by Donna Ball
On the other hand, no one had counted on sheep, much less a psychopathic sheepdog, when they signed on the dotted line.
“It’s a farm,” Bridget insisted joyfully, “and what’s a farm without livestock? This makes us real farmers!”
Lindsay said in a tone that brooked no argument, “Maybe it makes you a farmer. I’m an artist. I don’t do sheep.”
“Sheep,” repeated Cici with a small shake of her head, still not quite believing it. “How could that possibly have slipped by me?”
“Isn’t it like real property?” offered Bridget hopefully. “You know, attached to the premises?”
Cici returned a look that said, Nice try. Out loud she said, “Windows are attached to the premises. Rosebushes, maybe. But sheep? I think that’s pushing it.” At Bridget’s crestfallen look, she added, “For heaven’s sake, Bridge, we don’t know anything about sheep! We’re city girls, and this is a huge responsibility.”
“I saw a movie one time about a sheep station in Australia,” Lindsay added thoughtfully. “The sheep would swell up like ticks from bloat and the farmer would have to go around puncturing their stomachs with this huge needle to keep them from exploding.”
Bridget’s eyes went wide, and Cici stared at Lindsay.
“What I’m saying,” Cici said, when she could tear her eyes away from Lindsay, “is that sheep can be delicate, and a lot of work. Don’t we have our hands full just trying to put this house back together? Are you sure you want to take on more?”
Bridget raised her chin. “I’ll take care of them,” she promised. “And the dog, too. They’ll be my responsibility. You two will never even know they’re here.”
Lindsay looked at Cici. Cici looked at Bridget. “Sheep,” she said, shaking her head again.
And Lindsay repeated, her tone heavy with resignation, “Sheep.”
Bridget immediately checked out every book on sheep and sheepdogs the library had to offer, and over the next several days was rarely seen without a text in her hand. Occasionally she would glance up to offer such arcane wisdom as “April is the best month for lambing in this region” and “A good sheepdog can work a 2,500-acre ranch all by himself.” But for the most part she spent her time completely immersed in the written world of animal husbandry.
It was therefore no surprise for Cici to come into the kitchen for lunch and find Bridget sitting at the island, hair pulled back against the heat, reading glasses on, lost in a book. Fresh-picked tomatoes were scattered across the island around her, and something wonderful was simmering on the stove.
Cici lifted the lid and inhaled the fragrance. “Smells divine,” she said. “What are you making? Pate?”
“Chicken livers sauteed with garlic and white wine,” replied Bridget, without looking up, “for Spike.” The dog had gone through three different names in as many days; Spike was the latest. “Farley said he loves chicken livers, but I can’t get him to eat anything I make.”
Cici replaced the lid on the pan. “I don’t think dogs are supposed to have wine.”
In the background, the sound of the backhoe had stopped, since today was the day the septic tank crew was laying pipe. But Lindsay’s sturdy riding lawn mower puttered on, as she was determined to get the entire front lawn clipped before the earth-moving equipment started up again.
Bridget said, sighing, “It says here it’s too late in the year to shear the sheep. But we’re going to have to have their hooves clipped or they’ll go lame. I have to find a farrier.”
Cici took out a cutting board and began to slice a firm, ripe tomato. Since the tomatoes had started coming in, tomato sandwiches for lunch were the highlight of the day. They all agreed that none of them had ever tasted a tomato as sweet, as rich, or as purely tomato as those that came out of Bridget’s garden. A single sandwich made worthwhile every moment of that dreadful morning they had spent in their nightgowns protecting the garden from the sheep.
Cici spread a generous swath of mayonnaise on two slices of white bread. “You don’t really think it was the sheep who were pulling up your plants by the root, do you?”
“What else could it have been? Remember, they were coming through the hole in the fence, and we practically caught them red-handed on the nanny cam.”
“Hard to say what you caught on the nanny cam,” Cici reminded her. “Besides—”
She broke off as the sound of a high-pitched screech cut across the grinding of the lawn tractor. The dog started to bark furiously, and the screech came again, and again. Cici dropped the knife and rushed to the window, and Bridget ran to the back door. They each arrived in time to see Lindsay racing away from the path of the lawn mower, which was chugging around in ever widening circles. She was screaming and swiping madly at the air as she ran, the dog barking and circling her wildly. As they watched, she tore open the front of her shirt and wrestled out of it, tossing it away. She ran toward the house in her bra and denim shorts, slapping at her bare shoulders and thighs. Sam, who had gone to his truck for a tool, turned to stare. The men who were laying the pipe came around the corner to investigate the commotion and stopped dead, staring. Bridget flung open the back door and tossed a tomato at the barking dog, who scampered away about five feet but continued to bark furiously.
Lindsay cried, “Bees!”
Cici ran to her, slapping a kitchen towel through the air to knock away any lingering insects, and pulled her inside. Bridget ran to the freezer and pulled out the ice bin. Cici demanded, “Are you allergic?”
“No, I’m stung!” cried Lindsay. “Look at me, I’m stung!” Red welts were beginning to rise on her arms, chest, shoulders, and even her bare belly.
Bridget made soothing sounds as she gingerly applied ice packs to the stings, and Cici searched through the bathroom vanity for antihistamines. But for the most part all they could do was wince in sympathy and murmur things like “Oh, honey” and “Oh, you poor thing” while dabbing with ice and cortisone cream at the angry red knots that rose up on her face and neck and arms.
And suddenly a stricken look crossed Lindsay’s tear-streaked face. “Oh my God, I just took off my shirt in front of all those men!”
Bridget and Cici returned a sympathetic look. “Well, at least you were wearing a pretty bra,” Bridget offered.
Sniffing, Lindsay looked down at her soft white torso. “But my stomach is flabby.”
Cici smoothed back Lindsay’s hair. “I wouldn’t worry about that, honey. I’m sure no one noticed.”
“They were too busy looking at your bra,” added Bridget.
“Well, that’s it for me,” Lindsay declared wetly, her voice muffled through the ice pack she pressed against her face. “I’m never getting on that lawn mower again. I don’t care if the grass grows over our heads. I could have been killed!”
The other two murmured agreement, smoothing her tangled hair away from her face. “Don’t you worry. As long as you’re all right, that’s all that matters.”
A timid knock came on the back door, and Sam poked his head inside, carefully averting his eyes from Lindsay’s half-naked torso. Lindsay quickly dragged a towel around her shoulders to cover up.
“Um, I just wanted you to know we stopped your lawn mower,” he said. “Guess you ran over a pretty big yellow jacket nest. But they’re about settled down now.”
They had not even noticed that the sound of the lawn mower had stopped.
“Oh,” said Cici. “Thank you, Sam. We appreciate your help.”
Sam looked uncomfortable. “Well, it’s not all good news. We couldn’t exactly get to it before—with the yellow jackets and all—and by the time we were able to grab the throttle . . . well.” He stepped away from the door with a resigned gesture toward the yard, which more or less invited them to see for themselves.
Cici and Bridget followed him out to the porch curiously, and in a moment Lindsay, adjusting the towel around her shoulders, cautiously joined them. Sam led the way to the side of the house, and stopped. He didn’t have to say a
nything. As one, the women drew in a breath.
The garden, which Bridget had so painstakingly cultivated all spring and summer, which they had protected from the hedgerow thief and marauding sheep, was in shambles. Proud stalks of corn had been crushed as though by a thresher. Poles and pole beans were tumbled together in a tangle. Tomato plants were sheared off at the roots; squash and melons decapitated. In the midst of the ruins sat the lawn mower, looking like a tank in the aftermath of a battle.
“Oh . . . my,” said Bridget softly.
No one had anything to add to that.
A gentle rain began to fall at dusk, tapping on the porch roof and pinging in the gutters, smelling like sweet hay and earth. Greedy birds fluttered back and forth between the feeders and the poplar tree, bright yellow and deep indigo finches, bossy red cardinals, black-and-white chickadees, storing up reserves against the time when the weather would be too wet to fly. The mist muted the colors of the landscape to a dusky gray green, broken in spots by groupings of pastel hollyhocks and proud white phlox in their formal flower beds. Rolling meadow faded into foggy mountains, which faded into cool gray sky.
The women gathered on the porch for their evening ritual, comfortable in cotton drawstring shorts and tank tops without bras, their hair caught up off their necks with elastic bands and short strands sticking out willy-nilly. Their feet were bare, and their makeup, such as it was, long since sweated off. During the day, when the workmen were around, they tended to wear capris or, at the very least, shorts with zippers, and shirts that covered their upper arms. But when the day was done, and they sat splay-legged in their rockers, or with their feet propped up on the railing, sipping wine and watching the evening, it didn’t matter whether their armpits were shaved or their varicose veins were showing. They were at home.
“Funny,” observed Cici, rocking back and forth. “It kind of makes you think how it must have been a hundred years ago, sitting on this very porch, watching the rain. I’ll bet it wasn’t much different from today.”
“I love the colors,” murmured Lindsay. “Like an impressionist painting.”
“I hope the sheep are okay,” Bridget worried.
“They’re sheep,” Cici said. “They were surviving rainy days long before we got here.”
“What if it thunders?”
“Then they’ll stand under a tree.”
“They could get hit by lightning!”
Cici sipped her wine thoughtfully. “I don’t believe,” she said at last, “in all the history of the world, I’ve ever read about a flock of sheep being struck by lightning. Golfers, yes. Sheep, no.”
Lindsay sighed. “I’m awfully sorry about the garden, Bridget.”
Bridget reached across to pat her knee. “Oh, sweetie, it wasn’t your fault. As long as you’re okay, who cares?”
Lindsay, a little drunk on antihistamines, sipped sparkling water and sighed again. “It’s like something out of Little House on the Prairie, you know?”
And when she received nothing but puzzled glances in response, she explained, “You know. Every time those poor people would get a little bit ahead, God would send locusts or hail or a blizzard to wipe out their crops and it would all have been for nothing.”
Bridget nodded sagely, studying her wineglass. “The life of a farmer is never easy.”
Rain dripped. A cardinal landed on the porch rail, feathers ruffled against the rain, and angrily squawked at a chickadee on the feeder. The chickadee darted away, and the cardinal took its place.
Cici said, “We were able to save some of the garden. The herbs will come back. And we’ll have plenty of apples and pears and berries when they ripen.”
“If the locusts don’t come,” said Lindsay bleakly.
Bridget chuckled. “We do sound like farmers, tallying up what we’re going to be able to put by for the winter.”
Cici turned her wineglass around in her hand, and a strained look came over her face. She said, “Well, I guess this is as good a time as any to tell you. Deke finished hooking up the septic system. We can have a real bath and flush the toilets as many times as we want.”
“Yay!” cried Bridget, and even Lindsay, lost in an antihistamine haze, perked up.
“A bath?” she said.
“Add baking soda to the water,” suggested Bridget. “It will help the bee stings.”
“I’m going to miss him,” Bridget added, and rocked back, thoughtfully sipping her wine. “I think I’ll make him a basket of muffins when the blueberries come in.”
“You might want to wait on that.” Cici’s tone was grim as she dug into her pocket and pulled out a folded slip of paper. “Here’s the bill.”
Bridget looked at her with a certain amount of trepidation, and then, hesitantly, took the paper and unfolded it. She gasped out loud.
“It’s fair,” Cici said quickly. “I checked around. It’s just . . . unexpected.”
Lindsay took the paper from Bridget, squinted at it, held it farther away, and then close. “Does that say—eleven thousand dollars?”
“And forty-seven cents,” Cici confirmed.
For a moment the three women just looked at each other, speechless. Then Bridget cleared her throat. “Um, I don’t know how to tell you this, but I don’t have that much.”
“I don’t even have one third that much,” said Lindsay, still staring at the paper.
Cici got up and poured more wine from the bottle on the wicker table, topping off Bridget’s glass on her way back to her chair.
“We still have to get the hickory tree cut down,” Cici said. “You know, the one that caused the problem in the first place? Deke said his brother-in-law would do it for five hundred dollars. And if we go with Sam’s plan about building air shafts with exhaust fans from the cellar it will be about half the cost of installing air-conditioning, but still . . .” She drew a breath. “That’s going to be at least another three thousand dollars.”
Lindsay blew out a long, slow breath. “Wow.”
“I suppose I could get a credit card advance,” Bridget ventured.
Lindsay said, “I don’t think I have that much left on my credit cards.”
Cici shook her head adamantly. “At today’s rates? That would be crazy.”
Lindsay slanted a gaze to Bridget. “We could sell the sheep,” she suggested. Then at Bridget’s shocked look she added quickly, “Sorry, just kidding.”
“They wouldn’t bring enough to help anyway,” Cici assured her, and Bridget’s look darkened as she realized Cici had already researched the subject.
“Look,” Cici added quickly. “I feel like this is partly my fault. When I did the cost analysis on this place, I should have allowed for the unexpected.”
“Oh no, it’s not your fault,” Bridget said, although her tone was still distracted with worry. “How could you know?”
“We did allow for the unexpected,” Lindsay pointed out. “Just not enough.”
Cici nodded in sad agreement, then squared her shoulders. “Anyway, the point is, this is an investment. A business. We need to start treating it like one. We need to start thinking like men.”
Bridget looked confused, but Lindsay scowled. “I don’t like the way men think. Why do we have to think like men? They screw everything up.”
“Not everything,” objected Bridget.
“Name one thing.”
“Well . . . the Declaration of Independence.”
Lindsay sniffed her derision and took a gulp of sparkling water. “Oh yeah, like that was such a great idea. While those pompous white-wigged asses were up there making speeches and signing their names did they think about all the women and children who would be left homeless and impoverished during a war that would last, excuse me, seven years? Did they take a poll to see how many people were willing to put their homes on the line and have their families destroyed so that a handful of rich landowners could get out of keeping their agreements with a country that was treating them pretty damn well, all things considered? Di
d you know that more than half of the people living in America during the Revolutionary War were on the side of the British? And, oh by the way, let’s compare the standard of living of the average British citizen, with their free health care and four weeks of vacation, to that of the average American today and see how many people think the Declaration of Independence was such a good idea now, huh?”
Cici stared at her. “Jeez, Lindsay, when did you start listening to talk radio?”
“It’s the only station we can get before nine in the morning,” Bridget pointed out.
“Name me one thing,” Lindsay insisted, “one single thing that men did right.”
“Okay,” Cici said, “I’m game. They tamed the Wild West. Without men—big, ugly, lice-infested, gun-totin’, rotten-toothed, foulmouthed, bigoted, brawling men complete with all their greed, gold mining, railroad technology, and STDs, Hollywood would not be the multibillion-dollar industry it is today and the world would be deprived of such cultural masterpieces as Dumb and Dumber.”
“I was going to say something about disenfranchising an entire native population and destroying an ancient culture,” replied Lindsay, “but I think I rest my case.”
“And I think you need to cut back on the Benadryl,” Cici said. “This is serious.”
“I refuse to think like a man.”
“Then think like a smart woman.” Cici drew in a breath. “Look,” she said. “None of us can afford to put out this kind of cash. But we all could afford another forty or fifty dollars a month. I say we go into town Monday and talk to the bank about a loan.”
