The Merciful Scar

by Rebecca St. James

  Suddenly it didn’t matter what these camo-green and mud-brown ones looked like. I couldn’t see them with the ache coloring everything.

  I parked both the boots and the jacket by the front door and was about to go forage in the kitchen for coffee when I realized there was someone on the front porch. Doing push-ups.

  Sheep ranch, my eye. We’re talking boot camp.

  So it would seem. I opened the door to find an at least partly Hispanic woman of about twenty-five pumping up and down on the porch floor, her body a perfect plank and her arm muscles toned as ropes. Although she breathed in whooshes as she counted, I didn’t see even a glisten of sweat. The air was mountain-chilly, but at the rate she was going, I’d have been one large puddle of perspiration.

  I started to back into the house when she jumped up and faced me, arms in C’s at her sides. My back became one with the doorjamb.

  “Oh,” she said. “Sorry.”

  She stepped forward and stuck out her hand. I stared at it for an awkward moment before I realized she wanted me to shake it.

  “You Kirsten?” she said.

  “I am.”

  “I’m Velasquez. Emma.”

  “Petersen,” I said.

  “Okay,” she said.

  While both of us stood there groping for a conversation topic, I got a closer look at her. She had a pile of plump, dark brown curls cut to frame a small face the color of a café mocha. Her brown eyes were bright but clearly not happy, and her mouth, though full and pretty, didn’t seem to know how to form a smile. She was currently chewing her bottom lip with square, Chiclet teeth.

  “So the work’s that hard, huh?” I said.

  Emma looked at me blankly.

  “Like, we have to train for it?” I said.

  “No,” she said.

  Do I smell a duh-uh in our future?

  “It’s just what I do,” she said.

  And then she went back to doing it.

  I’m not seeing you two becoming BFFs.

  I couldn’t disagree.

  I made a cup of really bad instant coffee and drank it as I watched a white-bellied bird on the fence beyond the kitchen window. He was puffed up just like I was in my layers, which indicated to me that it was as cold out there as it was in here, but I wasn’t about to approach the wood-burning stove in the corner, which as far as I could tell was the only source of heat in the place.

  Between the chill and the caffeine, I managed to be wider awake when Frankie appeared on the porch on the dot of six. Emma had vacated so there was just me, Frankie, and two dogs with freckled noses and grinning muzzles. They pranced and jumped around me the same way they had Frankie the night before, only I didn’t handle it as well as she did. As in, I backed into a rocking chair and heard myself making little oh-oh-oh sounds.

  “Norwich! Undie!” Frankie said without raising her voice. “Off!”

  They both dropped to a sitting position in front of me and continued to thump their tails on the porch floor as if they could barely contain the urge to bathe my face in slobber. It was more than a little unnerving. I’d never been a big fan of dogs so it didn’t bother me that we never had one when I was growing up. Lara, on the other hand, wheedled for a puppy from the time she could talk until she had her personality transplant at age twelve. I had to look for a graceful way to cover my freak-out.

  “Your dog’s name is Undie?” I said. “Like underwear?”

  Frankie chuckled. “Like Underhill. Evelyn.”

  Oh, that clears it up.

  “And Norwich is named after Julian of Norwich. Both deeply spiritual women.”

  She smoothed her hand between Undie’s ears. Or was it Norwich? Who could tell them apart?

  Spiritual dogs. And she thought Aunt Trixie was crazy. This place gets more woo-woo by the minute, and you’re only on Day One. Of thirty.

  “Emma must already be up at the barn,” Frankie said. “You’ve met her?”

  Yes. Delightful girl.

  “I have,” I said.

  Frankie picked up the two buckets she’d carried onto the porch, one metal and empty, the other a repurposed ice cream tub full of some kind of congealed greasy nastiness that made me want to lose my coffee. “She’ll warm up. Emma’s been through a lot.”

  And then without further explanation of a lot, she handed me a pair of heavy gloves and said, “Keep that wrist covered up until it’s completely healed.” Then she nodded for me to follow her.

  Frankie walked softly even in boots, and yet deliberately, as if each step were intentional. Once again, beside her I felt too tall and angular and—

  Face it: completely spastic.

  I somehow managed to make it down the slope to the barn without falling into or stepping on anything, though when I got about six feet from the gate Frankie opened, I wished I’d at least sprained an ankle en route and was at this moment being rushed to a clinic. The smell was just about more than I could handle.

  I’m thinking it’s a nice mix of fresh mud, cow urine, and horse manure. I hope that empty bucket’s meant for you to puke in because I don’t see you getting through the next five seconds without hurling.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Bathsheba, get down.”

  I followed Frankie’s gaze as I passed through the gate. Above us, atop a tower of four bales of hay, sat a dog that looked—to me—just like Norwich and Underwear or whatever her name was. Actually, on closer inspection, she had a prettier face and softer eyes. Perched quietly on her tower she was preferable to the other two, who were now barking furiously on the outside of the gate. Preferable if you liked dogs, which I didn’t.

  “What’s she doing up there?” I said.

  “Being a simpleton,” Frankie said. “She has fewer brains than one of these chickens.”

  You mean the chickens running over here to attack? Those chickens?

  At least a dozen squawking, feathered beings were charging toward us, beady little eyes homed in on the bucket of grossness Frankie set on the ground.

  “Last night’s garbage,” she said. “They love it.”

  So, apparently, did a gray-striped, bone-thin cat that joined the circle and took his turn at the potato peelings and bacon fat.

  Yeah, good thing you didn’t eat breakfast.

  “They need grain too,” Frankie said, “so your first job will be to feed them this.”

  She handed me a can that had once held coffee and was now half-filled with something brown and seedy. At least it didn’t make me want to retch, but I still didn’t know what to do with it.

  “Spread it in a line right here,” Frankie said, as if she’d read my empty mind. “I’m going to mix up formula for the bums.”

  What? There are homeless people up here?

  “I already did it.”

  I looked up to see Emma, jacketless, sleeves rolled up and gloves already caked with something. I didn’t ask what. She probably wouldn’t have answered anyway. She didn’t seem to notice I was even there.

  I set about shaking seed from the container into a straight line. The chickens left the bucket to the cat and followed me in a frenzy, and it was all I could do not to drop the seed tub and escape to the top of the hay bales with Bathsheba.

  I’m pretty sure Bathsheba wasn’t a deeply spiritual woman. Just sayin’.

  “You want me to get Hildegarde ready?” Emma said to Frankie.

  “Let me get the bums fed first. Would you bring over some hay and put it in their pen?”

  Okay, so bums were some kind of animal that ate hay and drank the white liquid in the I-couldn’t-lift-it-on-a-bet bucket Frankie was now hauling out of the barn.

  “When you’re finished here, come out and see this,” Frankie said to me. “This is the fun part.”

  There’s a fun part? Really?

  I took great care getting the chicken feed into a perfectly straight line, so that by the time I left the barn Emma was already coming up behind me with a bale about half the size of herself.

  “Com
ing through,” she said.

  I stopped, and with an audible sigh she went around me, muttering something about me taking my half out of the middle. Feeling decidedly in the way, I hurried to the pen where Frankie was pouring the liquid into square containers on stands, each with three large red nipples sticking out of it. Below there was ceaseless movement and bleating and curly wool, all of which belonged to a crowd of lambs whose current goal was to get to those nipples.

  “Where are their moms?” I said.

  “Either they died or they can’t feed their babies,” Frankie said.

  Emma grunted from the far side of the pen where she was pulling off handfuls of hay and dropping them in the corner. “That’s why they’re called bums.”

  That certainly clarifies it. What the what?

  The bleating racket was replaced by eager sucking. A dozen lambs climbed on each other, all bent on nursing from the same nipple, even though there were more than enough of them for each to have its own.

  “Why do they do that?” I said.

  “Because they’re sheep.” I could hear the eye roll in Emma’s voice. “One does it, they all do it.”

  Frankie gave her husky laugh as she hustled a few lambs to the waiting nipples. “They start acting like sheep early. I suppose we all do.”

  Emma grunted again.

  Love this girl’s vocabulary.

  “You can go ahead and bring Hildegarde in,” Frankie said in Emma’s direction. “We’ll feed the other bums.”

  Frankie was already headed to the barn so I followed her—because what else was I supposed to do? I wasn’t going to stay out there with Emma sneering at me.

  My question is, what does all this have to do with you cutting? Just asking . . .

  Frankie handed me what looked like a large bag of dog food. I hugged it and fumbled to keep it from slipping down my body, though I was glad she’d given me that and not the bale of hay she placed against her hips and carried, face reddening, out of the barn and to a second gate that opened into a larger pen. I lost my grip on the dog food bag when a half dozen lambs, half again as big as the other bums, suddenly surrounded us and reared up to put their front hooves on the bag I had completely lost control of.

  “You can pour that into those big metal cans,” Frankie said.

  She had her back turned, so I retrieved the bag without her seeing how ungracefully I did it and dragged it to the metal containers—it and three lambs who insisted on coming along for the ride.

  They’re like middle school kids, I thought.

  Yeah, in Juvie.

  While they devoured the pellets I poured for them, Frankie led me back through the gate—I thought she must spend half her time opening and closing gates that looked like large Fisher-Price toys—where something let out a long bawl that made me press against the nearest wall.

  “And a lovely good morning to you, too, Hildegarde,” Frankie said to a large milk-chocolate head with enormous brown eyes and pink nostrils so large I could have driven a Volkswagen through them. The cow looked like something out of a children’s storybook, except for the fact that the tips of her horns appeared to have been chopped off.

  She left her complaining to return to a bale of hay placed right below her. I’d have bawled, too, if I’d had to eat that way, with my head stuck between bars. We went through yet another gate so that we were beside Hildegarde, and then I realized she was in some kind of chute.

  “Oh,” I said.

  My disapproval must have leaked through because Emma, who was perched below on a seat that seemed to have lost its tractor, looked up at me, lip curled.

  “You want to try to milk her when she’s not restrained,” she said, “be my guest.”

  “No,” I said lamely, “I’m good.”

  Frankie handed her the metal bucket. “You got this?”

  Emma nodded.

  “Kirsten and I will get the sheep. Just leave the milk by the pump and go meet Joseph.”

  Another nod.

  Nice talkin’ to ya, Emma.

  I wanted to ask Frankie how long Emma had been there. If she was far enough along to be able to milk a cow, she must be about at the end of her thirty days. I sure hoped so.

  Hands now free of buckets and bales, Frankie didn’t open the gate this time but went over it. I must have climbed a fence at some point in my childhood, right? How hard could it be?

  Apparently too hard for me. I got one leg over, but then neither one of them could reach the ground. I leaned to get a toe touch and suddenly I was flat on my back in what I hoped was mud.

  But I’m not thinkin’ so.

  “You okay?” Frankie said as she put down a hand to help me up.

  At least that was what I thought she said. It was tough to hear her over the hard staccato laughter coming from the direction of Hildegarde’s udders.

  Now she locates her sense of humor. Nice.

  Why I expected Frankie to tell me to go get cleaned up, I have no idea. She gave my back a quick pass with her gloved hand and led me on, through the middle-school pen, where a couple of mother sheep—weren’t they called ewes?—hurriedly got between me and their lambs. Some of the seventh-grade bums trotted after me, bleating for still more pellets. If they’d taken to making that disgusting sound with their armpits, I wouldn’t have been surprised.

  There was no end to the gates, but at least Frankie opened them instead of climbing over. Finally we were in the large pen I’d seen the night before, where the sheep had lain like statues in the wind. They were still quiet except for the occasional baa until Frankie called, “Avila!” and another dog bounded around the edge of the flock.

  He—or was it she?—was larger than Norwich and Undie and although her white fur had been clipped into a buzz cut, I was pretty sure she was a Great Pyrenees. My father’s second wife had one but I’d never spent much time around either her or the dog. Their marriage hadn’t lasted long enough to get the pup housebroken.

  “Avila’s the guardian dog,” Frankie said. “She’s with the sheep twenty-four-seven. Without her, we’d lose half the herd to coyotes.”

  And you thought the domestic dogs were bad.

  Avila now wove her way through the flock, and the sheep and their lambs began to stand up and stretch and pee and speak as if the white dog were giving them a wake-up call. Frankie made her way through them, too, to the top of the hill, where she stood gazing down at the milling, bleating mass. Even from the bottom of that hill, where I stood frozen with my back to the fence for fear of being trampled, I could see that she was looking for something in particular. What, I couldn’t fathom. They all looked exactly alike to me. Alike and threatening, just by the sheer number of them. I didn’t attempt to count, but there must have been five hundred, and now that they were stirring themselves up into the day, it was frightening.

  “Kirsten!” Frankie called to me. “Come up here!”

  She’s as insane as old Trixie if she thinks—

  But I shoved the Nudnik aside and made my way around the edge of the flock and up the hill. Most of the sheep ignored me. Those who glanced my way didn’t actually seem to see me. All of them had a rather clueless look in their eyes.

  “You look like I feel,” I said to one of them.

  I reached Frankie and felt instantly more secure standing next to her.

  “I’m going down to the gate,” she said. “You stand here and watch and let me know if any of them don’t get to their feet. We want everybody up before I open the gate.”

  So much for security. But I nodded. I didn’t have much choice. It was me, her, three dogs, and an endless flock. If I didn’t do what she said, what was I going to do?

  Once they were out of the pen, Frankie explained that the sheep had to be taken through the scattering of buildings, across a dry creek, and down the driveway to another gate that opened onto the public road. Once across that, they had to enter through yet another gateway and out onto their early summer pasture.

  Piece of cake, right?<
br />
  It was a half-mile walk. The longest half-mile I had ever taken.

  I’d always thought—if I ever actually thought about sheep—that once one headed in the right direction, the rest would follow. Weren’t sheep notorious followers?

  It appeared that they were, but never where you wanted them to go. At least that was my take on my first herding experience. Placed at the back of the herd, my job was to make sure nobody strayed. No easy task since the entire rear flank was in roaming mode and none of them would go where I wanted them to go, and I had no clue how to change their minds.

  There was definitely no point in talking to them. They were making such a racket I could hardly even hear the Nudnik. All two hundred lambs baby-baaed for their mothers even when said mothers were standing right next to them. That rose to an even more deafening pitch when they got separated, at which point the little ones stood in the middle of the rushing flock and cried like Stevie Nicks until their mothers reclaimed them. As for the moms themselves, their complaints had the same voiceprints as a bunch of guys burping at a frat party. They belched—their babies cried—and everybody else served as back-up bleaters.

  The dogs were no help to me. Norwich and Underwear—Underhaul—Undermine—

  Whatever. Move on.

  —were busy with the sides. As for Avila, she just got between me and the sheep as if to say, “Aw, let ’em have their fun.”

  I tried to figure out what Frankie was doing and do the same thing, but there was no rhyme or reason to it as far as I could tell. Sometimes she walked along beside them, and although I was two hundred and fifty sheep away, I could see her talking to them. Other times she broke into a run and called things to Norwich and Undie that spurred them into action but had absolutely no effect on Avila. When Frankie walked, I walked. When she ran I ran. Until my foot caught on something and I did a face-plant in the grass.

  Were you planning to stay vertical at all today?

  That cinched it: I had absolutely no control over my body. And this was supposed to be healing? As flailing and incompetent as I felt, I might as well go back and face Wes and Isabel and my shriveling education. Or join my mother in Missouri. Or call my father.