Rose in a Storm (10 page)

In her story, Rose was small, a puppy, living in the shadow of her mother, her world bounded by a tiny den clawed out of mud and rocks. Then she was suddenly awakened by roars, growls, the sounds of a struggle. She was thrown into the woods, and saw flashes of a large animal—the image isn’t clear—appearing, and her mother picked up and dragged off, snarling, fighting, Rose, lying still, paralyzed with confusion and fear. When she woke again she saw the bodies of her brothers and sisters strewn about her, and felt hunger in her belly.

She lay still, absolutely quiet, and when the hunger was too great to bear, she got up and hobbled on her small legs out of the hiding place and into a meadow. There, when she lifted her nose, looking for her mother, she could find no trace of her.

She picked a new scent, one that transfixed her, and began moving toward it through the meadow grass, hearing the ants and bugs and rats and bigger animals moving all around her. She was quiet, freezing at the slightest sound, waiting patiently, as she had been taught.

Despite her hunger and confusion, she was also enchanted. There were so many times she had to hide, from hawks, birds,
foxes, wolves, cats, but she seemed to know when to hide and when to move.

She was ravenous now, and losing her caution. Late on the second day she came to the edge of a clearing, where she was amazed to see bright-yellow flames flaring up and down just ahead of her. She had missed the warmth of her mother, but this was a different kind of warmth, and she could feel it from her hiding place in the bushes.

She saw strange creatures—people—for the first time. Some large, and a smaller one. She was intuitively afraid of these creatures, so unlike any she had ever seen, so unlike her mother or brothers and sisters.

They were sitting around the yellow warmth, and at the center of this warmth was a crackling sound and the smell she had caught on the wind, an unbearably good smell that caused her to drool with hunger. This was the scent she had followed through the woods and the meadows.

She edged forward, drawn by the smell. The creatures turned to look at her and two of them stood up, but the smaller one made a sound, and they sat back down, but still looked at her curiously.

After a time the smaller one took something from the warm fire and tossed it to her, making noises that were soft, not dangerous. The food landed a few feet in front of her, and, frightened at first, she jumped back into the tall grass. But this was what she had smelled and had been seeking.

Her hunger battled her fear, her instincts. She took it in her mouth. This was nothing like her mother’s milk, and the taste and the smell electrified her.

The people were quiet now, watching her, except for the small one, the girl who tossed another piece of meat out to
the edge of the grass. Rose darted out, grabbed it, then ran into the woods, eating it hungrily.

In her story, Rose slept and hid in the woods, dug a hole for herself, stayed quiet. Yet she ventured to the edge of the grass each morning as the people came and went. The little girl approached slowly again, throwing her some meat before leaving again.

For several days they repeated this ritual, the girl coming closer, bringing food, tossing it out, all the while calling to her, speaking soothingly, warmly.

On the third night, the girl came to the edge of the grass and sat down, holding a piece of food. She made warm, strange guttural sounds. She seemed safe to Rose, and so did this place, this cave in the side of a hill, this warmth, this food.

Rose now spent almost all day and night watching the people, waiting for the girl to bring her food. The girl came closer each time, sometimes playing right in front of Rose, tossing sticks in the air. The people pointed and laughed and threw scraps of food.

On this one night, the girl held some food in her hand, and did not throw it onto the grass or into the woods. Rose edged forward. She crept gamely toward the food—slowly, carefully—until she was eating the piece of meat out of the girl’s hand. She licked the girl’s hand, and the girl, speaking softly, stroked Rose’s back and neck. Rose put her head in the girl’s hand, and whined softly.

The next day, the girl brought another piece of meat and Rose ate from one end, while the girl held the other. Rose looked forward to her coming, wagged her tail, enjoyed the attention. The girl threw sticks for her, made soothing sounds.

The girl led Rose back to the other people, who also fed
her and spoke in soothing ways to her. That night, she slept just outside the mouth of the cave. And again the next night, and the one after that.

One night, she heard animals approaching outside and she growled and barked, and the people praised her, gave her food, patted her. She then barked whenever she heard a strange noise, or when an animal came near. It became her job to protect them.

She began to focus on what pleased the new creatures in her life, what made them talk to her approvingly, leave extra meat for her. Sometimes she would smell or sense other dogs but did not go out to join them. Instead, she would growl if they approached, and stand between them and the little girl.

She went with the people as they looked for food, when they swam, she lay by them as they ate and slept. There was no reason to wander, because she had food. She was part of a pack again. She had shelter from the rain and heat and cold. She had attention and affection.

One day the people gathered their things and began to leave the place, and the girl called to her. Rose had a choice, to stay or to go with her, and she paused and looked at her home, and then at the girl, and she went with her. It was the biggest choice she had made.

And this is where her story stopped.

R
OSE AWOKE FROM
her reverie with a start. Sam was gone, but she heard him breathing upstairs. He was in bed. It was unusual for her to sleep while he moved. Her legs ached from trudging through the heavy snow, and the chill seemed to have rooted deeply in her bones. Her paws were swollen and
painful, shredded by the ice, and her fur was matted and full of knots.

While Rose slept, night had come again. The wind still howled, and Sam had gone up to bed while she was dreaming. Although she watched from inside the farmhouse, it seemed the storm was hers. She wandered over to the front door, which was covered in drifts and ice, then to the rear door. She could still get outside, but only just. The pasture gates were covered, too. The hay in the feeders was buried, and the water troughs were black and hard.

A little while earlier, the animals had been free to move about their pastures, to the feeders and troughs. Now snow and ice made almost everything impassable. The geography of the farm, the map, had changed. The cows were trapped in the back pasture, the chickens barricaded in the barn, the goats unable to crawl or climb out of their pen, already hungry, although Sam had stuffed every inch of their feeders with hay.

Rose felt compelled to leave the house. She pushed open the small swinging flap, nearly overwhelmed by the ice and heavy snow.

Just outside the door, she scrambled up to the hard windswept surface, now crusted with ice. She slipped and slid to the pasture gate, and began to tunnel to the other side.

EIGHT

O
NCE OUTSIDE
, R
OSE WAS DISORIENTED BY THE STORM’S
ferocity. The air was colder than she had ever experienced, and she could not comprehend it. The brutal wind and intense snowfall confronted her with an alien landscape—huge drifts in some places, only a foot or two in others.

Although the snow had drifted over much of the opening in the barn door, there was still room for Rose to wiggle through. Inside, the chickens were in their roosts, and the wild dog—who lifted his head briefly when she came in—was lying on a bale of straw.

The lamb and mother—the pair she and Sam had saved the night before the storm broke—were talking to each other. They were the only two sheep in the big barn. Sam had left the others up in the three-sided pole barn, which was newer and stronger. They couldn’t all fit in this building, which, although bigger, was crammed with equipment, and suffered wobbly foundations and a tottering roof.

The scene in the barn seemed natural, but then she caught another scent and heard another cry. This was different, a call
of alarm from a mother, calls from the other sheep. The fur on her back stood up, and she heard herself growling, heard the wild dog struggling to his feet. The chickens and rooster were startled awake, and Rose was up over the drift and out the door in a flash. She opened a hole wide enough for the wild dog to follow, and he clambered up behind her.

Nothing about the farm looked the same as it had when she had last been outside.

She could barely see through the snow blowing in her face, and she struggled to get footing on the layer of ice that had crusted over the snow. She felt the sting of the cold in her eyes, in her paws, as the awful night engulfed her, covering her in clumps of ice that clung to her fur, weighing her down.

She heard the wild dog scrambling behind her, trying to keep up, slipping and falling. At first she waited for him, then understood she had to move quickly. She pawed her way through the snow and up the hill toward the run-in pole barn.

Normally, the pregnant ewes would have been in the lambing pens, but Sam had released them so they could find the protection of the pole barn and not be trapped in the exposed pens by the snow or crammed into the big barn, where there was no room for them.

Rose could feel the presence of the frightened ewe up ahead of her, and she could clearly hear the calls of the other sheep, panicked now. They were frantically moving back and forth within their shelter, but Rose’s view was blocked by the mounting snow. Running a hundred feet long and twenty feet deep, the pole barn was built so that its back faced the oncoming winds, its strong oak beams sharply slanted to handle the heavy winter snows.

She heard the wild dog barking far behind her now. She made her way up the hill, laboring toward the pole barn, and
then, struggling for breath, she pushed her way through the snow and saw the sheep, all jammed into one corner where it was dry and sheltered from the fierce wind.

Rose saw that they were paralyzed with fear, as sheep are when trapped. Off to the right, in the opposite corner of the pole barn, was the ewe, afterbirth trailing from her rear, its smell still fresh, even through the wind and snow.

The mother was in a panic. She ran here and there, calling out for her lamb—a particular kind of call mothers use to locate their offspring. She charged into the snow but was blocked and fell back.

Rose recognized this ewe instantly, one of the oldest and most pliant on the farm. She often retreated into the center of the flock when Rose appeared, wanting no trouble with the dog. But she was also a fiercely protective mother who would lower her head and rush in front of her babies whenever Rose came too close.

When she saw Rose emerge from the blizzard, she did not back off, as she normally would have, or lower her head, but looked at Rose in a way Rose had never seen before—as if pleading. She looked the dog in the eyes, but it was not a challenge, and not just an expression of desperation.

Rose understood sheep better than she understood people, even Sam. Sam often confused her, but the sheep never did.

The ewe was worried about her baby.

Rose stopped in the front of the pole barn, close to the ewe. She caught her breath, shook the snow and ice out of her eyes, leaned down and pulled chunks of ice off of her paws and forelegs with her teeth. Then she raised her nose high in the air. Smells poured through her mind.

The scent of coyotes came to her clearly. She now understood, and plowed forward through the snow, over the ice, into
the wind, and off to the right, to where the ewe was looking frantically. It took her what seemed like a long time to get that very short distance, as she kept falling into the drifts through the ice crust, her breath labored from the strain and weight of the snow in her fur. She heard a scratching and wheezing sound and was surprised to see the wild dog coming through the forbidding night close behind her.

After a few minutes, panting harder, her tongue long, Rose made it around the corner of the pole barn to a mound of snow where she could see up the hill. She smelled lamb and she smelled coyote but, at first, could see neither. She heard the shrieking of the wind, the piercing calls of the ewe, the anxious responses of the other sheep.

Rose did know fear, but it was fear of failing, not of other animals, or of injury or death. She’d felt something strange and new when the ewe had turned to her. It was not an image she could recall, but she felt it strongly, not in her nose or in her mind, but deep within her chest. Rose sensed the ewe’s emotion and it drove her up the hill. Most of all, she knew it was her job to protect the sheep and lambs.

As she moved a few feet up the hill, she smelled the blood. Some of the drops were still visible in the snow, the scent different from any other.

Blood was familiar to her—she almost always smelled it running through the woods. But Rose had only smelled the blood of a lamb once, when one was born twisted, near death, and Sam had gone to get the rifle and had shot it.

The experience had affected her, left her confused and lethargic for hours, so much so that Sam gave her a day off to get over it. But she remembered it, and knew it now.

She froze. There, not more than a few steps in front of her, was the coyote, the leader, the one she had known as a pup. His
eyes were ablaze, and a dead lamb was hanging by the throat from his mouth. Three other coyotes stood in a half circle right behind him. The lamb’s head hung off to one side, its eyes closed, its still-warm body hanging down to the ground.

Rose paused to take in this scene, moving in and out of shadow, framed by snow, ice, wind, dark. It was almost like one of her dreams, but her nose told her it was very real.

She was still, but teeming inside. It was not in her work—her map—although there were scenes like it in her memory. It had happened. But it had never happened to her, not in this way.