The Outsider

by Penelope Williamson

  "It's a drought we're in the making of. You tell me if we're not."

  Sol nodded, his mouth so tight it all but disappeared into his beard. "It's as hot as a cookstove, it is."

  Noah clamped his own lips together and forced himself to take a deep breath through his nose. He tugged on his hat, half afraid his head really would explode. He reminded himself to think of these days as a trial sent by the Lord to be endured with meekness and humility. God was testing him, saddling him with scorching days, a drought, and Johnny Cain, all in one summer.

  He had been looking forward to this day, though. The day they sheared Rachel's sheep. He had made the outsider a promise—ach vell, you could call it a challenge, wicked though that might be—that the man wouldn't be able to last through a day of sheep shearing. Noah knew the outsider fancied himself tough, that he took pride in his toughness. Sure enough, the Bible was right when it said that pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.

  Noah looked across the pool to where the outsider was trying to nudge a reluctant yearling into the water, and he smiled. You'll not last the day, outsider. Might be you'll not even last an hour. And then we'll see. We'll see what my Rachel has to say to that.

  Noah knew these thoughts were prideful in themselves, that he damned his own soul with them, but he couldn't seem to stop.

  Just then the excitement of being driven through the pool brought on the bloat in one of the ewes, and Johnny Cain stepped right up with a bloating lance to take care of it. Noah couldn't find fault, although he watched and waited for a mistake, God help him, hoping the outsider's hand would slip and the lance would go in wrong, and then the outsider would look bad in front of Rachel.

  When the ewe rolled back onto her feet with a hearty baa, Noah wondered at himself and his own spiteful thoughts. God help him, he had stood there and wished death on a poor innocent woolly, and all just to make the outsider look bad.

  Noah shook his head, rubbing the sweat out of his eyes with his thumbs. Squinting, he looked out over Rachel's sun-seared pastures. There was not much grass there to fatten a sheep. This hot weather, it was toughening and leathering the land as the salt of hard-work sweat toughened and leathered a man. A little rain would certainly be welcome, but the good Lord must know that. His ways sometimes were hard to understand. It was better not to think too much about it, better just to accept His will.

  Noah looked over to where his son Mose was wrangling the drying sheep into the shearing corral. For a moment their gazes met. Then his son's face took on that sour, flat-chinned look, and he turned around, giving Noah the stiff back, the cold shoulder.

  Noah blamed the outsider for this, for the loss of his son. He couldn't have explained precisely how his mind had made the convoluted journey to lay this latest trouble, with the cattlemen and that strumpet from the Red House, at the outsider's door. It was a matter, Noah had decided, of being in the presence of evil. Johnny Cain had cast his corrupting influences over all who came near him, even the righteous.

  Noah had told his boy that once his backside healed, he would take up the strap and give him a fresh set of welts. But when the day came he hadn't done it, he hadn't had the heart for it. Besides, he sensed the boy wasn't going to be taking any more whippings from anybody, ever again. He'd been changed sure enough by what had happened, altered deep, and in ways that Noah didn't understand. It frightened him, for his son seemed more lost than ever, lost to God and the church.

  Lost to him.

  The blade met the whirring grindstone with a shriek and a shower of sparks. Pumping hard, Noah Weaver grinned through his beard at the outsider. "A few more turns," he shouted above the noise, "and these shears'll be sharp enough to cut through wool like it was hot butter."

  And then we'll see how you do, outsider. Then we'll see.

  Once the sheep were bathed, the men had gathered inside the shearing shed for the ritual sharpening of the shears. Noah had offered to perform the task for the outsider, for there was a knack to it. Showing a humility that must be rare for him, certainly, Cain had accepted.

  The shearing shed had been a lambing shed only a few weeks ago. The floor was covered now with two feet of fresh straw, oyer which a canvas had been stretched for the shearing area. Shearing was backbreaking work, and few sheep farmers did their own, so there were roving shearing crews who followed the market north from Mexico to the British provinces. But the Plain church discouraged the hiring of these crews, for they were known to be fighters and blasphemers and drinkers of the Devil's brew. The Plain preferred always to keep themselves separate and do their own work.

  Samuel Miller took up a pair of shears, testing the edge with a callused thumb. "You might as well try to clip the woollies with a dull whittling knife," he said with a broad wink to Sol, "as to be using these pathetic things, our Abram."

  "Ha!" Abram snatched the shears out of Samuel's hands, nearly clipping off the end of his brother's beard. "I'll have more naked sheep on my tally come the day's end than you ever will, see if I don't."

  "It's a poor wool crop we'll all be getting this year," Sol said, the downward curve of his mouth matching the words. "What with that open winter we had, the sheep didn't grow as heavy coats as they should have. And now all this hot sun, day after day, the wind and the dust." He sighed, shaking his head.

  "The fleeces have shrunk down to next to nothing, ja," Noah agreed.

  He cast a glance at the outsider. They were all speaking in Deitsch now, excluding the man as they usually did. And as usual he was too proud to act as if it mattered to him.

  Ja, gut, Noah thought. Let him stew in his pride.

  Samuel said something that made his brothers laugh. Noah, watching the outsider, hadn't heard what was said, but he joined in the laughter. The outsider stood apart from them, his beardless face flat and empty. None of those charming, easy smiles to be found there now, and Noah was pleased.

  The good thing about the shearing time, Noah thought, was the work, for it brought families and friends together. Everyone had something important to do. Fannie and the Miller wives were already in the kitchen preparing huge quantities of food, for shearing built up a prodigious appetite. Mose would be wrangling the sheep soon toward the end of the corral, funneling the bleating, frightened woollies into the cutting chute. Rachel would stand on top of the chute fence to open the gate, sending the sheep into the catch pen. Four at a time, one for each of the shearers.

  Even the young ones would have work. Levi would tie up the fleeces and toss them up to Benjo, who would pack them into giant burlap sacks, the woolbags.

  Samuel, who had the talent and the teeth for it, would do the castrating, biting off the testicles of the boy lambs, turning them into wethers, the poor things. Whereas himself, along with Sol and Abram, would do the fleecing. The outsider would take Ben's place with them on the shearing floor, and not an hour would he last. And then they would all see what Rachel had to say to that.

  Noah passed the blades one last time over the grindstone, then handed the gleaming shears to the outsider. Cain wrapped his hand around the looped handle and squeezed the hafts. The long triangular blades, sharp as razors now, slid together with a sweet zing.

  Johnny Cain didn't have a farmer's hand, Noah thought, not a big, blunt-fingered, rough farmer's hand. But still, those shears seemed to wed themselves to his fingers as if they belonged there.

  Noah and the Miller brothers discussed among themselves in Deitsch what was to be done to put the outsider in his place. They decided that to be fair, they would have to show the man once how a sheep was properly sheared, and then he could be turned loose to make a fool of himself.

  "You watch and see, and maybe you'll learn a little something, ja?" Noah said in Englisch to the outsider. Samuel and Abram hid grins in their beards. Sol shook his head, but there was a hint of a twinkle in his eyes.

  "Give me a sheep!" Noah hollered to Rachel, who had already taken her place at the cutting chute.

  A
fat old ewe came waddling through the woolbag curtains that had been hung up between the catch pen and the shearing floor. Noah hooked her as she trotted by, grabbing her around the breast, under her front legs. She kept running, right up onto her hind legs, and Noah dumped her onto her rump easily. He gripped her tight to his body with his knees to keep her from wriggling free. The ewe, wise to the ways of a cruel world, saw the gleam of the shears and let out a loud bleat.

  Noah worked quickly, his experienced fingers feeling where the fleece was fine, close to the skin. The shears flashed in mighty strokes, and the wool, soft and greasy to the touch, began to unfold smoothly in a spiraling ivory circle like the peel of an orange.

  The ewe emerged from the pile of her wool, big eyed and naked. Noah relaxed the grip of his knees and gave her a gentle boost back onto her feet. She shook herself hard, no doubt feeling strange, and then trotted off with an embarrassed blaugh!

  Noah looked up from his stooped position and showed his teeth in a hard smile. "Now, let's see how you do, outsider."

  Noah could have called for another ewe, with udders and teats that Cain would have had to clip around. But he decided to make things easy on the poor man, outsider that he was, and asked for a big yearling wether instead. This time Rachel came into the shed along with the sheep to watch.

  The outsider had trouble from the start. In trying to wrestle the animal onto its rump, he somehow wound up face to face and arm in arm with it. Rachel, watching him with her eyes shining bright and soft as spring sunshine, was trying hard not to laugh. Cain caught her eyes, and a look of boyish mischievousness flashed across his face.

  He made as if to buss the wether on its bony nose. "Madam!" he declaimed. "May I have this dance?" And to Noah's astonishment, he actually managed to twirl the bleating sheep around on its tiny hooves.

  "Oh, Mr. Cain," Rachel called out, her throat warbling with laughter. "Did you know that's a boy sheep you're dancing with?"

  Cain stumbled to a stop and looked down in mock alarm. "Oh dear, so it is. Well, actually, something a bit less than a boy."

  Rachel clapped her hands together like a young girl. Even the Miller brothers, caught up in the moment, were finding the outsider pretty funny.

  Not Noah. He looked away, his teeth clamped together so hard his jaw ached. Not an hour, he reminded himself. The man wouldn't last through the first hour.

  It wasn't as easy as it looked, to cut the wool off a living, panting, squirming sheep. The outsider's big mistake was not gripping the wether's body tightly enough with his knees. Cain had it only half shorn when the wether slithered free, gathered its legs underneath it, and ran off trailing fleece. The outsider had to chase after it, and Rachel laughed so hard she had to sit down on a stack of woolbags and hold her belly.

  They all were laughing then. Even Noah.

  When the poor sheep was finally shorn entirely of its wool, it staggered off, blood-spotted and sporting ratty patches where Cain's shears had either missed completely or nicked the hide.

  "I've cut him to pieces," the outsider said. He looked so utterly miserable now that Noah had to turn his head to hide a smile. Rachel sat back down on the woolbags, her shoulders shaking, she was laughing so.

  Levi, whose job it was to do the disinfecting, hurried off after the lacerated, bald, and scruffy wether with a rag dripping carbolic acid.

  "I'm a butcher," Cain said.

  "Actually, you've a deft hand," Noah told him grudgingly. "You'll pick up the rhythm of it in no time."

  "I think, Mrs. Yoder, that you'd do better just to give me all the old ones with tough hides," the outsider called over to Rachel. And as Noah watched, feeling sick at heart, feeling like an outsider himself, their laughter blended in a music all their own.

  There were sounds, Noah thought, that belonged just to the shearing time.

  The snick and click of the blades, as the shears were clasped and released, clasped and released, over and over, clasped and released.

  The bleating and blatting and baaing of the sheep as they were dumped onto their rumps and shorn naked of their buttery wool.

  The thump-thump of Benjo stomping the spongy fleeces down into the woolbag.

  A shearer calling, "Give me a sheep!" And Rachel coaxing one through the chute, poorrrr-poorrrr-pooorrr, sounding sometimes like a kitten and sometimes like a mourning dove. He loved the sound of Rachel singing to her sheep.

  He had forgotten how quickly the work could wear on a man. The constant stooping, the clipping and clipping and clipping, rising just long enough to drag another sheep over and begin again with the clipping, clipping, clipping.

  Ja, and the sound of his own panting breaths, of his sweat drip-drip-dripping like a rainspout onto the shearing floor—that too was part of this time.

  And a new sound this year, Johnny Cain crooning softly to his sheep as he sheared them. The outsider seemed to have a genuine and gentle fondness for the woollies, which both astonished and bothered Noah. He found himself liking the outsider a little bit for it, and he didn't want to.

  Noah finished with a ewe and looked up to see that Benjo was standing on top of a full woolbag. "Time to rest a spell," he called out to the others. Time to catch their breaths and stretch the kinks out of their backs, time to sharpen their shears.

  Noah couldn't keep the grin off his face as he watched the outsider straighten up slow and stiff, like an old, old man. Cain rubbed one hand in the small of what was surely an aching back. His other hand, stiff as a claw, still gripped the shears. That hand had to be raw with bloody blisters by now. Even Noah's own palm, toughened and seasoned as it was, burned where he'd been gripping and working the haft of the shears for the last three hours.

  Noah went to the water butt, stumbling a little; he was that tired himself. He brought a dipperful of water over to the outsider, and the two men stood staring at each other, rocking slightly on their feet, chests pumping with their sucking breaths, sweat pouring in streams down their drawn faces.

  Noah said to the other man, softly so that only he could hear, "So, outsider? There would be no shame now, if you said you had enough."

  A devil's smile flashed beneath winter hard eyes. "When hell freezes, Deacon."

  As the two men continued to stare at each other, a hush fell over the shearing shed. It grew so quiet they could hear the fleeces, still live and warm, stirring in the woolbag—a faint sound, like soft breathing.

  "What is this I see? You lazy men are taking a rest already, and here the morning not yet half gone." Rachel sailed through the woolbag curtains with her hands on her hips and a teasing light in her eyes. "Pee-uw!" She pretended to reel back in horror. Or perhaps it wasn't such a pretense, for the shed was steamy with sweat. "You men smell worse than any sheep ever did."

  "It's a good smell," Noah said stiffly, as he turned to face her. "A smell that would please the Lord."

  He flushed, wondering why everything he said to her lately didn't seem to come out right. They were good thoughts, yet when he put them into words they sounded vain and boastful. This time she smiled at him, but then her gaze went right to Johnny Cain, and they shared another one of those special smiles that came only into their eyes.

  Noah watched her with helpless yearning as she went to the water butt. When she finished drinking, she headed toward him, and he felt a flutter of sweet anticipation. But she walked on past to Benjo, instead, and helped him finish sewing shut the woolbag. And then she went to him. To the outsider.

  They stood close together but not too close, and they spoke not in whispers but plain, so anyone could hear. But Rachel's eyes shone like morning dew. And her mouth smiled quick and sweet. And her whole body seemed to be leaning, straining to span the distance between them, as if all of her was saying to the outsider touch me, touch me, touch me.

  CHAPTER 21

  Dust devils danced ahead of Lucas Henry's phaeton as he turned into the yard of the Yoder farm. The corrals were filled with bleating sheep, some still dressed in their coats
of wool, others already shorn, their naked hides pale and quivering like an old man's paunch.

  Lucas reined up and watched Rachel Yoder walk toward him through shimmering heat ripples. When she came abreast of the buggy he smiled and tipped his hat to her.

  "Good day to you, Plain Rachel."

  He didn't get a return greeting, but he was used to Plain ways and hadn't expected one. "I was just over at the Triple Bar," he said, "delivering a baby. Then on my way back to town I felt a wheel coming loose."

  Rachel looked his wheels over. "It's your right front one, sure enough," she said. "I suppose Noah or Mr. Cain might help you repair it, but we're in the middle of shearing at the moment." She looked up at him and actually smiled. "You're also welcome to stay a spell and watch our poor woollies get scalped."

  She turned and walked off, leaving him to decide on his own. He climbed out the phaeton and approached the low sheds next to the barn. A knot of Plain men stood, jabbering in their guttural tongue, long beards jerking, big felt hats flapping in the hot wind. They fell silent and turned in unison to give him a hard stare, and he immediately felt about as welcome as a whore in Sunday school.

  Johnny Cain came out of the sheds just then, and Rachel went up to him and said something, lightly touching his arm. She seemed different to Lucas in that moment: more vivid, vital, more of a woman. It was as if he'd been seeing her in two dimensions, like a photograph, all light and gray shadows, and now suddenly she had come to full and breathing life.

  He was seeing a woman in love, he thought, and he knew he should be pitying her for all the sorrows that were sure now to come her way. But instead it was himself he felt sorry for, because although love was often a misery, so could it be an ecstasy, distilled to its purest form and headier than any booze. Only it wasn't happening to him, and it never would again.

  Rachel turned, pointing, and Cain came out into the middle of the yard to meet him. The man's Plain shirt was open at the neck, showing a throat slick with sweat and browned by days working in the fields beneath a hot sun. Bits of sheared wool clung to his hair and to his worn and patched broadfall trousers. But his Colt still hung from a bullet-studded belt on his hips, close by his right hand.