Rose in a Storm

by Jon Katz

  Rose had her own animal notion of separation, of good-bye. She had only a sense of what it meant. Carol had always given off a feel of aloneness, and Rose could smell much pain in her.

  It was clear to Rose that Carol was saying good-bye to her, the only creature on the farm she had chosen to communicate with. Rose saw, in the colors and reflections of Carol’s eyes, where images were stored and passed on, images from the old donkey’s life. She saw the early images of Carol’s life, much as she recalled her own—the donkey’s mother, her brothers and sisters, playing in a pasture, grazing in a field. She saw Carol and two of her sisters running through an open field as fast as they could go, kicking up their hind legs, braying with joy.

  She saw the suffering that came later—the loss of work, the loneliness, the hunger and neglect, eating the bark of trees and weeds, drinking from rancid rainwater, from the dew on grass, standing out in the open in rain, storms, cold, and heat.

  She saw the beatings, the hunger, attacks by dogs, and she smelled and sensed the pain, the ticks and flies and sores and the aching hooves and joints, and then, the change: the safety of Sam’s farm, hay and shelter and grain, peace and quiet.

  She saw Carol’s disinterest in the cows, her love of the sheep, her fear of Rose herself, who was, to her, just a different kind of coyote, a predator in her own right, one more carnivore to be wary of.

  Rose had seen that Carol was mostly left alone, and given no work, and in that time she found her easiest and most peaceful days. All this flashed in the light of Carol’s eyes, and Rose could see it clearly, and understand it well.

  Those reflections were Carol’s farewell, her own kind of good-bye.

  And then, as Rose knew it would, Carol’s body grew lifeless, her eyes vacant, her spirit now gone. What was left was smell and flesh, none of which held any meaning for Rose.

  The wild dog watched, quiet.

  Rose looked over at him, then she sniffed Carol’s body one last time. So did he. The snow was already forming on Carol’s head, and across her body, which had stopped heaving.

  Rose’s map had changed once more.

  Something inside of her stirred, moved her forward. If she was accepting, even passive, about a natural death, she felt quite differently about life, which was calling to her from everywhere around her to do her work.

  ROSE TURNED and looked up toward the sheep, then climbed wearily back up into the pole barn. She was tired, but a part of her also felt new. She was moving from thing to thing, gaining certainty.

  The sheep were still clustered by the rear of the barn, protected from the wind and heavy snow by the three-sided barn and its overhang. The coyotes, she sensed, were up at the top of the hill, waiting. She did not know where the foxes were. She heard nothing from the forest or the woods. The water troughs in the barn were frozen.

  Rose realized, very suddenly, that her map had not included most of the cows or the steers. Her instincts drew her out of the pole barn and to the rear pasture, which she could reach only by going through the big barn and back out the side door.

  She paused there. She could see that some of the cows were again struggling, almost frozen in place. The high drifts and ice had trapped them, the lack of food had weakened them, and the brutal cold and fierce winds had pulled the heat out of them.

  Only Brownie and a handful of cows, huddled by the rear door, were still moving, their breath steaming out of their noses. Brownie was shifting back and forth, his huge body a windblock for the cows, who were leaning into one another, waiting patiently for the hay that came from the barn doors.

  The steers and cows were never allowed into the barn—it wasn’t big enough for them—and so Sam had built a sun-and-rain shelter for them away from the barn, enough protection against anything but a storm like this. The shelter roof had collapsed under the weight of the snow, and the drifts had piled up so high around it that the cows and steers couldn’t even use its remaining walls as protection against the wind.

  When Brownie looked at Rose and bellowed, it seemed like a distinct call for help. Rose looked him in the eyes. She felt as desolate as the farm looked.

  Rose passed the pump and spigot that Sam turned on twice a day to bring water to the barn. She studied it for a few seconds. Often, she had been distracted by the sound of an engine kicking on in the barn. Sam called it a generator, and it was kept for emergencies, a small, propane-driven machine that provided heat and light to the tool room in the corner of the barn, and to one of the deicers that was now trapped in a frozen water trough. Sometimes, when there were storms, and the house went dark, it came on and water emerged from the pump. In her mind, Rose made a connection between the machine and the water, but could not go further.

  She simply didn’t understand, didn’t know how to make the water come. There were no images in her head, nothing in her experience or memory to draw from. For the first time, she felt something close to frustration. She understood there was water in there somewhere, but she had no way of manipulating the machine, getting it to do what she wanted. She stopped, stared at the generator again, then at the pump.

  She watched it a bit, then sniffed it, smelled nothing useful. She touched it with her nose, but recoiled from the cold metal. No images came to her.

  She had reached a limit, a place beyond her experience. She did not know what to do, so she left the pump behind. She knew the animals were thirsty, but they could go a while without water. They could eat snow, but it drained precious body heat. It was the cold and hunger she feared the most.

  She ran back around the rear of the barn and inside. Rose was focused now on the cows—her mind off Sam, no longer puzzling about where he had gone.

  She came quickly into the barn and hopped up toward the rear of the old building. There were several mounds of hay piled up on the second floor and gaping holes in the back wall from the wind and the storm.

  Remembering how the barn cats moved, she hopped onto one bale, then another, before leaping up onto the hay-storage platform on the upper floor of the barn. It was not a big jump for her.

  She grabbed a mouthful of hay and pulled it from a bale, then ran to one of the breaches in the wall and dropped it there on the wooden floor. Then she pushed it through the hole with her nose. It was only a small clump, but she heard the cows outside begin to low and stir, heard them all move toward the hay drifting to the ground. She ran back for another mouthful, pulled it out of the bale, dragged it to the opening, and pushed it out. She did this again and again. She had no sense of how many times she ran back and forth, but it was until there was almost no hay left on the platform, and she looked out and saw all of the cows milling and bumping into one another, quietly eating the hay. There was a considerable amount now, covering a wide swath of snow. In moving and eating, the cows seemed to have revived, gained strength, bought time.

  In her mind, images kept recurring.

  She had to get the cows and the hay together. And she had to get the sheep to the barn as well.

  Rose jumped down off the platform, landing with a thud right in the middle of the dark space at the center of the barn, causing the quiet space to erupt. Chickens squawked, Winston puffed himself up and began crowing, and the barn cats melted into the upper floor, where dark-green bales of hay were stacked.

  Rose nosed the wild dog to call him to work. He could see right away that something was different about her, and he struggled to his feet. The two went to the rear of the barn, to the ancient sliding door that was hanging fitfully off its hinges, leaving a small opening in the doorframe.

  The door was more than a hundred years old, and, like most farmers, Sam didn’t fix things he didn’t absolutely have to fix. The door was never really used, so it didn’t matter how loosely it hung. Sam joked that a good wind would turn the door into a sail, and maybe the whole barn would take off across the road, it was so old and rickety.

  Because it was on the westward side of the barn, a little less snow had gathered behind it, but there was
still too much for a sheep to wade through. The wind was furious in the back, and so was the ice, some of it crusted where the pipes had burst and shot water out the rear of the building.

  Rose began chewing at the outermost plank, which was rotten and soft. A large chunk of the wood came off in her mouth. She stuck her head through the hole. Brownie was on the other side.

  A bale of hay was behind her. She wanted Brownie to smell it. She and the wild dog chewed off another section of plank and after a few minutes, there was a two-foot hole in the side of the sliding door. It was still far too small to fit a cow, but Rose barked and Brownie’s nose came through, as she expected it would.

  Rose had seen cows slide barn doors open when they were hungry and they knew there was hay inside. They were curious creatures, and when it came to food they could be savvy and quick.

  But even Rose did not anticipate the crack and crash when Brownie’s great head came exploding through the hole, taking four or five planks of wood with it. He only had a few feet to back up, but it was enough. When Brownie charged the barn door—drawn by the smell of the hay on the other side—his 2,500-pound frame burst right through it. The door split, and half of it fell backward into the barn, sending Winston and the chickens running. Brownie squeezed himself through, and the four surviving cows ambled in behind him, each hungrily ripping at the three bales of hay.

  Now Rose’s mind turned to the sheep. She had to bring them to the hay, too. A number of them were pregnant, and she knew they wouldn’t survive without food.

  Rose led the wild dog on the long hard trek up to the pole barn, and, once inside, they trotted up behind the sheep. She examined their weakening stances and confused and hungry eyes. They had to get down the hill. The sheep and the hay had to be together.

  Rose dove into the back of the pole barn, behind the sheep, who then moved forward, startled. She lunged at the ewe in front of her, nipping at her buttocks, her hind leg, her tail, grabbing the wool from her legs in her teeth.

  The sheep had nowhere to go. They were engulfed, trapped by mounds of snow, and two dogs crowding them from the rear. They panicked. They raced back and forth trying to get away from the crazy dogs, and then finally fled the only way they could—straight into the wall of snow that had piled up in front of the barn.

  The two farm dogs, without overt signals or communication, went to work. The sheep were moving downhill, the weight of their own bodies propelling them through the mounds of snow. Rose circled and, where necessary, charged and nipped, bit and pushed. The two dogs put intense pressure on the flock, and they lunged through the drifts toward the back of the big barn.

  One ewe, about to go into labor, and too weak from the cold and hunger, would not move. Rose chose to leave her behind. Another jumped into the drift and twisted her leg; Rose heard it snap and break. The sheep fell back and to the ground, struggling to get up, then collapsed on her side in shock. Had Sam been there he would have gotten his rifle and killed her to ease her pain. But in this cold and wind, she would not suffer long.

  Rose looked back once at the old ewe, and at the injured one, and then plowed into the snow after the rest of the flock.

  The sheep formed a natural wedge, their weight and momentum forming a living plow, creating a furrow through the drifts. Snow flying, they pushed down the hill. Rose had brought the flock down in bad weather many times before, but never through snow this high, wind this strong, or temperatures so low.

  The two dogs worked relentlessly. It took nearly an hour for the flock to move those few hundred feet. At some point, the sheep finally smelled the hay and moved on their own, without encouragement.

  Eventually, dogs and sheep, almost equally exhausted, broke through.

  But here Rose had made a mistake, one of her few. Brownie and the cows were already inside devouring the hay. When the flock of sheep charged through the shattered barn door and rushed toward the food, the cattle spooked.

  It was a small area, and when Brownie moved to protect his cows, lunging and kicking at two of the ewes, they were slammed into the side of the barn.

  The sheep, in a frenzy, rushed ahead anyway, cracking open several of the stalls, and damaging the shelves inside the barn. It was too much for the cows, and they backed out as the sheep began tearing at the few bales of hay still lying on the floor.

  Rose, uncomfortable with any kind of mayhem or disturbance, stepped into the barn, but the hungry sheep and starving mothers were beyond control. She and the wild dog backed off. One ewe began circling, about to go into labor on the floor of the barn, pacing restlessly as the others ate.

  In a few minutes, the hay was gone. Brownie and the cows had consumed two bales by themselves, and were now out in the back, already dusted with snow again. Half the sheep were inside the barn, half out.

  There was no more hay, except in the upper reaches of the loft, and no way to get to it.

  Rose’s map was in shambles.

  Some of the sheep, exhausted, were lying down. Some milled outside in the snow, still protected by their thick coats. One had died, crushed by the cows. A second ewe had gone into labor, straining. Rose could hear her heartbeat, and the lamb’s. She added the baby to her map, removed the sheep killed by the cow.

  The cows stood by the rear of the barn with Brownie.

  Rose glanced now at the wild dog—he had staggered over to a pile of straw, collapsed, and fallen asleep in a corner of the barn—and tried to get her bearings.

  Sam was on her mind. But her sense of Sam and his role in her life seemed muddled. He had left, yet there was still so much work to do.

  * * *

  DOWN FROM THE HILL, by way of her exquisite sense of smell, came fresh news—coyotes. They were nearby, and they were hungry. Tonight, they would come for the sheep, for the lambs. They would come for her.

  ROSE LOOKED back up at the hill, for the ewe in labor that had remained behind. She hadn’t forgotten, and she turned to begin the trek back up, leaving the wild dog in the barn.

  The ewe was still struggling to give birth, circling in the wind and snow, then lying down in a near collapse, drained from cold and hunger. Rose smelled her fear and heard the struggle in her belly.

  The ewe’s turning had gouged a hole in the snow.

  Rose could not hear the heartbeat of a lamb inside of her, though she did hear the ewe’s own weakening heart. She listened to her cries, a sound she had heard a few nights before when she had awakened Sam.

  Rose circled the sheep, giving her eye, trying instinctively to get her up. This was what Sam always asked her to do during births. Get up, get up.

  She thought of Sam, and of his bag, and of the way he reached inside the ewes and pulled out lambs.

  The ewe would not get up.

  Rose slowed. Circling the ewe was useless.

  So was barking or nipping. Her instincts suggested nothing that she might do; neither did her memory. The inside of the ewe, the process of lambing, this was beyond her.

  Rose turned to the farmhouse to listen for Sam. He was not there. He was not in the barn. Or in any of the pastures. He was not inside his truck. Rose felt responsible for Sam—more so than she did for the sheep. She could not fathom where he had gone, nor could she stop looking for him.

  The ewe, in pain and great weariness, struggled in the snow and wind, fighting with all her energy to get her baby out, calling out to the other ewes for comfort. She looked at Rose and groaned, her cries weakening.

  Rose whined softly again and again. Then she quieted. It seemed as if Rose and this mother were alone in a sea of shifting white and cold.

  There was nothing else but them.

  And the storm.

  After some time, with the life seemingly draining from her, the ewe sighed. She was on her side, her eyes open wide.

  Rose listened, tilting her ears. She was startled.

  She heard the ewe’s heart grow stronger, beat more rapidly. Rose lowered her head, now hearing the heart of the lamb as well, beating softly
but steadily. All around her, there was the fearful sound of the wind, and the heavy snow hissed as it hit the ground. These sounds unnerved her as the beating hearts transfixed her. In her mind were the powerfully conflicting images of emptiness and life.

  Rose barked, then nipped at the ewe’s legs, watching as she rose gamely to her feet, slowly and deliberately, groaning and straining—and a moment later a glistening, wet, newborn lamb slid out of her backside and onto the snow, trailing afterbirth in a red, liquid stream.

  The ewe, snow swirling all around her, turned to nuzzle the baby, who struggled to her feet and began bleating, already looking for her mother’s nipples underneath her ice-encrusted coat of wool. Rose knew she had to get them quickly to shelter, or else they would freeze in the cold and snow. This was work she knew well.

  Exhausted and nearly frozen, Rose began to bark, backing up and putting herself between the pole barn and the ewe. The mother, bewildered by the dog’s sudden change in demeanor, frantically began nuzzling the lamb down the hill toward the big barn, moving the newborn through the freshly plowed trail the rest of the sheep had made a few minutes earlier. Together, they vanished into the snow and wind.

  It was a long trek down in the brutal cold, and Rose could not help them. Lambs would not be herded, and if she came near, both might panic, separate, and disappear into the snow. Rose had no sense of whether the two would make it.

  All she could do was stay behind the mother, keep pressure on her to move, and the lamb would follow. But they refused to move in a straight line, were startled by the wind, confused by drifts. Rose had to move on.

  She walked down the hill by herself and into the barn. She shook herself off, looked at the chickens clucking softly in their roosts, lay down next to the wild dog, and closed her eyes. The lives of sheep were never predictable, not even to a herding dog. She was tired, more drained than she had ever been.

  She heard the wild dog’s uneasy breathing, the barn cats moving high up in the rafters, the cows bellowing softly out in the rear pasture. She entered a dreamy state, somewhere between sleeping and wakefulness.