Rose in a Storm (18 page)

Until now, they had always been viscerally wary of each
other, two very different creatures, even though there was a sense of being in the family of the farm, in Sam’s care. But just hours before, they had crossed a line together, and Carol knew her life was now in Rose’s care.

Among Rose’s keenest instincts was a deep understanding of what she could and could not do, but there was no experience for her to draw on now, no skill to use, no battle to fight.

Rose lowered her head, listening. She could hear that Carol’s heart was beating slowly and would soon stop. Rose knew this thumping sound well. She knew when a sheep was close to death, usually well before the sheep even sensed it.

Carol’s heart was very faint, hard even for Rose to hear above the wind.

The cold had weakened her. The storm was wearing down her tired old body. Rose saw it for what it was: simply the way of things. Rose had no strategy for fighting that.

Meeting Carol’s gaze, Rose saw the spirit draining out of her, drifting up into the snowy sky—a blue streak, a vapor, an impulsion of light and energy.

Carol snorted, brayed softly. Rose, squinting against the snow and the wind, leaned forward to sniff Carol’s forehead, gently. Carol leaned her head to the side, one eye covered by snow, only one free, to look at Rose, meet her eyes.

Rose had her own animal notion of separation, of good-bye. She had only a sense of what it meant. Carol had always given off a feel of aloneness, and Rose could smell much pain in her.

It was clear to Rose that Carol was saying good-bye to her, the only creature on the farm she had chosen to communicate with. Rose saw, in the colors and reflections of Carol’s eyes, where images were stored and passed on, images from the old donkey’s life. She saw the early images of Carol’s life, much as
she recalled her own—the donkey’s mother, her brothers and sisters, playing in a pasture, grazing in a field. She saw Carol and two of her sisters running through an open field as fast as they could go, kicking up their hind legs, braying with joy.

She saw the suffering that came later—the loss of work, the loneliness, the hunger and neglect, eating the bark of trees and weeds, drinking from rancid rainwater, from the dew on grass, standing out in the open in rain, storms, cold, and heat.

She saw the beatings, the hunger, attacks by dogs, and she smelled and sensed the pain, the ticks and flies and sores and the aching hooves and joints, and then, the change: the safety of Sam’s farm, hay and shelter and grain, peace and quiet.

She saw Carol’s disinterest in the cows, her love of the sheep, her fear of Rose herself, who was, to her, just a different kind of coyote, a predator in her own right, one more carnivore to be wary of.

Rose had seen that Carol was mostly left alone, and given no work, and in that time she found her easiest and most peaceful days. All this flashed in the light of Carol’s eyes, and Rose could see it clearly, and understand it well.

Those reflections were Carol’s farewell, her own kind of good-bye.

And then, as Rose knew it would, Carol’s body grew lifeless, her eyes vacant, her spirit now gone. What was left was smell and flesh, none of which held any meaning for Rose.

The wild dog watched, quiet.

Rose looked over at him, then she sniffed Carol’s body one last time. So did he. The snow was already forming on Carol’s head, and across her body, which had stopped heaving.

Rose’s map had changed once more.

Something inside of her stirred, moved her forward. If she was accepting, even passive, about a natural death, she felt
quite differently about life, which was calling to her from everywhere around her to do her work.

R
OSE TURNED
and looked up toward the sheep, then climbed wearily back up into the pole barn. She was tired, but a part of her also felt new. She was moving from thing to thing, gaining certainty.

The sheep were still clustered by the rear of the barn, protected from the wind and heavy snow by the three-sided barn and its overhang. The coyotes, she sensed, were up at the top of the hill, waiting. She did not know where the foxes were. She heard nothing from the forest or the woods. The water troughs in the barn were frozen.

Rose realized, very suddenly, that her map had not included most of the cows or the steers. Her instincts drew her out of the pole barn and to the rear pasture, which she could reach only by going through the big barn and back out the side door.

She paused there. She could see that some of the cows were again struggling, almost frozen in place. The high drifts and ice had trapped them, the lack of food had weakened them, and the brutal cold and fierce winds had pulled the heat out of them.

Only Brownie and a handful of cows, huddled by the rear door, were still moving, their breath steaming out of their noses. Brownie was shifting back and forth, his huge body a windblock for the cows, who were leaning into one another, waiting patiently for the hay that came from the barn doors.

The steers and cows were never allowed into the barn—it wasn’t big enough for them—and so Sam had built a sun-and-rain
shelter for them away from the barn, enough protection against anything but a storm like this. The shelter roof had collapsed under the weight of the snow, and the drifts had piled up so high around it that the cows and steers couldn’t even use its remaining walls as protection against the wind.

When Brownie looked at Rose and bellowed, it seemed like a distinct call for help. Rose looked him in the eyes. She felt as desolate as the farm looked.

Rose passed the pump and spigot that Sam turned on twice a day to bring water to the barn. She studied it for a few seconds. Often, she had been distracted by the sound of an engine kicking on in the barn. Sam called it a generator, and it was kept for emergencies, a small, propane-driven machine that provided heat and light to the tool room in the corner of the barn, and to one of the deicers that was now trapped in a frozen water trough. Sometimes, when there were storms, and the house went dark, it came on and water emerged from the pump. In her mind, Rose made a connection between the machine and the water, but could not go further.

She simply didn’t understand, didn’t know how to make the water come. There were no images in her head, nothing in her experience or memory to draw from. For the first time, she felt something close to frustration. She understood there was water in there somewhere, but she had no way of manipulating the machine, getting it to do what she wanted. She stopped, stared at the generator again, then at the pump.

She watched it a bit, then sniffed it, smelled nothing useful. She touched it with her nose, but recoiled from the cold metal. No images came to her.

She had reached a limit, a place beyond her experience. She did not know what to do, so she left the pump behind. She
knew the animals were thirsty, but they could go a while without water. They could eat snow, but it drained precious body heat. It was the cold and hunger she feared the most.

She ran back around the rear of the barn and inside. Rose was focused now on the cows—her mind off Sam, no longer puzzling about where he had gone.

She came quickly into the barn and hopped up toward the rear of the old building. There were several mounds of hay piled up on the second floor and gaping holes in the back wall from the wind and the storm.

Remembering how the barn cats moved, she hopped onto one bale, then another, before leaping up onto the hay-storage platform on the upper floor of the barn. It was not a big jump for her.

She grabbed a mouthful of hay and pulled it from a bale, then ran to one of the breaches in the wall and dropped it there on the wooden floor. Then she pushed it through the hole with her nose. It was only a small clump, but she heard the cows outside begin to low and stir, heard them all move toward the hay drifting to the ground. She ran back for another mouthful, pulled it out of the bale, dragged it to the opening, and pushed it out. She did this again and again. She had no sense of how many times she ran back and forth, but it was until there was almost no hay left on the platform, and she looked out and saw all of the cows milling and bumping into one another, quietly eating the hay. There was a considerable amount now, covering a wide swath of snow. In moving and eating, the cows seemed to have revived, gained strength, bought time.

In her mind, images kept recurring.

She had to get the cows and the hay together. And she had to get the sheep to the barn as well.

Rose jumped down off the platform, landing with a thud
right in the middle of the dark space at the center of the barn, causing the quiet space to erupt. Chickens squawked, Winston puffed himself up and began crowing, and the barn cats melted into the upper floor, where dark-green bales of hay were stacked.

Rose nosed the wild dog to call him to work. He could see right away that something was different about her, and he struggled to his feet. The two went to the rear of the barn, to the ancient sliding door that was hanging fitfully off its hinges, leaving a small opening in the doorframe.

The door was more than a hundred years old, and, like most farmers, Sam didn’t fix things he didn’t absolutely have to fix. The door was never really used, so it didn’t matter how loosely it hung. Sam joked that a good wind would turn the door into a sail, and maybe the whole barn would take off across the road, it was so old and rickety.

Because it was on the westward side of the barn, a little less snow had gathered behind it, but there was still too much for a sheep to wade through. The wind was furious in the back, and so was the ice, some of it crusted where the pipes had burst and shot water out the rear of the building.

Rose began chewing at the outermost plank, which was rotten and soft. A large chunk of the wood came off in her mouth. She stuck her head through the hole. Brownie was on the other side.

A bale of hay was behind her. She wanted Brownie to smell it. She and the wild dog chewed off another section of plank and after a few minutes, there was a two-foot hole in the side of the sliding door. It was still far too small to fit a cow, but Rose barked and Brownie’s nose came through, as she expected it would.

Rose had seen cows slide barn doors open when they were
hungry and they knew there was hay inside. They were curious creatures, and when it came to food they could be savvy and quick.

But even Rose did not anticipate the crack and crash when Brownie’s great head came exploding through the hole, taking four or five planks of wood with it. He only had a few feet to back up, but it was enough. When Brownie charged the barn door—drawn by the smell of the hay on the other side—his 2,500-pound frame burst right through it. The door split, and half of it fell backward into the barn, sending Winston and the chickens running. Brownie squeezed himself through, and the four surviving cows ambled in behind him, each hungrily ripping at the three bales of hay.

Now Rose’s mind turned to the sheep. She had to bring them to the hay, too. A number of them were pregnant, and she knew they wouldn’t survive without food.

Rose led the wild dog on the long hard trek up to the pole barn, and, once inside, they trotted up behind the sheep. She examined their weakening stances and confused and hungry eyes. They had to get down the hill. The sheep and the hay had to be together.

Rose dove into the back of the pole barn, behind the sheep, who then moved forward, startled. She lunged at the ewe in front of her, nipping at her buttocks, her hind leg, her tail, grabbing the wool from her legs in her teeth.

The sheep had nowhere to go. They were engulfed, trapped by mounds of snow, and two dogs crowding them from the rear. They panicked. They raced back and forth trying to get away from the crazy dogs, and then finally fled the only way they could—straight into the wall of snow that had piled up in front of the barn.

The two farm dogs, without overt signals or communication,
went to work. The sheep were moving downhill, the weight of their own bodies propelling them through the mounds of snow. Rose circled and, where necessary, charged and nipped, bit and pushed. The two dogs put intense pressure on the flock, and they lunged through the drifts toward the back of the big barn.

One ewe, about to go into labor, and too weak from the cold and hunger, would not move. Rose chose to leave her behind. Another jumped into the drift and twisted her leg; Rose heard it snap and break. The sheep fell back and to the ground, struggling to get up, then collapsed on her side in shock. Had Sam been there he would have gotten his rifle and killed her to ease her pain. But in this cold and wind, she would not suffer long.

Rose looked back once at the old ewe, and at the injured one, and then plowed into the snow after the rest of the flock.

The sheep formed a natural wedge, their weight and momentum forming a living plow, creating a furrow through the drifts. Snow flying, they pushed down the hill. Rose had brought the flock down in bad weather many times before, but never through snow this high, wind this strong, or temperatures so low.

The two dogs worked relentlessly. It took nearly an hour for the flock to move those few hundred feet. At some point, the sheep finally smelled the hay and moved on their own, without encouragement.

Eventually, dogs and sheep, almost equally exhausted, broke through.

But here Rose had made a mistake, one of her few. Brownie and the cows were already inside devouring the hay. When the flock of sheep charged through the shattered barn door and rushed toward the food, the cattle spooked.

It was a small area, and when Brownie moved to protect his cows, lunging and kicking at two of the ewes, they were slammed into the side of the barn.

The sheep, in a frenzy, rushed ahead anyway, cracking open several of the stalls, and damaging the shelves inside the barn. It was too much for the cows, and they backed out as the sheep began tearing at the few bales of hay still lying on the floor.

Rose, uncomfortable with any kind of mayhem or disturbance, stepped into the barn, but the hungry sheep and starving mothers were beyond control. She and the wild dog backed off. One ewe began circling, about to go into labor on the floor of the barn, pacing restlessly as the others ate.