rose circled the sheep, giving her eye, trying instinctively to get her up. This was what Sam always asked her to do during births. Get up, get up.

She thought of Sam, and of his bag, and of the way he reached inside the ewes and pulled out lambs.

The ewe would not get up.

Rose slowed. Circling the ewe was useless.

So was barking or nipping. Her instincts suggested nothing that she might do; neither did her memory. The inside of the ewe, the process of lambing, this was beyond her.

Rose turned to the farmhouse to listen for Sam. He was not there. He was not in the barn. Or in any of the pastures. He
was not inside his truck. Rose felt responsible for Sam—more so than she did for the sheep. She could not fathom where he had gone, nor could she stop looking for him.

The ewe, in pain and great weariness, struggled in the snow and wind, fighting with all her energy to get her baby out, calling out to the other ewes for comfort. She looked at Rose and groaned, her cries weakening.

Rose whined softly again and again. Then she quieted. It seemed as if Rose and this mother were alone in a sea of shifting white and cold.

There was nothing else but them.

And the storm.

After some time, with the life seemingly draining from her, the ewe sighed. She was on her side, her eyes open wide.

Rose listened, tilting her ears. She was startled.

She heard the ewe’s heart grow stronger, beat more rapidly. Rose lowered her head, now hearing the heart of the lamb as well, beating softly but steadily. All around her, there was the fearful sound of the wind, and the heavy snow hissed as it hit the ground. These sounds unnerved her as the beating hearts transfixed her. In her mind were the powerfully conflicting images of emptiness and life.

Rose barked, then nipped at the ewe’s legs, watching as she rose gamely to her feet, slowly and deliberately, groaning and straining—and a moment later a glistening, wet, newborn lamb slid out of her backside and onto the snow, trailing afterbirth in a red, liquid stream.

The ewe, snow swirling all around her, turned to nuzzle the baby, who struggled to her feet and began bleating, already looking for her mother’s nipples underneath her ice-encrusted coat of wool. Rose knew she had to get them quickly to shelter,
or else they would freeze in the cold and snow. This was work she knew well.

Exhausted and nearly frozen, Rose began to bark, backing up and putting herself between the pole barn and the ewe. The mother, bewildered by the dog’s sudden change in demeanor, frantically began nuzzling the lamb down the hill toward the big barn, moving the newborn through the freshly plowed trail the rest of the sheep had made a few minutes earlier. Together, they vanished into the snow and wind.

It was a long trek down in the brutal cold, and Rose could not help them. Lambs would not be herded, and if she came near, both might panic, separate, and disappear into the snow. Rose had no sense of whether the two would make it.

All she could do was stay behind the mother, keep pressure on her to move, and the lamb would follow. But they refused to move in a straight line, were startled by the wind, confused by drifts. Rose had to move on.

She walked down the hill by herself and into the barn. She shook herself off, looked at the chickens clucking softly in their roosts, lay down next to the wild dog, and closed her eyes. The lives of sheep were never predictable, not even to a herding dog. She was tired, more drained than she had ever been.

She heard the wild dog’s uneasy breathing, the barn cats moving high up in the rafters, the cows bellowing softly out in the rear pasture. She entered a dreamy state, somewhere between sleeping and wakefulness.

After some time, a sound roused her. It was outside the barn, the opening of the gate. She sat up and growled. The wild dog lifted his great head and bared his teeth as well.

Then she heard a voice calling out to her, faint at first but
then clearer, and familiar, but muted by the wind. “Rose, Rose, where are you, girl?”

It was Sam. He had returned.

Rose was beside herself with excitement.

She leaped up, tail wagging, and rushed to the barn door, where she almost ran into Sam, his arm still wrapped up, holding a brown bag in his good arm.

He was on his way to the barn, out of the snow and the mist. She touched his knee with her nose, and then barked furiously, rushing up beside the barn and toward the pole barn to where the stricken ewe had gotten up and given birth, calling Sam’s attention to it.

She watched as Sam opened the gate and clambered up the hill, setting down his bag and reaching into the ewe to pull out the last of her afterbirth before leaning over the glistening lamb and wiping her off with his cloth. Sam picked up the lamb in a sling and with Rose pressuring the ewe from the rear, the mother and baby made it into the shelter of the big barn.

Suddenly, she heard Winston crowing, snow falling from a roof and blowing in icy bursts through the barn walls.

Rose opened her eyes.

She was in the barn, disoriented. She shook the fuzziness from her head, then walked to the door, looked out into the storm.

Sam was not there. He was not by the barn, or up the hill. She looked, sniffed, and listened for him.

Then she turned and made her way through the snow and back up the hill toward the pole barn. She could not see the ewe or her newborn lamb.

TWELVE

F
OR THE FIRST TIME IN DAYS
R
OSE DID NOT HAVE WORK TO DO
. Or, rather, she had exhausted the things she could do. She couldn’t open doors, turn on faucets, haul hay bales, beat back the storm. She understood this was temporary, a respite.

Out of habit, she looked and listened for Sam, sometimes almost in disbelief at the idea that he was not there, had not returned, that he had inexplicably gone up into the sky and vanished. Sometimes, an image occurred to her of trying to stop the big green bird, but Sam had not seemed afraid, nor had he asked her to help.

Now that Brownie and the remaining cows had gotten some food, they were still cold and weakening, but alive. Several of the ewes were exhausted, but they, too, had eaten a little, and the remaining flock was making its way back up to the familiarity of the pole barn. It would leave them more exposed, at least to the predators gathering at the top of the hill, but it was home for them. They had never lived in the big barn, and they had their own corners, patterns, and smells. In the pole barn they also had space.

Like most animals, sheep did what was familiar. Neither Rose nor the wild dog had the energy to try to keep them all down in the barn, which was a dark, cold mess of snow, ice, wet hay, and broken beams and pipes.

The wild dog, growing ever weaker from the cold and lack of food, was still lying down in a corner. Rose thought about leading him to the farmhouse to eat, but she wasn’t sure he had the strength for the journey.

She walked over and saw how thin he was, how shallow his breathing, and she made a decision. She knew that he had to get to the farmhouse or he would die right where he lay. She could see a picture of it in her head, feel the warmth draining from his body, hear his breathing slow, his lungs filling with fluid.

Better to die on the move than curled up in a corner of the barn.

She leaned over, touched his nose, and he opened his eyes, looked into hers; then he struggled, slowly and painfully, to his feet.

He did not know where they were going, but she was his farmer now, his reason, his leader. She was the only thing left that made sense or offered promise to him. She led him to the opening in the door and began the push through the drifts. For him, it would be a nearly unbearable walk, testing his painful limbs and joints, his waning energy and strength.

Rose had forged something of a path on her earlier trips to the farmhouse, but it was a difficult and arduous one for the old dog, already exhausted from his work with the cows and in the barn. His ribs were sticking out, and his gums were a pale yellow. He gave off a scent of sickness.

Rose slowed her pace. One step at a time, then another, then pause, look back, then another step, pause. The first drift
was the highest and the hardest, and the rest of the way, she lowered her head and pushed a path through the snow with her chest and shoulders. She saw that he was moving on will alone.

It took a long, cold time, but the two of them finally made it, panting, to the back door. Rose nosed it open and led her companion through.

He stopped and looked at the huge pile of kibble Sam had left and then at her, and when she did not challenge him, he limped over and began to eat the dog food. He took four or five mouthfuls, and it was almost too much for his stomach. He walked over to the bowl of water and drank greedily, and then Rose led him into the living room, where he made his way gingerly over to the dog bed on the floor, nearly collapsing onto it.

Rose followed and sniffed him—heartbeat already stronger. Here, she decided, is where he needed to stay. She did not know if he could or would survive inside, but she did know he didn’t stand a chance out in the cold and the storm. She listened to his heart, watched his stomach rise and fall. She said good-bye to him, in case she did not see him alive again.

Rose’s understanding of death had been simple for most of her life. Animals died all the time, in the woods or on the farm. She simply removed them from her map. When Katie became ill, Rose could smell the sickness in her—in her sweat, on her skin. She saw that Katie’s body was dying; she had seen that before. It was her sudden absence that bewildered her, the loss of her physical presence.

She had never seen Katie leave, and that was why Rose looked for her so relentlessly. She did not want that to happen to the wild dog.

She and the wild dog had connected, almost viscerally, and she knew now what it was to miss someone or some thing she
was connected to. Still, separation and death were givens in her world. She did not fear death herself, or even imagine she would die. She imagined now that she would go to the place of blue lights and see her mother again. Perhaps even see the wild dog.

If it was the wild dog’s time, it was not her work to fight it or lament it. So she was preparing herself, in her own way, drinking in the smells and memories of what was familiar. She had never heard the farmhouse so still, seen it so dark or felt it so cold.

So lonely.

She walked to the edge of the living room, looked for Sam on the porch, where she had last seen him before he was lifted into the sky, and then looked for Katie in the sewing room. She remembered her life in the house. She remembered the box in the kitchen she slept in as a puppy. She remembered the sofa she lay on while Katie and Sam watched TV. She remembered the bones that they had brought her, the dog bed, Katie and Sam drifting through the rooms like ghosts.

She remembered every sound she had heard in the house—TV, radio talk shows, conversations, food cooking, teapot whistling, mail coming through the slot, the hissing of radiators, the rumblings from the boilers in the basement, the sound of lights being switched on and off, the water rushing through the pipes, the flies laying eggs on the windowpanes, the settling and creaking of wood, the groaning of the roof in the snow, the damp, the ladybugs, wasps, and bees that built hives and nests, the ants, termites, and beetles that lived in the walls and ceilings, the moths fluttering throughout the house.

To her, the farmhouse was a hive of noise and emotion, people and sounds, sometimes deafening to her, always fascinating. She could lie on the porch for hours, or on the hearth in
front of the woodstove, at Sam or Katie’s feet, half dozing, listening to the cacophony all around her.

She had always moved about the house at night, run in and out during the day. Sometimes she slept at the foot of Sam’s bed, sometimes under the bed, sometimes in Katie’s sewing room. Sometimes she snuck out quietly in the middle of the night and went out to the barn to watch over things.

Peaceful memories—soothing. She padded to the front door, lay down, looking once more for Sam, waiting for him to come down from the sky, to tell her what to do, to go out into the barn and bring down hay and turn on the water and save the flock.