Rose in a Storm (2 page)

The ewe closed her eyes, reopened them. She was suddenly alarmed, breathing more heavily now, as she struggled to get to her feet. Afterbirth trailed from under her tail.

Sam carefully put the lamb down and came over to help, pulling the ewe up gently. She was disoriented, panicky, and as soon as she was upright she tried to bolt. Rose headed her off. She and Sam knew all too well that when ewes ran, they could forget the smell of their lambs and abandon them entirely. That was not going to happen, had
never
happened when Rose was there.

Rose held the ewe to the spot while Sam positioned the lamb beside her. Then he ran into the barn and came back with some water laced with molasses syrup for the ewe. She lapped it up greedily while the lamb searched for its mother’s nipple. The ewe seemed to gain strength, returning to the world, becoming aware of her baby.

The ewe began to call out to her lamb. Now protective, she turned, lowered her head at Rose, and charged, butting her, and catching her off guard.

“Head’s up, Rose!” said Sam.

Rose was sometimes unprepared for how powerful the mothering instinct was in ewes once it kicked in and they
bonded with their babies. It was a testing time for her, as the formerly compliant ewes changed, and she was suddenly, sometimes violently, challenged. She always regained control, with her body, her eyes, her teeth, and her ferocious determination, which eventually wore down even the most maternal ewe, even though it sometimes left Rose bruised or limping. After a time, they became sheep again, doing what they were supposed to do.

The vet once told Sam that Rose weighed thirty-seven pounds, and that any one of those two- and three-hundred-pound ewes or rams could have stomped or butted her senseless, but they didn’t know they could. Rose had to make sure they never knew.

S
AM LOOKED UP
and saw that it had begun snowing lightly, and the wind was picking up. He was huffing hard on his hands, looking up at the sky. Rose looked up, too, and felt a stirring in all of her senses.

Sam appeared different to Rose than he used to, quieter, not as strong, not as clear-headed. A lot of things were different since the night Katie had been taken from the house.

The very map of the farm had changed.

She watched Sam as he worked silently, purposefully, toweling off the lamb. Once he was sure the mother had the smell of the lamb, he picked it up in a cloth sling. It was time to get it under the heat lamps and onto a pile of straw. There the mother would finish cleaning her baby, and the baby would find her teats and drink some more, getting warm and dry, and the ewe could bond with him—it was a ram—and know his cry. The two would nestle up together and talk to each other in a language all their own.

Sam was now backing up to the hatchway, and the ewe looked around frantically. Rose kept her distance, a bit away and behind her, so that she wouldn’t panic and head for the other sheep, who were still watching from the pole barn.

The ewe darted a few feet up the hill. Rose dashed ahead of her and brought her back. They repeated this two or three times, Rose and the ewe, in a kind of a dance, Rose anticipating where the ewe would go and blocking that route. Even though her lamb was being carried in that direction, it was unnatural for the ewe to move away from her flock, and toward the barn, especially with a human and a dog. Only the ewe’s intensifying mothering instincts kept her from running off. That and Rose in her face, whenever she looked or turned to go up the hill.

Finally at the hatchway entrance to the barn, the ewe froze. Rose watched her look up the hill, then toward her lamb. Rose saw that she was still thinking of bolting up to the pole barn, to the Blackface, to the safety and comfort of the other sheep.

Sam backed into the barn, making sure the ewe could see him and the lamb in his arms. He opened the lambing pen gate, then turned on the heat lamps and put the baby down in the warming glow. The lamb bleated, and the ewe bleated in response, rushing through the hatchway and into the pen.

Rose kept the mother in until she settled down there. The ewe eventually forgot Rose, and nosed the lamb under the lamp and onto the hay. She began licking him. Sam closed and tied the plastic fencing of the makeshift pen. The ewe, exhausted, would let her baby feed, and then the two of them would sleep.

Sam turned away to check the wiring of the heat lamp and bring some fresh hay. Rose sat down, calming also. Her job
was done. But in less than a minute she stood again and turned away, limping slightly from the butting of her shoulder.

“Okay, girl,” Sam said to Rose as he shone the flashlight around to see if the other pregnant ewes were up to anything. Rose did not understand his words but understood the tone of voice, his approval. And she also understood it as the end of this work.

Rose smelled the warm, rich mother’s milk, heard the sound of suckling. The timeless map, a compilation of countless memories and experiences and images, was as it should be, and now updated to include one new creature.

Sam slid the door shut.

Rose followed him to the gate and then trotted toward the house. Sam walked on ahead of her, but on the stoop, she paused for a moment. Something made her look up again at the predawn slate sky.

Rose felt the storm coming, smelled snow and heavy air. She remembered other storms, the snow and wind and killing cold. She felt a flash of deep alarm run through her like a bolt of lightning. The hair on her back and neck came up. Sam called for her, but she waited a moment longer before following him inside.

TWO

S
AM PADDED UPSTAIRS TO BED AND FELL SLEEP ALMOST
instantly. Rose drifted to the back of the second floor, into a spare room used for storage where she often curled up on a bed of old towels and rags, sometimes taking a bone or stick with her, though usually not.

Sam rarely went into that room; it was Rose’s secret resting chamber, a place of dreams. Perhaps the only place she was calm, away from work. Sometime before dawn, when the farm was quiet and Sam was off in a deep sleep, as he was now, she allowed herself to sleep, too, hidden away.

A
T
W
INSTON
the rooster’s first crowing, Rose got up, ready and alert by the time Sam awakened soon after and came downstairs. She took a few pieces of kibble that he poured for her, but she was too distracted for food.

The morning was gray, ominous. The snow was falling lightly, unconvincing, but Rose knew it would be heavier soon.

She moved quickly through the living room to the back
door of the farmhouse, where she looked down at Sam’s feet, and saw that he was wearing his old boots. She whined a bit in excitement—those shoes meant they would soon be working together.

Rose ran out the back door, along the pasture fence and up to the gate. Sam walked behind her, as briskly as he could. She moved in circles around him—always in motion, looking left and right, listening. When she was working, her body was focused, buzzing; all of her instincts, senses, and energy raced at their most intense.

Rose waited at the gate for Sam, her head lowered, her right paw raised, poised to proceed. She looked up at the leader of the sheep—the Blackface with the brown eyes who had a dignity and bearing different from the rest of the flock.

The Blackface froze, and so did the other sheep. Rose held them there to keep them away from Sam while he got their grain. The sheep sometimes charged down the hill, running into Sam, even knocking him down if Rose wasn’t there, head lowered, her eyes fixing them in place. If any sheep moved an inch, she would charge up the hill, get close to their faces and force them to back up. She held them there until the farmer said, “Okay, girl,” and then she would rush up behind them and drive them down to the feeder. Sam would be gone by then, safely in the barn.

Rose had been born with an understanding that, where sheep were involved, she should never waiver. If the sheep ever sensed that she wasn’t sure, things would quickly fall apart.

Rose sat by the feeder for the next hour, watching the sheep eat. Sam had gone back into the farmhouse. When a car pulled up, Rose barked, and Sam reappeared at the door. A woman whose perfume caught Rose’s attention from some distance got out of the car and took a long and appraising look
around the farm. Rose loped up to challenge her, but the woman greeted her by softly murmuring her name. She did not reach out to pet her. Rose was taken with her boots, which smelled of animal waste. In her mind, Rose saw a horse.

Sam approached the solidly built woman, who stood waiting in the driveway beside the big barn, and welcomed her with a hug. He began to make a series of noises, as humans often did, gesturing to this woman, who seemed uncomfortable in the gathering wind. He looked her directly in the eye, as was his way when talking to people, but she looked away.

“S
AM
, I
KNOW
this has been an awful year for you, what with losing Katie and all. We’ll get the best price we can.”

Sam shifted his feet, zipped up his work sweatshirt, and looked up through the light snowflakes at the gray sky. He and Katie had been thinking of converting the business of Granville Farm, located in a valley of the southern Adirondacks, and starting to grow and sell organic produce. The old-school farmers were going under, one by one, but organic farms were surviving. Sam and Katie were excited about the prospect of change. Katie had sent for the Cornell University catalogue and was thinking of taking some online courses on the new agricultural economy.

Sam bred and sold sheep and beef cows, sending meat to New York City restaurants with other farmers. He also rotated his crops—alfalfa, potatoes, corn, among others.

Now, though, with Katie’s death two months earlier, everything had changed.

He didn’t have the kind of energy he used to. He no longer thought he had the heart to start over, even though everyone told him to take his time, to wait before making any decisions.

Sam turned back to the woman. “I appreciate it, Ginny. I’ll call you. Meantime, Agway Farmer’s Service says we’re set to get a real big one down from Canada. I just hope the power doesn’t go out right away.”

R
OSE STOOD
by Sam’s side, watching the sky, then the sheep, paying no attention to the sounds coming out of the two people until she heard the word “Katie.”

Rose knew that Katie was not in the farmhouse, but she did not know where she had gone. Rose watched for Katie every day, but she was not in reach of her sight or her hearing. She did, however, smell her—her smell was everywhere in the house, on the floors, in the closets and bed, in the kitchen, on doorknobs and cabinet handles. But Rose couldn’t place Katie on the map. Still, she was there.

Sam talked less now—he moved slowly, worked less, routinely sat alone on his sofa in the big room in front of the woodstove. Rose often came to lie near him, but he did not touch her, nor would she have accepted that. She insisted on a certain space between her and all living things, except when she was battling sheep.

But she was conscious of Sam’s great sadness. Sitting with Sam next to the woodstove also became part of her work. In this new routine, being with him had become another task.

S
AM AND THE WOMAN
outside were still talking to each other. Rose was now paying attention to the tone, to Sam’s tenseness and anticipation. She also felt a shifting in her consciousness—an arousal. She was coming to know something, to feel it: This
would be a massive, disturbing storm. Her body was alive with the sense of it approaching.

She felt danger in her body, saw it in her mind. And she called up her own kind of memory, the images of many lives in many places that she carried in her head, heart, and bones.

She saw mountains of snow, felt bitter cold, the humbling power of the winter wind moving across open fields.

She recalled the experience of clawing through snow, crawling over and under it. Of food buried in ice, paths blocked by drifts, pasture after pasture covered in white. Of animals struggling, starving.

Images whirred and rushed and hissed and blew through her mind. Like a wheel in a carnival, they slowed and stopped.

T
HE WOMAN
got in her car and drove away. Rose and Sam looked up at the sky.

“I would hate to leave this place, girl,” he said. “Let’s go to work.”

She rose to her feet, alert.

“We’re going to put some hay up in the pole barn, and put out feed for the donkey, cows, and chickens. Best we can do. Then we’ll see what we see.”

Sam often spoke this way—in his work voice—laying out the chores ahead, and in this way he’d taught Rose many words. Mostly they related to Katie, sheep, work, or the farm.

Sam saw dogs as many farmers did. He didn’t believe in coddling or praising them. They were animals, and they had a job to do, as did he, and they both were expected to do it. He didn’t believe in treats, and hated the chirpy “up” voices some people used to talk to and reward dogs, voices that usually
made Rose flatten her ears and move away. Rose loved work, and in his mind that was reward enough. He respected her, as he believed she respected him, and praise was not necessary. Approval was different.

Dogs were not children. They came and went, took care of themselves, slept inside at night if they wanted to. They had their own lives.

Just then Rose looked up at the sheep on the hill. She saw something else that made her stop, freeze, growl. She moved forward, her eyes trained on the hill, at the upper pasture. Sam turned and tried to follow her gaze.

“What is it—” Then he stopped. He saw it, too. Something was up in the right far corner of the pasture, by the gate. Rose, uttering a low growl, began moving up toward the lower gate. Sam followed and the two of them made their way up the hill.

About a third of the way up, he saw what Rose had noticed minutes earlier. A small doe was caught in the pasture gate, wedged between the metal end of it and the wooden fencepost, where the gate was latched by a thick chain.