In Need of a Good Wife (38 page)

The pails filled quickly and they carried them in to the animals to drink. When the horses as well as the rest of them had each drunk a full bucket, Leo seemed to relax. As long as the roof on the house held, they would be all right. With a sponge, he spread the cool water over the horses’ backs and down their flanks. They nickered with satisfaction, their lips curling back to reveal straight, flat teeth. They dipped their heads and nuzzled against Leo. Elsa watched him carefully as he closed his eyes and pressed his cheek into the horse’s mane. Two weeks ago, she had wondered if he might die.

The old griping would save him from too much mooning over his close call, though. “Nit, that’s enough,” Leo barked at him as he brought yet another round of buckets into the barn. “They’ll just keep drinking it until they make themselves sick.”

Ully veered from where she played in the corner to Elsa’s side, frightened at Leo’s harsh tone.

“Yes, sir,” Nit said, and set the buckets down in the corner. Leo’s tone seemed not to bother him in the slightest. There was too much relief in the room, in the whole of the town, Elsa was sure, and it cushioned Nit against Leo’s prickly nature. When a person has held that muscle of worry clenched for so long, letting it lapse can make him feel a strange lightness, a floating, an easy rotation of the shoulder in the socket. Nit sat down on a crate and leaned his head back against the wall, water running in rivers between the planks. After a moment, he stood. “I had better go check on my own roof, see what I can do to shore it up.” He took one of the horse blankets off the hook by the door and held it over his head as he ran across the sodden field.

The three of them sat for a long time, listening to the rain. The ewe, still heavy with her lamb, ambled quietly over to the buckets and began to drink. She lapped, moving her head in a small circle so that her tongue could touch the whole surface of the water in the pail. Then she lifted her head and held very still. One of her back legs kicked out slightly. She breathed through her muzzle, then let out a low bleat. Her flank clenched and unclenched like a fist.

Leo glanced up and looked at Elsa, his eyebrows raised. “Must have been the drought that kept her waiting so long,” he said.

Elsa nodded.

“Come on,” Leo said. “Let’s leave her to it.”

“What’s happening?” Ully whispered to Elsa.

Elsa took her hand and held her close to her skirt, in a ridiculous attempt to keep her hidden. If Leo minded the girl’s presence, she supposed he would have said something by now. “That ewe has got some work to do,” Elsa said. She chose her words carefully, not wanting to call the lamb a baby just yet. The birth was so awfully overdue that there seemed to be a good chance things wouldn’t go well. “And we should leave her to it.”

Ully agreed without an argument. They all left the barn. The rain had slowed to a steady, pleasant shower. “Hey,” Ully said, spreading her fingers in the water. “The hoppers are gone.”

The sky was dark and they were exhausted by all the commotion. Leo insisted on staying outside and checking the roof and foundation for leaks. He kept saying how much there was to do now that they finally had rain. Elsa and Ully went into the kitchen and Elsa put Ully to work peeling potatoes for supper. She knew the girl should go home to be with her father. He would be worried about her out in this weather. But Elsa didn’t want her to leave. She got the fire going in the stove, then melted butter in the cast-iron pan and arranged the potato slices in the sizzling fat. She took a handful of salt from the crock and sprinkled it on top.

Ully was arranging the strips of potato skin into four even piles, her brow drawn in concentration. “Elsa, what kind of work does the ewe have to do?”

Elsa rolled her lips together. “She is birthing her lamb,
Spatzchen
.”

Ully looked up, surprised. “She is?”

“Mm-hmm.” Elsa kept her eyes on the pan. The potatoes popped and hissed. It wouldn’t do to make a big thing out of it. But then she wondered whether Ully even understood what she meant by
birthing
. “Do you know how that happens?”

Ully rolled her eyes. “Yeah. I know.” She was quiet for a long moment as she moved some of the strips from the middle pile to the one on the left, using her index finger to measure the height and ensure that the piles were absolutely equal. “Do you think,” she said carefully, “that it will hurt her?”

Elsa moved the pan off the heat with the wooden spoon leaned against the pan’s handle. She sat down in the chair across from Ully. “It will hurt her some, but her body’s made to do it. She’ll be all right.” Elsa didn’t know whether she had just told the girl a lie.

“Here, have some potatoes.” Elsa arranged a few slices on a plate and fished a fork from the drawer. “And then it’s time for you to go home. You know your father is probably worried sick about you now.”

“Gustav will tell him where I am. He can come get me if he needs me. Which I’m sure he doesn’t.”

“Of course he does,” Elsa said sternly. There was a time for sweetness and a time to tell this child where she stood. “Now, eat your potatoes.”

After Ully had wolfed them down, she lifted the plate to her face and licked the salt off it.

“Ully!” Elsa cried. “Don’t do that!”

The girl giggled.

Elsa knew she did things just to get a rise out of her. Just then, Leo banged into the kitchen, casting water all over the floor.

“Elsa, I need your help,” he said. “Nit must have had trouble with his roof. I’ve been yelling for him for ten minutes, but I don’t have time to run over there.”

“What is it?”

“The ewe’s having trouble. I can’t crouch down low enough with this damned knee to help her.”

Elsa nodded and wiped her hands on her apron, then followed him back out into the rain, with Ully trailing behind her. Her still-damp dress soaked all over again on the jog back to the barn. They would all have head colds before this was over, she thought, her brain trying to distract her from the worry of what they might see, of what Ully might see.

She grabbed the girl’s shoulder. “
Spatzchen
, go on home.”

Ully shook her head.

“No, I mean it,” Elsa said, making her voice hard. “You need to go on home now.”

“I want to see that lamb,” Ully said.

Leo was already at the barn door. “Elsa,
come on
.”

Elsa shook her head at Ully and hurried into the barn. The ewe lay on her side, scraping her cheek in the hay. Her rump was bright pink and swollen. At the opening, a translucent membrane expanded and contracted like a soap bubble.

“She has been laboring hard,” Leo said. “She should be further along than this.”

“How many lambs are there?” Elsa asked.

“Just one, thank the Lord for small mercies.”

“What can we do for her?”

“When the sac breaks, I want you to get down and pull on the legs.”

Elsa nodded. She saw in the periphery that Ully had slid inside the door and stood in the shadow, her back against the wall of the barn. The sac expanded even larger this time, becoming transparent and revealing the lamb’s hooves for a moment as if behind a clouded pane of glass. Leo leaned over the ewe’s rump, peering down. “
Damnation.
It’s turned the wrong way.”

Elsa felt her throat tighten.
Please Lord
, she prayed.
Please
don’t let this child see something terrible.

The ewe grunted and the sac broke then and fluid sluiced out in a wave. Elsa heard Ully take a breath in the silence that followed and Leo touched Elsa’s shoulder. She nodded and crouched down. The back legs poked out of the opening and the ewe moaned, her eyes rolling back in their sockets. Elsa took a breath and grasped the legs with her hands. They were wet and slippery, but she gripped tightly, digging her nails into the fleece.

“Now I should pull?” she asked, looking up at Leo.

He held up a finger. “Wait—” He watched until the ewe’s belly clenched again. “Now.”

Elsa pulled, but the lamb didn’t budge.

“Harder,” Leo barked. He sat down on the hay but couldn’t bend his leg to get close enough.

“I’m afraid I’m going to hurt her,” Elsa cried.

Ully was very quiet over in the corner.

“She has to get the lamb out
now
.”

Elsa got up on her knees, her legs parted a little so that she could brace her weight. She leaned forward and took hold of the legs again, then inhaled and pulled as hard as she could. The ewe made a terrible low sound, an almost human keening. If she were a young woman in her travail, she might have cried that sad psalm,
Why hast thou forsaken me? Why art thou so far
from helping me, and far from the words of my roaring?
Elsa pushed her hands inside the hot birth canal to grip around the lamb’s hips. She felt the tiny creature’s legs would break, but she kept on pulling. The suction inside gave way, finally. The lamb slid into the hay, long and lean. It did not move.

Elsa looked at Leo. He scooted closer to her. Even in the dim light of the barn, Elsa could see that the lamb was blue around its eyes and mouth. The rain pounded on the roof, relentless.

“Rub her,” Leo said.

Elsa nudged the lamb gently, moving her hand in more vigorous circles on its sticky fleece.

Leo reached over and rubbed too. “Come on, little one,” he said in the tenderest voice she had ever heard him use. “Wake up.”

The mother lifted her head and looked down the line of her body at them. She bleated, desperate to see her baby.

Leo winced as he put his weight on the bad leg and hoisted himself up over the lamb. “Come on,” he said. He put his hand on the lamb’s belly and moved her in the hay.

Elsa felt her own lungs were made of stone. She felt she couldn’t breathe until she saw the lamb breathe.

Just then, the ugly, slick mess twitched and lifted its head. Its flanks expanded with breath and on the exhale it made a tiny whine. The ewe’s body relaxed and she called out to her baby. The lamb took another breath, pinkening, and then stood up and limped toward its mother. The ewe began to lick her all over her face, then shoved her down to feed.

Elsa sat back on her heels and watched, wiping her eyes on her sleeve.

Leo sighed, then pushed himself up. “Thank you, Elsa. I don’t know what I would have done if you weren’t here.”

Elsa swallowed. Everything seemed very quiet for a moment and she stared at Leo, this hard, humorless, difficult, precious man. She felt she had been waiting her whole life for someone to say those words to her.

A wail broke the silence and Elsa looked up in surprise. Ully, crying, rushed to Elsa and climbed right into her lap, Elsa’s dress still wet with fluid from the birth. Ully buried her face in Elsa’s chest and cried and cried. Elsa rocked a bit from side to side, kissed the top of Ully’s head and rubbed her palm in circles on the girl’s back.

“I thought that lamb was going to die,” Ully said, her voice thick with anguish.

“Oh, my darling. But look—she’s just fine.”

“But I
thought
she was going to die.” Ully insisted, trying to get Elsa to understand. And Elsa did understand. That things had turned out all right almost didn’t matter at all; if you got what you wanted, if you let yourself love something, all that meant was someday you would lose it. The threat of that loss loomed over you always.

Ully tucked her head under Elsa’s chin and Elsa ran her hand along the scraggly line of the girl’s lopped-off hair. There was nothing to say. It was an awful thing for a nine-year-old girl to know about the world, but it wasn’t untrue.

“My mother died,” Ully whispered.

“Oh, my Ully,” Elsa said. “I know. And it is so sad.” The Lord felt very near, just then. He had brought this child to Elsa’s doorstep and asked her what she might do to be of use, to soothe Ully, to soothe them both, in some small way. Elsa hoped she had not failed.

Leo cleared his throat. “Elsa, who is this child?”

Elsa laughed a loud, honking laugh. She pushed Ully to her feet. “Mr. Leonard Schreier, allow me to present Miss Ulrika Eleonora Gibson.”

Ully took the long, sputtering breath that came after crying, then wiped her nose on her sleeve before extending her hand. “Pleased to meet you, sir. I’m sorry for all the carrying on.”

Leo took Ully’s hand, glanced down at her short, dirty fingers.

“I’m sorry, too, sir, about all of my visits. I hope I haven’t eaten too much of your food.”

Leo looked at Elsa. She held her breath, then gave a tentative little shrug. “Ully has been keeping me company in the afternoons.”

Leo frowned at her. “And here I thought you were doing all that baking for me.” He turned back to Ully. “It’s all right, Miss Gibson. Miss Traugott and I have plenty to share. And something to celebrate now too, that the lamb made it through, and we have our rain. I wonder if there’s any cake left inside.”

Elsa nodded and Leo stepped out of the darkness of the barn with his palm up. He led the three of them through the drizzle to the house. Ully doubled her steps to walk beside him and grasped Leo’s fingers. To Elsa’s surprise, he allowed the girl’s hand to hang there beneath his own. Ully was patient with his slow gait, not rushing him or pulling him along. After that cake she absolutely had to go home. Daniel Gibson would be worried.

Elsa wondered, though, as she watched them walking together, if the next time she saw Daniel she might not ask whether Ully could come to live with her for a while. It was what Elsa had been wanting all along, she realized. Not to have her come and go—to have her
stay
. Leo would be all right with it, she thought. He might even be glad. They had yet to take that walk he’d asked her for, but she saw now that they would. For the first time since coming to Destination, she saw that her life would never go back to the way it had been. She wouldn’t be alone anymore. In the fall they would celebrate
Erntedankfest
. Perhaps she could get some apple wine from Omaha.

They tromped inside, peeling off their wet shoes and stockings. Elsa got the fire going in the stove because, even though it was still hot outside, the rain made you crave something hot to drink. After she washed up, she put the water on to boil, cut the cake, and slid the slices onto plates. When she turned to the table, Ully was sitting beside Leo watching him unfold his napkin and put it on his lap. Elsa noticed that Ully’s hair had grown down just a bit at the back of her neck, a stiff fringe. By winter it would be long enough to braid, and that was what Elsa would do.