The Long Walk Home

by Will North

  But what was real? David had hit her; did that make him dangerous? Alec had kissed her forehead; did that mean he loved her? Did she love him? She needed time to think but didn’t have it. It was time to get the day going; time to get David’s breakfast and lunch made and delivered, time to attend to her guests. There was never time for her. As she slipped out of bed and dressed, she wondered if she’d know what to do with it if there were.

  In the kitchen, Jack was waiting for her, sitting on his haunches, tongue lolling.

  “Jackie my boy, what are we to do?” she said to the collie, setting his tail a-wag. “There’s a strange man in the house, and I’m afraid I’m rather fond of him. Really, Jack, it’s not at all right.”

  Jack yawned, stood, and sidled up to her.

  “Oh, you’re no help; you’re just hungry! There’s a surprise ...”

  She walked out into the boot room and put dry food in Jack’s bowl. Jack made a soft “woofing” sound by way of thanks, and she ruffled the top of his head with her fingers. Then she knelt down, put her arms around the dog’s neck, and gave him a hug. Jack ignored her, and it didn’t matter; she knew the hug was for her, not him. She knew she was clinging to something certain, because uncertainty surrounded her.

  She stood up and returned to the kitchen. Opening the refrigerator, she took out a sealed pint carton of milk and two hard-boiled eggs. She put the eggs into a small paper bag, adding a thick, buttered slice of crusty granary bread, a pared carrot, and fruit. She set the bag into a large wicker basket that sat on the end of the counter and added the milk, a box of organic muesli, a banana, and an apple. Breakfast and lunch for David. Not much to keep a farmer going, but all he seemed to want anymore.

  She pulled a coat off a hook in the boot room, shrugged it on over her flannel shift, and pulled on her green wellies. Taking the basket from the counter, she took a deep breath and headed for the car.

  It was a dreary morning, and cold. The clear night sky had yielded to a blanket of dense, icy mist, the kind that keeps you constantly damp but doesn’t soak you through. “Pneumonia weather,” her mother used to call it.

  When she reached the hay barn she sat in the car for a few moments to gather her courage. Finally, she got out and knocked at the door. There was no reply. David was often off early, tending to the sheep, but when she tried the door she found it locked. She puzzled a moment, then left the basket on the doorstep. Clearly, he wanted to be left alone. After last night, she was happy to oblige.

  Back in her kitchen, she filled the electric kettle and flicked on its switch. She put a scoop of tea leaves in her teapot. The kettle clicked off as the water came to a boil and she went to fetch it. When she turned around, Alec was standing in the doorway.

  “Hello, you,” he said.

  “Hi.”

  They stood looking at each other, smiling shyly. Fiona broke the silence.

  “You will have noted,” she needled, “that my interpretation of the marine weather forecast yesterday was correct.”

  “I did, yes. Not a great day to give the mountain another try.”

  “I shouldn’t think so, given your last attempt.”

  Alec was about to protest, but there was a knock at the back door. Fiona went to open it.

  “Oh hello, Owen; come in and have a cuppa.”

  Owen followed her into the kitchen. “Morning, Alec,” he said.

  Fiona poured a cup of tea and gestured for Owen to sit.

  “What do you need, Owen?”

  Owen hesitated, as if searching for the right words.

  “David’s already gone back to his cottage. Looked done in when he arrived this morning and left after a couple of hours. A right mood he was in, too, I can tell you; angry at everything, he was. The thing is, the last rush of lambing is upon us and I’m a bit stretched to keep up with ’em.”

  Fiona knew from experience that this was an understatement. Before he’d taken ill, it had been all she and David together could do to handle the surge of births at this stage in the season.

  “I was hoping my assistant here might be willing to lend a hand,” Owen said, nodding toward Alec.

  Alec laughed. “Well, if you’re willing to engage a galloping incompetent to help out, then I’m your man. But you’ll have to guide me.”

  Fiona looked at Alec. She was beginning to expect his unexpectedness.

  Owen’s hunched shoulders eased and he grinned. “After yesterday, I’d say you were a natural.”

  “Why don’t I make you both a decent breakfast before the others come down,” Fiona said. “Then you two can go and play in the fields together.”

  “That would be right welcome, Mrs. Edwards.”

  Fiona went to work and Owen filled Alec in on the state of things. The good news was that the last of the lambing ewes were in the near meadow; the bad news was that the lambs were coming thick and fast. A few minutes later, Fiona had plates of fried eggs and bacon before them, along with thick slices of toasted brown bread. The two men ate quickly. Fiona had barely enough time to wipe her hands, pour herself a cup of tea, and take a seat before the two men stood, thanked her, and headed for the door. Alec pulled on his boots, then ducked his head back into the kitchen.

  “By the way, miss, what’re my wages?”

  She laughed. “Only food, lodging, and all the comforts, I’m afraid.”

  “Works for me,” he said, then hurried after Owen.

  ***

  “THERE ARE A couple of things worrying me,” Owen said as they walked through the farmyard. “We’ve got a fair number of young ewes about to give birth and they’re always more trouble than the seasoned ones. The births are more difficult, and they often need to be trained to care for their lambs properly. The other thing’s the weather. It’s cold, and according to the local report, it’s going to get colder throughout the day and tonight.”

  “You’re worried about losing lambs?” Alec asked.

  Owen nodded. “David’s an old-fashioned hill farmer. Lambing’s done in the fields and the little devils survive or they don’t is his theory. That’s not how I was taught.”

  “What would you do?”

  “In normal weather that theory would be fine, but look what we’ve got: steady mist and deepening cold. More like winter than spring. I think we stand a chance of losing a lot of the lambs tonight, unless we shelter them. See, most farms these days, lambing’s done in sheds, out of the weather. David’s got the space, but doesn’t believe in it.”

  “David’s not here.”

  Owen looked at him. “You’d support me?”

  “For what it’s worth, which isn’t much, sure. Seems to me the objective is to keep the lambs alive, whatever that takes. What does it take, by the way?”

  They were just passing the barn when Owen stopped. “How are you with a hammer and a saw?”

  “I’ve renovated a few houses over the years and, to the best of my knowledge, they’re still standing.”

  “Good enough; follow me.” In the barn he gestured at the largely empty space. “Ideally, I’d like a couple dozen pens, roughly four by four. No time to build permanent ones, but there’s wood behind the barn and tools in the office. If you could just build a few sets of portable hurdles ...”

  “Hurdles?”

  “Like in track-and-field races, like portable fence sections. We can rearrange them as needed. Ideally, I’d like a central aisle with pens on either side, bedded with that dry straw over there.”

  “I can do that. I’ll get the wood; you get the tools and move the Land Rover and the tractor.”

  “Right. And Alec?” Owen said. “Thanks.”

  Alec waved and headed for the rear of the barn. The wood was in good shape, stacked and relatively dry. In a few trips, he’d dragged most of it into the barn. Owen headed to the lambing field.

  Within a few minutes, Alec created a prototype of what he would build: two uprights braced to a footing board, three four-foot horizontal boards nailed to the uprights, and one
diagonal to give the hurdle strength and stability. Then he used the pieces as templates and cut multiples of each. After that it was simply a matter of nailing the pieces together to form each hurdle unit.

  At midmorning, Fiona arrived with thermoses of hot tea. She slipped into the barn and watched Alec work. He knelt on the concrete floor of the barn piecing together the sections of wood. He had stripped to one of his sleeveless T-shirts and despite the cold weather there was a dark stain of sweat between his shoulder blades. His bare, attenuated arms were sinewy and clearly strong. He didn’t look his fifty years, and he didn’t work like a man that age, either. He worked like a machine: no wasted movements, each nail driven straight and true in three swift, smooth hammer swings. She hadn’t expected a writer to have such practical skills. There was another thing she hadn’t expected, but standing there quietly watching him work, she embraced it: she was in love with him.

  It had grown swiftly, this love. It had begun at her doorstep, when he first arrived, then had spread throughout the world as she knew it over the course of the next three days, like shock waves after a detonation. She thought about what a bundle of contradictions this man was: thoughtful but mischievous, quick-witted but kind, reserved but openhearted and generous, educated but informal, controlled but caring. I feel like I’ve known him forever, she said to herself, and then suddenly she knew why. He was the kind of man she dreamed of marrying when she was a little girl: he was a gentleman.

  “Tea?” she said.

  Alec looked up, startled. He’d had no idea she was there. He leaned back on his haunches.

  “Perfect,” he said, twisting this way and that to loosen his shoulders. “How’s Owen doing with the lambs?”

  “Don’t know. I’m on my way there now.”

  He reached for the thermos, ignored the cup that formed its lid, and drank the hot, milky tea straight from the lip of the container. He thanked her, dragged the back of his hand across his mouth, then picked up the hammer again. “Let me know how he is, will you?”

  Then he went back to work. She smiled at his single-mindedness. She didn’t feel ignored or insulted; he was focused, a man on a mission.

  “Alec?”

  He looked up.

  “Why are you doing this for us?”

  He sat back on his heels again. “Because it needed doing. I suppose it’s just how I was brought up. My father called it the ‘barn-raising tradition.’”

  “The what?”

  “Barn raising. His father’s brothers farmed in central Pennsylvania and he spent summers with them. When a farmer needed to build a new barn, everyone in the community would gather to help and it would be framed and sided in a couple of days. They were German immigrants, mostly, and they had a phrase that translated roughly as ‘many hands make the work light.’ So when there’s something that needs doing, I just pitch in. Like I said: it’s how I was brought up.”

  Fiona looked at him and doubted that was the whole story.

  “Well then, I guess I’ll leave you to it. But thank you.”

  Alec nodded. She found two pails, filled them with water at the spigot outside the barn, then headed for the lambing meadow, a bucket in each hand and the second thermos tucked under an arm. A few minutes later she was back in the barn.

  “How’s Owen doing?” Alec asked her.

  “So far, so good. Mostly normal births, a few ewes being stupid about caring for their lambs. He wants to know how you’re coming.”

  Alec had by this time set up two pens, tying hurdle sections together with orange hay-baling twine. With the precut wood, he figured he could build a pen every forty-five minutes.

  “We’re ready for some lambs,” he said, hardly looking up from his hammering. She bent over him and kissed the back of his neck.

  “Be right back,” she said.

  Alec didn’t move. The kiss was electric; it was as if someone had stuck his finger in a wall socket. The emotional jolt was stunning, galvanic. He was vibrating from the shock of it, from its tenderness. He felt simultaneously suffused with happiness and confusion.

  He didn’t have a lot of time to deal with these conflicting emotions; Fiona was back in just a few minutes. She had the forelegs of two lambs gripped in each hand. The mother followed behind, bleating in protest. She led the lambs and the ewe into one of the pens, knelt down in the straw beside the ewe, and, holding each lamb in turn by the shoulders, squirted milk from their mother’s teats toward their mouths. It took a couple of tries, but eventually the lambs got the idea and were suckling the ewe. Their little bellies were round in no time and the ewe seemed more than happy to have the pressure in her udder relieved. Fiona brought the ewe a scoopful of food pellets and a bucket of water.

  Thus it went, pen by pen, ewe by ewe. By early afternoon, five pens were filled with bleating lambs and ewes.

  “How about something to eat?” Fiona asked at one point.

  “Protein and water,” he replied, not looking up.

  “Ham sandwiches?”

  “Just the ham, please, no bread; slows down the brain.”

  She returned a few minutes later with the ham, some cheese, and a plastic bottle of water, then took Owen his lunch.

  A few minutes later she was back. “Owen needs you.”

  Alec headed up to the meadow at a run and found Owen much as he had the day before, trying to still a straining ewe. Owen’s hair was matted flat from the continuous mist and his face was covered with dirt.

  “And a handsome devil you are, I must say, young Owen,” Alec cracked.

  Owen looked up and laughed. “Seen yourself lately?”

  “What’ve we got?”

  “Twins, both reverse presentation—that is, hind legs first. Not what we want, but it can be managed. What you want to do is ease the top one out first, while keeping the lower one inside, so as not to crowd the cervix.”

  “What I want to do?”

  “Yeah. I got another one just like her over there on the other side of the meadow, and she’s in more distress.”

  “I’m a big fan of learning by doing, Owen, but how about a tip or two?”

  “I was coming to that. I’ve made you a double-ended leg rope. You slip a loop over the hoof of each of the top lamb’s hind legs, careful so the knot straightens the hoof rather than bending it. Pull each leg gently to the opening. Then lift the ewe’s hindquarters like we did yesterday so the lower lamb settles back down in the uterus. Finally, pull both legs out evenly; the first lamb will follow. Lambs born backward can have fluid in their throat, so you’ll have to grab the lamb by the hind legs and swing it—gently, mind—in a low arc to get it out. The rest you already know. Then do the same with the other lamb. Oh, and use plenty of lubrication on both your arm and the birth canal; I’ve left you a bucketful, plus some disposable latex gloves.”

  With that he dashed across the field.

  Alec pulled on the gloves, lubricated his right hand and arm, picked up the rope, and kneeled behind the ewe. But as soon as he tried to insert his hand, the ewe stepped away. He stood up and straddled the ewe, facing backward. With his knees holding her in place, he tried again. It was somehow different approaching upside down; it made visualizing what was happening inside more difficult. Still, he easily located the uppermost lamb and slipped the loops over its tiny hooves. He followed Owen’s instructions and soon the hooves were at the opening. He lifted the ewe’s hind section about a foot and gave it a bit of a shake, then began to pull the leg ropes. Sure enough, in no time the lamb appeared and slipped out onto the grass. Alec gave it a gentle swing, cleared its nose, soaked its umbilical in iodine, and set the fragile little creature by its mother’s head. The ewe made soft bleating sounds and began cleaning her trembling firstborn. Alec turned to the task of pulling out the second.

  This time, occupied as she was, the ewe gave no trouble. He slipped his hand into the birth canal, located the second lamb’s legs, and repeated the procedure. But as he pulled, this lamb seemed to get jammed at the c
ervix. He reached in, feeling for the problem, and found that the lamb’s hooves had bent at the ankles; he’d slipped the rope loops on wrong. He corrected the error, straightened the little legs, and tried again. This time the lamb came into the world smoothly. He cleared its nose and set it beside its sibling. The ewe looked at him with what seemed to Alec like gratitude. Then she moved instinctively to the task of licking off the birth fluids and nudging the babies toward her udder. This ewe’s maternal instincts were strong. The lambs would survive.

  Owen bounded over to him, having seen to the other ewe. “How’d it go?” he asked.

  “Amazingly, just fine,” Alec said with a look of bemusement at what was happening before him. “I never thought I’d ever be in training for ovine obstetrics.”

  Owen laughed. “Looks like you’re ready for your diploma. By the way, how are things in the barn?”

  “I’ve got ten pens made up. I could have another half dozen or so before the afternoon is out.”

  “Well, get to it, man; we’ll have no lollygagging here in the fields!”

  Alec rose, groaning as he stood. “I swear I’m too old for this.”

  “Nonsense,” Owen chided. “You just need getting used to it. But remember, I only need the pens for the ones who seem weak to me. Whatever you can build, I’ll take.”

  “I’m on it.”

  “Alec,” Owen said.

  Alec turned again.

  “Couldn’t do it without you, mate.”

  Alec smiled and bowed formally. “I’m at your service.”

  They both laughed and Alec returned to building pens. Every hour or so, Fiona would arrive with one or two newborns and their mother. At one point she showed up with two lambs but no ewe. She put them in a fresh stall, then headed back to the field with a large plastic jug, returning a few minutes later with the jug filled with ewe’s milk. Alec heard her murmuring to the lambs and went over to the pen.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked her over the railing.

  “Orphans. Sometimes a ewe dies giving birth but the lambs survive. In this case, though, the ewe’s fine but she’s refusing to nurse, so I’ve got to feed them with colostrum I’ve milked from the mother.”