Rose in a Storm (3 page)

The doe had tried to squeeze through the opening, probably during the night—sensing the coming storm and foraging for food—and gotten stuck. Her head was facing them, and she was twisting piteously, her eyes darting wildly.

Rose walked up ahead of Sam, slowly, as she always moved in the presence of wild animals. Sam did not call her back, or keep her away. Rose was not a dog to charge a deer or skunk or raccoon. She avoided them if possible, and, if not, circled them warily.

As Sam got farther up the hill, he saw that blood was seeping from a cut on the doe’s nose. She was little bigger than a fawn, and her sides were rubbed raw from trying to push
through the gate. The space would tighten when she surged forward. Sam winced. It must have been painful.

He approached carefully. The doe began bleating, thrashing her limbs toward Sam and Rose, whose approach deepened her panic. Sam knew how dangerous wounded or trapped deer could be, as they slashed out with their sharp hooves. He thought about going to get his rifle and shooting the doe to put her out of her misery. He had to get the farm ready for the storm, and he couldn’t afford to hurt himself or endanger Rose. But he kept moving up toward her instead. Looking into her wide brown eyes, he saw the fear in them.

He was not a hunter, couldn’t understand the idea of trapping an animal, or lying in wait for it in the woods and shooting it. It didn’t bother him that others did it, it just wasn’t something he could see himself doing.

Sam realized that if he could get close enough to reach over the doe, he could lift the chain up and the gate might swing forward and release. Her wounds were serious, and he knew he couldn’t leave her there. He either had to free her or shoot her.

As he approached, the doe kicked her legs forward, crying out in a piercing, surprisingly loud voice. She slashed her front hooves in a scissor kick, catching and tearing the sleeve of his coat.

Sam jumped back. He moved closer, and the doe bleated and kicked out again. He reached forward a dozen times, but there was simply no way to get close enough. He pulled a stick off a maple tree, attempting to reach and unlock the gate with it, but she lashed out at the stick with her hooves and broke it.

All this time, Rose was behind him, edging closer, watching. Sam waited to see if the doe would grow comfortable with
him, or else grow too tired to fight. He tried talking to the deer, soothing her, throwing some twigs with dead leaves down to distract her.

After a while, he decided to switch his approach. He told Rose to stay, then started down the hill to the barn. Rose moved a few feet down the slope, lay down in a crouch, and watched the doe, who fell silent, staring right back. She had finally stopped struggling.

Sam returned with an armful of hay, and also an old Winchester .30-06 rifle. He threw the hay on the ground and leaned the rifle against the fence.

The doe wouldn’t sniff or eat the hay.

“Come on, girl,” he pleaded. “I’m not going to hurt you. Give me a chance to get you out of this. I’m running out of time.” Sometimes, Sam knew, animals responded to tone of voice. If you were calm, they might be, too.

The ground was stained with blood.

He looked over at the rifle.

Suddenly, he was aware of Rose moving up behind him on his left. He and Rose had been in a hundred scrapes together, from aggressive geese to rampaging rams, runaway cows, encroaching foxes, rabid raccoons, and nasty feral cats. She always came up with a plan.

“What have you got here, Rose?” he asked, as if she could answer. Rose didn’t look at Sam. She was too focused on the doe.

Sam watched as Rose moved out and away from the doe, growling and, occasionally, barking. He couldn’t fathom what she was doing, but then he saw the doe’s head turn slowly to the right, and away from him. Rose edged forward, bit by bit, and as the deer slashed out at her with her hooves, bleating, Rose kept barking, moving from side to side, in and out, but staying just out of reach.

The doe had forgotten about Sam, her eyes locked onto Rose, who kept moving and making noise. Sam saw an opportunity and edged forward, holding the butt of the rifle out to ward off any kicks. The doe never took her eyes off Rose as Sam, holding the rifle out, reached forward with his right hand, and pulled the chain up off of the latch. The gate swung forward, releasing the doe.

Rose backed quickly away, and so did Sam. The deer, startled, froze. Then in an instant she turned and disappeared into the winter brush.

Rose and Sam stood there, at the top of the hill, looking at the blood and fur left on the pole and gate.

“Hope she makes it,” Sam said, quietly. He closed the gate and refastened the chain.

Silently, the two of them walked back down the hill.

W
HEN THEY GOT
to the bottom, Sam went into the farmhouse to stash the gun but keep it handy, and Rose felt another rush of blood, up and down her spine, and a sharpening of her senses. She looked over toward the pasture, to where Brownie, the gargantuan Swiss steer, was staring at her with his enormous brown eyes. He was monstrous; he towered over her, and even over Sam, standing well above the other cows and steers. He was waiting.

Rose was easy around Brownie, and associated the name with him, as Sam often spoke it around him. She knew by now that he, like the other cows and steers, was ultimately doomed: He would either die or leave. For her, it was one of life’s clearest lessons.

She also knew how to get him to move when he didn’t want to budge but Sam needed him to. If Rose came by
quickly, nipped two or three times at a spot on his legs just below his knees, and then darted away even quicker, Brownie would be startled into moving. The little dog was masterly at annoying Brownie without actually putting him into a panic, especially since he could have crushed her if he turned aggressive.

The cows and steers had felt the storm coming earlier in the morning. All the animals were slowing, withdrawing into themselves, preparing and conserving their energy.

Sam emerged from the farmhouse and opened the pasture gate. The sheep always tried to get into the barn at feeding time, because they knew the grain was there. Rose did not permit it. She stood in the door and looked at them fiercely. The bravest of them inched down the pasture, but didn’t come closer.

One wether took a belligerent step toward Rose, his head down, daring her to stop him. She marched up the slope, moving directly into his face, then darted to grab a mouthful of wool, pulling it right off his head. He lowered his face again, and she nipped him on the nose. Startled, he backed away, giving up.

Once in a while one of them would rebel, take a chance, overwhelmed by the instinct to eat. But they never got past Rose.

As Sam walked into the barn, the two cats, Eve and Jane, appeared, as they always did, out of the rafters. Rose often saw them catch mice and toy with them before they killed them. Cats were murderous one moment, flirtatious the next, unfathomable to her, deceitful, slippery. All the work they did was in killing, dismembering prey and then playing with the parts before scattering them around. Rose grasped the notion of hunting well enough, but the savage side of these cats was
beyond her ken. Their territory—the vast hay-bale mountains in the barn—was the one district on the farm Rose avoided. It was a place of bats, mice, and barn swallows—a lot of fluttering and skittering—not the realm of a dog.

Sam checked the chicken feed and pulled a sack down from the shelf. He filled the feeder high, as he always did before a storm, and checked the heated water tub that the cats and chickens used.

He climbed up the ladder to the platform he’d built for the chicken roosts, to keep them up off the floor and safe from predators—the occasional badger or raccoon or fox that might wander into the barn. The hens could hop up onto the platform and climb into their roosts, and it was still wide enough to store some hay and feed.

There was an upper barn window just above the roosts, which Sam kept closed to keep animals out.

Eve and Jane paraded along the wooden rails. Rose ignored them, since they were not subject to her supervision or authority. They were not interested in her, either.

Through the window she saw Brownie, who appeared curious, looking into the barn. Sometimes he got some grain, if Sam had time or it was especially cold. Grain gave the animals energy. Otherwise just hay.

No grain this morning. Sam was moving too quickly, getting ready.

Winston, the farm’s ancient rooster, hobbled over to see if Sam would drop any seed on the ground. Winston rarely left the barn these days—his legs were too unsteady—but he made plenty of noise just the same. Rose treated him with respect. He was the oldest animal on the farm and had seen a lot.

*   *   *

B
Y MID-MORNING
the light snow that had begun the night before had petered out. Sam knew it would start back up with a vengeance soon. But for now it was a beautiful day. The slate-gray sky was set off by the bright-red barn. It was windy and cold and he moved around the farm with an increasing sense of urgency as he prepared for the storm. He’d not yet eaten anything that day, but he did not stop working.

A sense of alertness had swept the farm and its creatures, a stillness, a formality perhaps. The word was passed about the storm in the way animals exchange an understanding, something that Sam had seen many times before. The animals bunched together, raised their noses and ears to the sky. Their eyes were open, vigilant. The feeling had spread to the steers and cows, to the chickens and the sheep, to Carol the donkey, to the barn cats. It even spread to the three goats—troublesome, greedy creatures, who found cause to defy Rose at every turn.

Sam climbed the stairs up to the hayloft.

He piled up some bales by the back door of the barn and slid it open. He fired up the tractor, attached it to the hay wagon, hefted another twenty bales on, and pulled it up to the pole barn.

Sam came back down the hill and filled the water tanks. There was no point, he knew, in putting out too much extra grain, as the animals would eat it all immediately, get bloated and sick, but he put out more than usual to give them some extra energy and strength. He tossed a basket of corn kernels out for the chickens. He took a bag of dry cat kibble, slit it open partway, then heaved it up on a shelf in the barn. All of this would give the animals an extra day or two if they were stranded or if the feeders were buried in snow.

The cats, sensing something unusual, climbed up to the top of the bales to watch. Sam saw that Rose followed them with her eyes.

Outside the barn door, Carol the donkey brayed, and the sheep had gathered, hoping for grain, anxious to eat. Rose glared at them, backing them up the hill. Carol eyed Rose carefully. A couple of years earlier she had kicked Rose without warning, nearly killing her.

Carol had been treated poorly and neglected for years before the farm she used to live on went under and Sam took her in. She had no real purpose on Sam’s farm, although he liked to claim she was a guard animal. It was true that she was protective of the flock, always taking the sheep’s side. And she wouldn’t hesitate to charge a coyote or stray dog if it came near.

While Sam checked the deicers on the water tanks, which would go out if the power went, Rose lay down and studied the sheep, looking them over one by one, challenging the difficult ones, giving them plenty of eye.

Sam got back into the tractor and hauled straw up to the pole barn and spread it around to make warm bedding for the sheep, then he stuffed the wooden feeders. As he drove, Rose ran alongside the tractor, barking at it, trying to herd it, perhaps, or move it to a different spot. Sam yelled at her to get away, but these were commands she ignored, or perhaps simply didn’t hear. Sam was never sure, though he had his suspicions.

Because there wasn’t enough room to drive the tractor up to the goat pen, which was up a slope and beyond a narrow gate, Sam had to carry hay there by hand. He made a half dozen trips to stow bales under a flimsy plywood roof. He suspected the snow would cover them up quickly—the roof was
designed as protection from rain, not blowing snow, but it might keep enough snow off that the goats might have half a chance to dig the food out.

Rose watched but kept her distance. She had as little use for goats as she did for barn cats, and they were almost completely incorrigible, ignoring her, or even taunting her, if she tried to move them. The goats were potentially functional, part of Sam’s experimentation with organic milk and cheese. Still, he disliked them almost as much as Rose did, as they were loud, obnoxious, and nearly impossible to control. They were a world apart from his beef cows, who loved nothing more than to graze quietly, off by themselves.

Sam had also sold spinach and carrots to farmers’ markets in New York and Philadelphia. He used to talk to Rose while they worked, outlining the business plans he and Katie were developing. Farming needed to grow food to survive, in addition to raising dairy cows. He said farmers had to change, and that he intended for Granville Farm to try different things. He knew, of course, that Rose didn’t understand what he was saying, but she clearly liked being consulted, having Sam’s attention, and she cocked her head intently as if she were getting every word.

Since Katie’s death, though, Sam rarely spoke to Rose about his business plans, or much else.

He rarely spoke at all.

Sam put the plow attachment on the tractor, then drove it back into the barn. If the forecasts were right about the size and severity of the storm, he wouldn’t be able to use it for at least a few days. Sam had heard stories of storms like this—they were overwhelming, paralyzing. So much snow fell, and so fast, that it became impossible to get hay or water to the animals.
He had seen photos of livestock frozen to the ground where they stood, hunger and cold draining the life from them.

A
S THE MORNING
progressed, and the storm drew nearer, Rose’s instincts were kicking in, stirring memories and images in her mind. She pictured, in her diverse mental inventory, the hawks, raccoons, weasels, badgers, foxes, and coyotes that, if pressed by hunger, would circle the farm, probe the fence, scramble over drifts once the storm arrived.