Williamson, Penelope

by The Outsider

  "And here all this time I've been worried you were going to make me do that," the outsider said.

  "The night is young yet, Mr. Cain."

  He laughed, then his gaze fell back down to the ewe, who was now trying to nudge her lamb to its feet by pushing up on its little rump. A gentleness she had never seen before came over his harsh face. He looked very young, she thought, and... surprisingly, the word that came to her mind was happy. He looked happy.

  "M-Mem?"

  She turned, swallowing down the lump that clogged her throat. She took the sheep hook that Benjo handed her. She slid it under the lamb's belly, in front of its hind legs, lifting the nubby yellow bundle of bones until it was dangling from the end of the pole, nose to the ground.

  She offered the baby in this fashion to its mother, letting her see and smell it. But the ewe suddenly whirled and ran into the middle of the corral, scattering the whole rest of the drop band into a bleating, tail-humping panic.

  "Oh, she sure enough is a flighty mother!" Rachel exclaimed in exasperation "See if you and MacDuff can shoo her back over this way, Benjo."

  Her boy, with both the dog's and the outsider's help, chased the ewe back over to the lamb. The ewe stretched out her neck, sniffing hard to be sure the baby was hers. Slowly Rachel backed up, the lamb dangling at the end of the pole. She made soft bleating noises low in her throat, a beh-beh-beh, to encourage the flighty mother. And the ewe followed them warily, sniffing the whole way, into the sheds.

  The sheds, built long and low, had a mixture of straw and sawdust spread over the floor, and were divided inside into a honeycomb of pens, called jugs, that were just large enough to hold a ewe and her lamb. Once snug in its new home, the newborn pushed itself up onto its wobbly, knobby-kneed legs. Using gentle nudges, Rachel guided it to its mother's teat for its first meal. She couldn't linger to watch, though, for she could hear Benjo hollering that another lamb was coming.

  They hit a flurry of birthings after that, so that she and the outsider had to work separately. She watched him, though, whenever she got the chance. Johnny Cain, man-killer, seemed to settle easily into the sheep midwifery business. His low and lazy drawl soothed the ewes like a lullaby, and the touch of his hands was gentle and sure.

  Her eyes often sought out her boy as well, and her chest tightened with a bittersweet ache when she thought how proud of him his father would be. He seemed to be everywhere at once, handing them sheep hooks and pieces of sacking, scooping up the birth mess from the newly delivered ewes. And in between jugging the babies and their dams, they all took turns at forking hay into the pens and giving the new mothers buckets of water sweetened with molasses.

  Only once did Rachel have to pick up a small wet yellow bundle and carry it outside the corral fence to the place that, one particularly bad spring, Ben had taken to calling the "bone pile." For it was inevitable that, even in the good years, some of the lambs died, and they always lost a few of the ewes as well.

  Still, as Rachel carried the dead lamb over to the bone pile, she turned her head away so that the men, her son and Johnny Cain, wouldn't see her woman's tears.

  Rachel clasped the sheep hook between her thighs so that she could use both hands to gather up her hair and work it into a braid.

  Her hair had been falling into her face all night, when it wasn't being twisted into knots by the wind. She scolded herself for not pinning it up and covering it properly with a prayer cap. It had been prideful of her—and wicked, because she had done it for him. "Rachel."

  Her name, coming at her out of the night and in such a tone of urgency, startled her so that the sheep hook went clattering to the ground.

  He had come up close behind her, and as she whirled, her flying braid wrapped around his throat. He reached up, his long fingers tangling in the thick loose plait. His fingers tightened their grip, pulling her closer. His head dipped, and his lips parted slightly as if he would kiss her.

  It was as if she had roped him, roped him with her hair.

  He let her go and took a step back. "We got trouble," he said.

  Rachel's eyes flew to the road, expecting the trouble to belong to him. But then she saw that he'd already gone back into the lambing sheds, and she had to run to catch up with him.

  The outsider led her to the jug where they'd put the first lamb born that night, the first lamb of spring. The little black-faced baby stood alone, ignored by his mother, his knobby legs shaking, his back humped up, eyes sunken, ears drooping.

  "Oh, he's starving, the poor little bobbli." Rachel squeezed into the jug with the lamb and his dam, stooping to keep from hitting her head on the sloping roof. "This flighty ewe of yours is bumming her lamb."

  "Flighty ewe of mine? I don't recall marrying her."

  "You hadn't ought to spurn her to her face like that, sir. Given how she adores you." And indeed, at the sound of his voice, the ewe had turned her head to look up at the outsider with an expression on her sweet clown's face that was positively besotted. "Help me to tip her over onto her rump, if you don't mind," Rachel said.

  "I don't. But I ain't speaking for her feelings on the matter."

  The drawling words were full of teasing laughter, and although she smiled back at him, there was a tightness in her chest now akin to fear. She thought of how his fingers had felt in her hair. No wonder the Bible said an uncovered woman ought to be shorn. It was a wickedness, what he had been about to do. What she had almost let him do.

  They wrestled together with the stubborn ewe, their hips and shoulders bumping in the enclosed space, trying to upend her so that her baby could nurse. Once, Rachel's loosening braid curled around his arm, and she nearly upended her own self jerking away from him, but if he noticed he gave no sign.

  When they got the ewe sitting up on her rump, Rachel worked her teats to get the milk to flow. Soon the shed filled with the slurping sounds of hungry suckling, the slap of a little black nose against the bag. They didn't let go of the ewe, though, until her baby's belly bulged with milk.

  The outsider stepped aside to allow Rachel to precede him. But she couldn't go past him without brushing up against him, and her unruly braid caught in the buttons of his coat. She spent a frantic moment trying to tug herself free, while he said, "If you'd just quit wriggling like a cut worm, I can..." And once again she had to endure the feel of his fingers in her hair.

  When they were safely, and separately, outside the cramped jug, he straightened to his full height, bracing his good hand into the small of his back. He rolled his shoulders, easing out a deep groan. "I could stretch for a mile, if it weren't for the walk back," he said. "This is a downright indecent hour to be working. There's only one thing a body ought to be doing this time of night."

  "And just what is..." A blush rose in her cheeks, as her head caught up with her tongue.

  "I was going to say sleeping, Mrs. Yoder."

  He turned away from her, but not before she'd noticed how the lines had crinkled at the corners of his eyes.

  He took off his coat and slung it over a peg where the sheep hooks hung when not in use. Although the night was cold, the crowded sheds were warm and they'd been working hard. He grabbed up a pitchfork now with his good hand and dumped hay into the feeding trough that ran along the back of the flighty ewe's jug.

  He hadn't bothered to put on his vest when he'd dressed. Beneath the thin, wash-worn flannel of Ben's shirt, she could see the muscles of his back and shoulders flexing as he worked. His black suspenders seemed to cling to those muscles, to move with them.

  Plain men never wore suspenders.

  She touched the middle of his back, above where the suspenders crossed. It was supposed to be a light, brief touch, meant only to get his attention. Yet like his suspenders, her hand seemed to cling there, and she felt the heat and hardness of his flesh.

  He turned, slowly, so that her hand trailed for a moment across the width of his back before it fell to her side. "I've been meaning to thank you," she said. "I don't know how ever B
enjo and I would be managing on our own tonight, without you."

  "I suspect your good neighbor and particular friend would've come hightailing it on over here, tripping over his own big feet in his rush to lend you a hand."

  "Noah doesn't have big feet. Well, yes, he does. But you shouldn't mock him. He's a good man."

  The outsider said nothing. He stabbed the pitchfork back into the hay bale just as Benjo came into the sheds with a splashing bucket. The outsider took the bucket from the boy and set it inside the jug. The ewe immediately stuck her nose into the molasses-sweetened water.

  "Besides," Rachel said, "Noah's probably having plenty of his own lambs to worry over just about now."

  She suddenly realized that MacDuff was whining at her. Benjo gripped her arm, and she turned. The boy was looking at her with wide eyes. His throat worked, his tongue pushing so hard against his teeth that he was spitting.

  She laid a gentling hand on his shoulder. "Hush, now, and take a breath. I'm listening."

  "Muh—Mem! Y-you know that old gappy-mouthed ewe? Huh—huh—her baby's c-coming out all wrong!"

  The ewe lay on the ground, quiet except for her contracting belly. Rachel could see only one tiny Mack hoof thrusting from her rear. Her water had broken some time ago. The music that Rachel felt, emanating in radiant waves with each hard shudder of her body, was like the wild and plaintive howl of a coyote. Yet as Rachel knelt in the straw, the ewe looked up at her with those serene eyes that had always made her seem such a gentle, wise old thing.

  "You poor old dear. Your baby's trying to come out all backwards, isn't he?" She thrust her fingers through the ewe's thick gray fleece, massaging her clenching belly. "I'm going to need to pull her," she said to the outsider, who had squatted down alongside her. "Benjo, fetch me a bucket of water and some of that lye soap. And a piece of baling twine."

  As they waited in silence for the boy to come back, kneeling side by side, watching the ewe labor, Rachel was so very aware of him. Of the way those black suspenders cut his shirt into white diamonds lit by the moon, and the way his sharp cheekbone cast a deep shadow onto his beard-roughened cheek. Of the way his hand, like her own, rubbed and pulled through the wool of the sheep's shuddering belly.

  And her awareness of him made her aware of herself. Of the heaviness of her braid lying on her back. Of the way her breasts pushed up against the cotton of her shift, and her thighs rubbed together when she shifted her weight to bend closer to the ewe.

  Benjo came running up so fast he stumbled and sprawled onto his knees in front of her, nearly dumping the bucket of water in her lap. "M-Mem! Is she g-g-going to d-die?"

  "I don't know," Rachel said, rolling up her sleeves. "I'll try to save her and her baby both. But the Lord always knows what's for the best." She plunged her arms in the water, scrubbing hard with the soap. "So we must leave it all in His hands and strive for the patience and the courage to surrender to His will."

  The outsider made a small movement, and she thought he was going to say something, but then he didn't. She thought he'd probably been about to say that the good Lord surely had more pressing business to attend to than the fate of an old gappy-mouthed ewe and her lamb.

  "God is all-knowing, and all-loving," she said, answering him as if he had spoken aloud. "A sparrow doesn't fall from the sky without Him knowing of it." Even you, Johnny Cain.

  She pushed her hand up inside the ewe's hot womb. The lamb's head was turned backward, and its other hind leg seemed to be bent up around it. The ewe stretched her neck forward and rolled her head as a fierce contraction shook her body. The squeezing muscles bore down hard, crashing Rachel's hand between the lamb's skull and the ewe's pubic bone. The bruising pain was so intense tears started in her eyes.

  When the contraction ended, Rachel pulled out her hand, slimy now with the ewe's blood and the birth mucus. She tried to wipe the wetness off her cheek with her shoulder, but more tears followed, for she knew now that the ewe and her lamb would both surely die.

  "The lamb's head is twisted around all funny, and my hand's too big. I can't get it up in there far enough."

  "Let the boy try," the outsider said.

  Benjo reared back. "Nuh—null—nuh!"

  Rachel cupped her son's face so that she could look into his eyes. They'd gone big and round as cartwheels. "You don't have to do it. I'll not make you. But this poor old gappy-mouthed ewe, you are her only hope."

  Benjo pulled his head out of her hands to look at the outsider. The man's face showed nothing—to Rachel, at least. But her son must have found what he was searching for, because he turned back to her and nodded solemnly.

  "All right, then." Rachel's breath eased out in a sigh. She had smeared the ewe's blood on the boy's cheek and she used a gunnysack now to wipe it clean.

  "The trick is going to be to get your fingers around the lamb's nose and jaw and ease its head around until it's pointed right." She tucked a strand of his long shaggy hair behind his ear. "You can use a piece of the baling twine then, to help you, but you're going to have to stay with it, to stay with the head and pull the baby out. And Benjo..."

  She gripped his hand, his small boy's hand that she was asking to do a man's job. She could feel a fine trembling going on inside him. "Benjo, the ewe's belly is going to be trying to squeeze out her baby, and when that happens she's going to squeeze your hand too."

  "Wuh—will it h-hurt?"

  "Yes."

  "Luh—luh—-lots?"

  "Probably. Yes."

  "He can do it." The outsider clasped her boy's shoulder, giving it a rough shake, the kind of touch men gave one another. The kind of touch a man gave his son. And he smiled—the first all-out, genuine smile she'd seen from him. It was as bright and dazzling as hot sunshine.

  Her boy tried for a brave smile himself, but his mouth only trembled a little.

  Benjo had to he flat on his belly to push his hand and arm up inside the ewe. With every one of the ewe's contractions, he screamed aloud. Tears ran down his cheeks, leaving white streaks through the straw dust and grime, but he never once let go, and Rachel had to cover her mouth with her hand to keep him from hearing her sobs.

  Each time the ewe labored, the lamb came down only an inch or two. Then, finally, she gave a mighty heave and the lamb slid, bloody and sticky, out into the straw.

  Rachel knelt unmoving, with her hand pressed hard against her mouth. But the outsider was right there to cradle the lamb. His fingers tore away the membrane from the tiny black nose. "Breathe, damn you, breathe, you little bastard." He was chanting the profane words like a prayer. "Breathe, breathe, breathe."

  The lamb wasn't breathing.

  Rachel grabbed the yellow bag of bones from him by the rear hocks. She stood up and swung it hard in a full and violent circle through the air. Once. Twice.

  The lamb let out a loud, indignant baa!

  Laughing, Rachel collapsed back into the straw, cuddling the bawling lamb in her lap.

  Through it all, Benjo had been choking over hysterical words, while the outsider had stared at her, wearing a wide-eyed look of pure wonderment. Now as she sat hugging and rocking the bleating lamb, she laughed just to see him like that. Then he let his own laughter go.

  "I thought you were going to..." he sputtered. "Lordy, I don't know what I thought—the way you were swinging that poor lamb like a lasso." His laughter wound down and then came back again. He shook his head. "If you aren't the damnedest woman I've ever seen."

  "No, no," Rachel said. "That's how it's done, truly. It's supposed to help them start breathing."

  "Helps to scare the breath right out of them, I would've thought."

  Her boy had been laughing as well. But now he gripped her arm.

  "M-Mem? Wuh—wuh—wuh..."

  She touched his tear-streaked face. "He'll live, our Benjo. He'll live."

  She laid the lamb gently back into the straw, then pushed a burlap sack into the outsider's hands. "Here, rub him down with this, Mr. Cain. Or you can go on
ahead and use your tongue, if you like. Then you can lay full claim to the tide of 'lamb licker.'"

  That dazzling smile blazed across his face again. "Lady, you sure don't cut a man any slack, do you? I've a mind to..."

  She was so caught up in his smile that it took her a moment to realize his voice had trailed off. The whole world suddenly seemed to have fallen silent, and in the next instant she saw what he had just noticed: that the ewe was lying too quietly. It was hardly to be expected that she would bounce right up after such a hard delivery, but still...

  Rachel pressed her hand to the ewe's brisket. It rose once and then subsided, softly, gently. She looked down into those quiet, all-knowing eyes in time to see the life fade out of them.

  The outsider came up onto his haunches, shifting his weight so that the ewe was shielded from Benjo's sight. His gaze met hers and then, together, they looked at the boy. Benjo had taken up the burlap sack himself and he was absorbed with wiping the lamb clean. His face glowed bright as a lighthouse beam, with joy and pride over what he had done.

  "Hey there, partner," the outsider said, as he gripped the boy by the back of the neck and gave him another of those rough manly shakes. "Come along and help me to carry this youngster of yours into the shed and out of the cold."

  Rachel watched them go. Once, Benjo started to look back, but the outsider said something, snagging his attention. She knew he would find out soon enough about the ewe's death, but she couldn't bear for him to be told of it just yet.

  When Benjo was out of sight inside the shed, she turned back to the ewe. That old gappy-mouthed ewe—she should have been culled from the band last fall, but she'd always been such a good mother. Such a sweet, gentle mother.

  Tears came again, stinging Rachel's eyes. She threaded her fingers through the tight curly wool between the ewe's ears. She leaned over and kissed her bony nose.