The Merciful Scar

by Rebecca St. James

  “What’s that?” Andy said. “Us arriving with all our teeth still in our heads?”

  “No. A ewe with her brand-new lamb. Or have you forgotten how glorious it is?”

  Andy didn’t answer.

  We’re starting to rack up the Awkward Moments.

  Frankie continued to follow Emma east across the south pasture, leaving the flock behind us.

  “I hate to drive across this good grassland,” she said. “Where in the world are they?”

  As if in answer, something sharp and loud and harsh echoed from the slopes to our right. If I hadn’t just finished a shooting lesson, I might not have recognized the sound as gunshots—close ones that repeated like angry raps on a giant door.

  “Whoa,” Frankie said.

  But it wasn’t the shots that made her jam on the brakes and send me lurching into the nonexistent dashboard. Ahead of us, Emma and Sienna had come to a dead halt. Sienna shied and threw back her head, but Emma appeared to be paralytic on the saddle.

  “That horse has heard gunshots before,” Andy said. “What’s going on?”

  “It’s not Sienna,” Frankie said.

  She wrenched the door open and left it hanging as she ran for Emma. Even from inside the truck I could see Emma’s shoulder muscles jerking as if violent spasms had taken hold of her and wouldn’t let go.

  “What is going on?” Andy said.

  One of Frankie’s hands clung to Emma’s shirt as she threatened to topple sideways. The other fumbled with her cell phone.

  “Is she having a seizure?” I said.

  “I don’t know. Is she epileptic?”

  “I have no idea.”

  The information I had on Emma would just about fill a thimble, but I had enough to know this wasn’t normal for her. Something was terribly wrong, and I evidently wasn’t the only one who thought so. Joseph left a tsunami of dust behind as he and Merton blew down a slope and across the pasture toward her. He was off the horse before its hooves stopped moving.

  By then Emma was beyond trembling. Her feet left the stirrups and her knees bent into her chest as if her limbs were being pulled by springs. Now in a fetal position she teetered on the saddle and veered into Joseph’s outstretched hands. The man I thought was nothing but bones and sinew turned into a steel crane as he lifted the curled-up mess that was Emma off the horse and into his arms.

  Andy leaned across me and turned off the ignition. Without the sputter of the struggling engine, I could hear Emma screaming from the pit of her soul. Just as she’d done in her nightmare.

  Joseph squatted, still holding her against him, and soothed his hands over the now hatless curls. He looked up at Frankie who was stroking Sienna’s mane and whispering to her.

  “Your ewe’s up there just behind those rocks,” he said. “Grizzly got to her. She’s dead but the lamb’s alive. I ran the bear off before she could get to it too.” He pressed Emma’s head into his chest. “I’ll take care of this. You see to that—and don’t waste any time. That grizzly’ll be back looking for the carcass.”

  I heard more than felt the gasp that came out of me. It was a gasp for every level of what I’d just heard.

  No one else took the time for shock. The scene through the wind-shield mobilized: Joseph got Emma to her feet, and Frankie hurried over to the truck.

  “You two come with me,” she said. “We’ll go on foot.”

  She turned without waiting for an answer and started out across the pasture toward the rocks. I couldn’t have given her one anyway. Everything on me was inert, including my mouth.

  Yeah, I don’t think this is going to be something beautiful and mysterious and glorious.

  “Hey.” Andy had the passenger door open and was holding out his hand. “Frankie needs our help.”

  Good. Another chance to be new at something.

  The Nudnik’s voice was sarcastic. But the echo of Frankie’s voice was not.

  I climbed from the seat and followed Andy across the pasture.

  Frankie was on her knees beside what appeared to be a pile of dirty matted wool. When we got within six feet, she put up a hand, and Andy stretched out his arm to block me from taking another step.

  “Stay there, Kirsten,” she said. “I’m going to bring the lamb to you. Carry her back to the truck and hold her until we get back.”

  There was no time to even think about refusing. Frankie scooped up a white bundle and brought it to me without even completely straightening up. Her shirt and jeans were smeared with red fluid.

  “Don’t look at the ewe,” she said as she pressed the lamb into my arms. “Just take her straight to the truck. We’ll be right there.”

  The small being was half the size of any of the lambs in the bums’ pen and her squirms to free herself were heartbreakingly feeble. But the plaintive bleating as she strained toward her lifeless mother filled the air like Emma’s sobs.

  “Kirsten,” Frankie said. “Go.”

  I did, with my arms clenched around the crying lamb and my feet stumbling toward the truck. Soft clumps of wool squashed against me, but through them I could feel the little heart pattering. It was as frightened as the mournful bleating that poured from the pink lips.

  I was almost bleating myself as I pried open the door while trying to keep the lamb from escaping my hold. Though by the time I got us both into the cab and closed the door again, the squirming had stopped and the damp armful of softness was molding itself to my chest.

  “It’s okay,” I whispered to it. And then because I could think of nothing else, I added, “It’s okay.”

  I wondered if Joseph was saying much the same thing to Emma. They were still out there, standing between the horses, Emma leaning into Joseph with her face buried so far into his shirt I was sure her cheeks would come out plaid. She was no longer shaking. I didn’t hear any crying. But like the lamb in my arms, she clung to Joseph and showed no signs of moving.

  Joseph kept his eyes turned toward the rocks and the slope above, and even though I couldn’t see them under the hat brim, I knew they were watching for Frankie, and probably the grizzly. Now that I thought about it, I hadn’t seen Frankie carrying her gun. How had I ended up in a place where it wasn’t safe unless everybody was packing?

  The lamb nuzzled at my neck.

  “I know, baby,” I said. “Somebody will be here soon to take care of you.”

  Was it the right time to tell her she was now a bum lamb?

  Really? Tell her anything you want. The chances of her understanding you are just about nil.

  I wasn’t actually sure whether I was doing it for the lamb or to keep myself from losing it, but I said, “You’ll like the other bums. Okay, some of them are a little rowdy—mostly the boys. That’s the thing about boys: at this age they’re mostly absurd little creeps. Then they grow up and . . . they’re absurd big creeps. But you’ll be all right. Sister Frankie will make sure you don’t get hurt. Now, I haven’t actually tasted the milk she’ll give you, but from what I can gather it’s pretty good. The other babies suck it right up.”

  I didn’t add that I was a little concerned about her getting equal chances at the nipples. She was so very tiny and probably not ready to know she’d just entered a hard, competitive world. So I just whispered, “It’s okay. You’ll be taken care of.”

  Movement caught the corner of my eye: Frankie and Andy moving down the last of the slope, each holding two of the dead ewe’s legs so that she swung like a bleeding hammock between them. I could see why Frankie wanted to get the lamb away from her. No one needs to see her mom like that.

  The lamb stirred and I quickly buried her head in my neck so she wouldn’t see them pass with the ewe. The truck rocked as they apparently slid the body into the bed, now a hearse for a beloved mother.

  “You didn’t even have a chance to get to know her,” I whispered into the wool. “I’m really sorry.”

  “Go ahead and drive back with Kirsten,” I heard Frankie say. “You remember what to do—put the lamb
in one of the small—”

  “Got it,” Andy said.

  Frankie rushed past and joined Joseph. I watched as together they coaxed Emma back onto Sienna and Joseph remounted Merton. There was a rope tied between the two horses, so that Emma was attached on one flank to Joseph, and on the other side to Frankie who held Sienna’s reins as she walked. A memory swelled in me, a faded one kept safely folded away with the too-few others like it, of a parent on either side, holding my hands, swinging me over a curb with a whee worthy of the highest of Ferris wheels.

  The truck door opened and Andy got in. His face was the color of cream of wheat.

  “You okay?” he said.

  I shook my head and burst into tears.

  I heard no Nudnik reminding me that there was no crying in sheep keeping. Only Andy’s voice saying, “I know, right? I never got used to it either.”

  I smeared at my cheek with the back of my hand and drew the lamb in closer.

  “Look at that,” he said. “She’s asleep.”

  “Are you sure?” I said. “She’s not—”

  “Nah, I can see her breathing from here.”

  Andy turned the truck around and started across the pasture, driving far more slowly than Frankie had.

  “You know I grew up here,” he said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I’ve seen a lot of sheep and cows and dogs die and I blubbered over every one of them.” He gave me the grin. “That’s why I decided to become a scientist. It’s hard to grieve a dead equation.”

  “What field are you in?” I said.

  The grin dissolved.

  Oops. Isn’t that why the prodigal nephew showed up here? So he could sort himself out?

  “I didn’t mean to get in your business,” I said.

  “No worries.” He nodded at the sleeping lamb. “So, congratulations, Mommy.”

  When we got back to the barn, I continued to carry the lamb while Andy looked around and carried on a conversation with himself.

  “I guess she means this pen. Probably never took it down after lambing season. Why was that ewe giving birth so late in the year? I hope there’s some formula left.”

  “Frankie mixes it for the bums every day,” I said.

  Andy shook his head and motioned me into a small pen formed by four of the yellow plastic Fisher-Price gates tied together with rope so that they only looked slightly off-kilter.

  “Put her in here,” he said. “If you’ll get some hay, I’ll see if there’s any newborn formula still around.”

  “So she’s a girl?”

  Andy formed the dimples without the smile. “I haven’t checked. I just don’t want to keep calling her It.”

  When I set the lamb on the floor of the pen, she looked smaller and more fragile than ever. She must have felt that way, too, because as I fumbled my way over the gate to go get hay, she stretched her wooly neck and let out a mournful, vibrating cry.

  “I’ll be right back,” I said. “I’m going to fix you a bed.”

  But she cried—and stirred all the bums in their pen outside the barn into a frenzy—until I came back with an armful of hay. She didn’t settle down until I had spread it on the floor and sat beside her. Andy found us there, a nippled plastic Coke bottle half-filled with something milky in his hand.

  “This is almost the last of it,” he said.

  He joined us on the floor and peered under the lamb’s leg. “It is a girl. Is that what you wanted?”

  “I didn’t even know I was expecting.”

  “It happens. Have you ever done this before?”

  “What?”

  “Fed a lamb a bottle?”

  “Are you serious?” I said.

  “I didn’t want to insult you by starting in on a tutorial if you were already a pro.”

  “Wait—I’m going to feed her?”

  “She’s comfortable with you so it makes sense.”

  He didn’t give me a chance to list the myriad reasons why the lamb would probably starve in my hands.

  “So you tuck her under your arm so her feet touch the floor behind you,” he said.

  “Like this?”

  “Yeah. Then hold the bottle in your left hand and with your right, tip her chin up.”

  “Is this right?”

  “Little higher. Okay, now press the nipple on the side of her mouth and sort of wiggle it until she opens and then slide it in.”

  “Not from the front?”

  “No, you have to sneak it in there at first, especially since she’s never nursed.”

  “So—this way?”

  “Don’t be afraid to apply a little pressure. There you go. You’re in.”

  The nipple was indeed in the lamb’s mouth but she didn’t seem to know what to do with it.

  “You seriously have to teach them how to eat?” I said.

  “From a bottle anyway. Tilt it up more. You see that hole at the base of the nipple?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Keep that at the top and watch the milk. If you see bubbles you’re in good shape.”

  “I don’t see any.”

  “Pull out on it just a little bit and see what happens.”

  I gave it an infinitesimal tug. The lamb latched on and began to suck, the pink lips curled around the nipple, her eyes closed. I couldn’t help holding her tighter.

  “You’ve got this,” Andy said.

  “You’re not leaving, are you?”

  Look out now . . .

  “Nah. I always liked watching them feed like this. ’Course, I would never admit that when I got past about twelve, but secretly it was one of my favorite parts of growing up here.”

  “You fed a lot of lambs, did you?”

  “Oh yeah. And I always got to name the bums.”

  “Really.”

  “Every year I picked a theme and then mostly I—but sometimes Frankie—would give them names. Like one year it was Winnie-the-Pooh characters—that was when I was really young—then when I got older it was, like, makes of cars.”

  “You mean like Chevy?”

  The grin appeared. “No, like Camaro, Corvette, Ferrari. One of my last themes—I guess I was in high school—was famous scientists.”

  I blinked at him. “I can’t even think of any famous scientists.”

  “Sure you can. We had Hawking, for Stephen Hawking. Einstein.”

  “Okay, so, like Madame Curie. Louis Pasteur.”

  “Frankie kept getting them mixed up, couldn’t remember any of the names half the time. At sixteen I thought that was wicked funny.”

  I checked the bottle for bubbles. The little girl lamb was still nursing away.

  “Did Frankie keep up the tradition after you went off to college?”

  “Don’t know.”

  I could see the grin begin to fade again and I didn’t want it to go away.

  “I think you should name this lamb,” I said.

  “You think? Really?”

  “I do.”

  He tilted away and took the long view of the lamb chowing in my arms.

  “What’s your last name again?” he said.

  “Mine? Petersen.”

  “Perfect. I’m going to call her Petey.”

  “She’s a girl!”

  “Hello—Frankie?”

  “Oh yeah, huh?”

  “I like it. Petey Ketersen.”

  I let out a guffaw that startled the lamb and I had to sneak the nipple back into her mouth again. She sucked at it hungrily.

  “That whole Pete thing really works,” he said.

  “How so?”

  “You can be Little Bo Pete.”

  Hey, that was my joke! Sort of . . .

  The Nudnik had been uncharacteristically silent. I would have been fine with her staying that way, but Andy pushed the right buttons to get her going again.

  “I’m going to call you Bo for short,” Andy said. “Can I do that?”

  Flirt alert! Flirt alert!

  “I guess I’ve been called wo
rse,” I said.

  “Yeah?” Andy propped himself against the opposite side of the pen so that his feet almost touched my hips and mine his.

  Boundaries, anyone?

  How was I supposed to establish boundaries in a four-by-four pen? Still, I was careful to keep the space between my feet and him.

  “So what have people called you?” he said.

  Let’s see, your mother called you Selfish. Your father’s fave was Just Like Your Mother. Now, Wes, he was partial to Babe.

  I refocused deliberately on the lamb.

  “She’s spitting it out. Is she done?”

  Andy leaned forward and put his hand on Petey’s bulging belly. “I think so. There’s no room left in there.”

  “Did I feed her too much?”

  “Is she puking?”

  “No.”

  “Then she’s fine.”

  That was apparently true, because little Petey stretched herself across my lap and soon the belly in question was rising and falling in even baby breaths.

  “I was supposed to take pictures,” Andy said. “But I left my phone in the truck.”

  “That’s really okay.”

  I didn’t add that I was sure I was a thing of beauty to behold about then. My hair was still in a ponytail from the shooting lesson, although half of it had come loose and was hanging around my face like tassels from an ear of corn, and my eyes were probably puffy-pink from my short crying stint.

  “I really want a picture of this,” Andy said.

  He formed his index fingers and thumbs into a camera lens and looked through the hole, one eye squinted. “Okay, give me a Bo Pete pose.”

  “What?”

  “You know, that thing you do when you cock your head and look at me like I’m insane.”

  “I do not!”

  “You’re doing it right now. That’s it—that’s the money shot!”

  I threw my head back to laugh, and found Frankie standing just outside the pen. I couldn’t put a name to the expression on her face.

  How ’bout, This isn’t what I was expecting?

  I was thinking more along the lines of Now look what you’ve done. But I’d done exactly what Andy told me to do. And it was Andy that Frankie was looking at. It was the closest I had ever seen her to being stern.