At Home on Ladybug Farm

by Donna Ball

  “I’ll paint it back in for you,” Noah volunteered. “Wouldn’t charge you more than fifty dollars. For each one, of course.”

  Cici said quickly, “Thank you, Noah, but I think we’d better leave it the way it is.”

  And Lindsay added, “After all, you wouldn’t want someone else to come behind you and add something to one of your paintings, would you?”

  He shrugged. “I wouldn’t mind. Especially if I was dead. Twenty-five,” he offered. “Apiece.”

  “Thank you, Noah,” Bridget said firmly, “but no. Besides, you were going to finish planting the potato eyes this morning.”

  He shrugged. “Suit yourself. But if the painting ain’t worth nothing, stands to reason I can’t mess it up.”

  “Potatoes?” insisted Bridget.

  Hands in pockets, he ambled off.

  “And we’ve got sheep to shear,” Lori declared, rubbing her hands together in anticipation. “Today’s the day!”

  Lori had determined, from all her reading, that the Ladybug Farm sheep were Irish in origin, and so declared there could be no more appropriate day to begin Project Sheep Shear than St. Patrick’s Day. And even though Bridget was not quite as excited to begin what she suspected would be a dirty and exhausting task, she had to admit that having the patron saint of their flock’s homeland on their side was not a bad idea.

  “It’s too early to be shearin’ sheep,” Ida Mae warned dourly. “You might as well go ahead and use the mutton for your Irish stew, if that’s what you’ve a mind on.”

  “Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to wait a few weeks.”

  “Aunt Bridget,” Lori insisted, barely suppressing an eye roll. “The market.”

  “Right,” Bridget said. “Apparently March is a hot market for wool around here,” she explained to the others. “April, not so much.”

  “So let’s go!” Lori said, heading for the door.

  Cici caught Bridget’s arm as she turned to go, a hint of alarm in her eyes. “You’re not really going to let Lori near those sheep with a pair of shears, are you?”

  “Of course not,” she assured her, with a small smile. ”Farley’s coming to help.”

  Lori had seen a program on the Discovery Channel in which a sheepdog lined up an entire flock of sheep outside a dipping shed, then herded the queue into the shed, up a ramp, and into an automated harness device, which clamped each sheep between its jaws and dipped it in a vat of insecticide. The sheep then scampered up another ramp and down the other side, out into the freedom of the sunny pasture to dry off.

  Bridget assured her that Ladybug Farm was very far removed from the Discovery Channel, and while Rebel was in fact a competent sheepdog who had no trouble moving the sheep from pasture to pasture, he was unlikely to be able to persuade twenty-five sheep to climb single file up a ramp and into a vat of sheep dip.

  They had spent a good deal of time discussing the pros and cons of the sheep-dipping process, and finally decided upon a more organic approach. Chemicals were dangerous, and smelly, and would cling to the wool for days, even weeks. They couldn’t sell wool that reeked of pesticides. Besides, what was better for cleaning and disinfecting than good old-fashioned soap and water?

  To obtain the optimal softness and fluffiness from the wool, they decided on baby shampoo. Bridget bought a half dozen bottles of it at the Dollar Store.

  The plan was simple. They spread out a ten-by-ten tarp on the ground outside the barn door, where each sheep would be shampooed and then turned loose in the barn to await shearing. They hooked up the garden hose to the outside faucet and Bridget went to collect the first animal.

  Rebel had been eyeing them suspiciously all morning, and when Bridget opened the gate to the meadow, he went into action. He streaked across the grass like an optical illusion, so swift and silent that the peacefully grazing sheep didn’t even see him coming until he nipped one of them on the ankle. The flock bleated and trotted restlessly in a dozen different directions and the dog dropped to his belly, his mesmeric gaze stopping the animals in their tracks. He began to circle and the sheep began to bunch. As though contained inside an invisible circle, the herd trotted toward the opposite fence line.

  Bridget had learned quickly that all she had to do to get Rebel to herd the sheep toward the west was to pretend she wanted them herded toward the east. So when she started waving a towel at the flock, urging it on in the direction it was going, Rebel immediately turned the flock around and moved it the opposite way. Bridget kept screaming at him and waving the towel, and Rebel kept ignoring her, trotting the flock toward the open gate of the sheep pen just outside the barn. There Lori stood, ready to close the gate as soon as the last sheep was herded inside.

  “Good job!” she called as Bridget came jogging up a few dozen yards behind the sheep. “Not a single straggler!”

  “All it takes is a little reverse psychology,” Bridget called back with a grin.

  Rebel, his job complete, streaked off to do whatever it was he did when he was not circling the sheep or trying to attack members of the household.

  Lori planted her hands on her blue-jeaned hips and looked over with satisfaction at the shuffling mob of securely contained sheep. “And you thought it was going to be hard,” she chided Bridget. “I told you we could do this. And think of the money we’re saving.”

  “We haven’t even started the hard part yet,” Bridget reminded her.

  “Still . . .” Lori raised her palm for a high five. “Not too bad for a couple of city girls.”

  Her optimism was contagious. Bridget laughed and slapped her palm in agreement.

  Fortunately the sheep were a relatively docile bunch, and Bridget had no trouble getting a loop around the neck of a ewe and leading her out of the pen to the tarp, where Lori stood ready with the garden hose and the baby shampoo.

  “Okay, you just hold him there—”

  “Her,” corrected Bridget.

  “Right. You hold her and I’ll do the shampooing.”

  “She’s a sweet girl,” Bridget cooed, stroking the sheep’s woolly head. “She’s going to like her bath. She’s not going to be any trouble at all.”

  And so, for a time, it seemed she wouldn’t be. Lori soaked the woolly sheep with water from the garden hose—which was surprisingly cold on her hands—and poured on a generous amount of shampoo. She added more water to work up a lather, and more shampoo, scrubbing up to her elbows. Rivers of brown suds were sluiced away with the final rinse from the garden hose, and with Bridget tugging and Lori chasing, they finally maneuvered the ewe into the barn.

  Two blow-dryers had been attached to long extension cords that were plugged into the barn’s single outlet. They used old towels to rub away the worst of the water and, with Lori on one side and Bridget on the other, began to blow-dry the sheep.

  Half an hour later, Lori stepped back to survey the fluffy, white, and rather annoyed-looking result of their efforts. “Well,” she said, though with slightly less enthusiasm than before. “One down, twenty-four to go.”

  Bridget groaned out loud. “There has got to be a better way.”

  Lindsay carefully spread newspapers out on the newly sanded floor and pried the lid off the gallon of wood stain with a screwdriver. “I’ll start in this corner and you start in that one,” she suggested, “and we’ll meet at the staircase.”

  Cici looked up from the section of floor she was scrubbing with a mixture of turpentine and mineral spirits. All of the doors and windows were open, but the air was still sharp with the odor of chemicals and the ghost of dust from the sander.

  “How are we going to get out?”

  Lindsay looked momentarily nonplussed. “Oh. Okay, you start in that corner and I’ll start in this one and we’ll meet at the door.”

  “Better plan.”

  Cici sat back on her heels and stared in exasperation at the spot she had been scrubbing for the past twenty minutes. “Well, I give up. I’ve tried everything I know—sanding, bleaching, steel wool, and mineral
spirits . . . whatever this is, it’s not coming out.”

  Abandoning the stain, Lindsay came over to examine the spot. It was an irregular dark splotch a couple of feet wide, surrounded by smaller, coin-shaped blotches of the same color. “Maybe it’s a defect in the wood,” she suggested.

  Cici shook her head. “It’s more like some kind of spill.”

  “Maybe the wood stain will cover it.”

  “I doubt it. It’s too dark. But I don’t know what else to do, short of replacing the floorboards.”

  “Uh, veto that idea. We’ve got to get this finished today, remember? Besides, that’s antique wood. Where are you going to find matching boards?”

  Cici sighed. “I suppose. It just seems a shame.”

  Ida Mae stood at the doorway. “Don’t look like ya’ll are makin’ much progress,” she commented. “Them men just drove up.”

  Lindsay blinked. “What men?”

  “About the sheep. Thought you’d want to know who was in your yard.”

  “Oh,” Cici said, still preoccupied with the blot on the floor. “Not really. I don’t suppose you have any secret recipes for removing stains from wood floors, do you? I’ve tried everything, and I just can’t get this stain out.”

  “Nope,” replied Ida Mae flatly. “And you ain’t gonna get it out either.”

  Cici looked at her curiously. “Why not?”

  “Because,” said Ida Mae. “It’s blood.”

  They were blow-drying their fifth sheep when Bridget looked up to see Farley standing at the door with a man they did not know. Her jeans and sweatshirt were splotched with wet patches, her platinum bob was tangled, her makeup had worn off, and her face was feathered with scraps of curly fleece. Every muscle ached with stiffness and she was as exhausted as she looked. Nonetheless, when she saw company had arrived, she automatically ran a hand over her hair and made an effort to smile.

  “Hi, Farley,” she said. She turned off her blow-dryer and nudged Lori, who was using a dog brush to comb out the wool around the sheep’s ears.

  Neither man spoke for a moment; they simply stared. The stranger bore a faint though noticeable resemblance to Farley that stopped at his head, which, rather than the perpetual camo cap Farley wore, was covered by a tattered straw hat. He chewed thoughtfully on a matchstick, which he removed from his mouth before speaking.

  “Damn,” he said. “I reckon I’ve seen it all now. A beauty parlor for sheep.”

  Farley, deadpan, spat into his soda can. “My cousin Zeb. He does sheep.”

  Bridget came forward, first wiping her hand on her damp jeans, then extending it. “Nice to meet you, Zeb. Thank you for coming, but”—she glanced helplessly over her shoulder at Lori—“we’re really not ready yet. We didn’t know it was going to take this long.”

  Zeb walked forward, his expression thoughtful as he examined the sheep Lori was working on, and looked over the stall door at the four fluffy white specimens who were stored there. He ventured, “Ya’ll taking these sheep to a party?”

  Lori, who was at least as tired as Bridget and far past the point of humor, bristled. “Well, you can’t shear wet sheep, can you? We had to dry them somehow.”

  He sniffed the air. “They smell funny.”

  “Baby shampoo,” Bridget explained, plucking an almost invisible strand of wool from her lips.

  Zeb looked at her for a long moment. He looked at Farley. He lifted his straw hat and scratched his bald pate. “You washed the sheep?”

  Lori pushed a handful of her straggling hair out of her face and replied, with just the smallest note of condescension, “We can’t sell dirty fleece, can we?”

  He said, “How come you didn’t wait till they was sheared and then just wash the fleece?”

  For a moment neither Bridget nor Lori reacted. Then their eyes met in a moment of mutual recognition for the futility of the past three hours’ backbreaking work.

  Bridget said, very distinctly, “We didn’t have to wash the sheep.”

  And Lori agreed in a small voice, “I guess not.”

  “We could have just washed the fleece.”

  Lori tried to smile. “Guess we should have thought of that.”

  Bridget drew a breath as though to say more, stopped herself, and then turned back to Zeb with a smile so stiff it looked as though it might crack.

  “Well then,” she said in a voice that was high and tight and far too cheerful. “Shall we get started?”

  “What do you mean, blood?” Cici asked.

  “Whose blood?” Lindsay demanded, alarmed.

  Ida Mae gave her an exasperated glance. “How’m I supposed to know whose blood? Somebody’s, is all.”

  Lindsay took a step back from the splotch on the floor, her nose wrinkling in distaste. “But . . . blood. On our floor!”

  Cici insisted, “Then how do you know it’s blood? Who told you that?”

  Ida Mae shrugged. “Just always knew it, that’s all.”

  Cici’s frown was skeptical as she gazed down at the stain. “If you know it’s blood, you must know how it got there.”

  “Never said I didn’t.”

  Both Lindsay and Cici looked at her expectantly. Ida Mae took a dustcloth from her apron pocket and ran it across the mantelpiece.

  “Honestly, Ida Mae, getting information from you is like pulling teeth,” Cici exclaimed. “Well? How did it get here?”

  Ida Mae tucked her dustcloth back into her pocket. “Seems like there was some story about somebody shootin’ a Yankee that tried to come in that window yonder.”

  Lindsay caught her breath, her eyes going wide. “No kidding? A Yankee?”

  Cici cast her a dry look. “Yes, kidding. Unless somebody was still fighting the war at the turn of the century, which was when this house was built.”

  Lindsay looked disappointed, but Ida Mae returned smugly, “As much as you know, Miss Smarty-Pants. Like I told that pesky child of yours, there’s been a house here since before Civil War times. Part of it burnt down, but they built it up again. “

  Now Cici looked interested. “Really? What part?”

  It was Ida Mae’s turn to look annoyed. “I wasn’t around then,” she told her, “and I got to go take my nap. Ya’ll finished making all that racket up here?”

  Cici assured her that they were, and Ida Mae moved off toward her downstairs sanctuary.

  Lindsay regarded the stain on the floor with new respect. “Well, at least now we don’t have to worry about getting rid of it. You don’t get rid of a piece of history.”

  “I’m not sure how I feel about preserving the kind of history where people are shot in your living room,” Cici said uneasily.

  Lindsay shrugged. “Times were different back then.”

  “I don’t know why you say that. Blood is blood. And dead is dead.”

  “And we can’t do anything about what happened here a hundred years ago.”

  “You’re right about that.” Cici cheered marginally. “Besides, it is a good story, isn’t it?”

  “No one I know has a better one.”

  “Okay.” Cici took up a pair of rubber gloves and slapped another into Lindsay’s open palm. “Let’s get started then.”

  After a dozen sheep were sheared—which was accomplished in approximately half the time it had taken the two of them to wash even one sheep, exclusive of the blow-drying—even Lori had to admit the advantages of hiring a professional far outweighed those of doing it themselves. Farley looped a hobble around each sheep’s hooves to keep them from struggling, and with a pair of electric shears, Zeb peeled off the thick, furry fleece in a single piece. As the fleece dropped to a clean tarp on the barn floor, Farley released its former owner and a naked sheep trotted away.

  “It’s just like unzipping a jacket,” Lori said admiringly. “I don’t suppose you’d let me try it once, would you?”

  Zeb replied simply, “Nope.”

  “Lori,” Bridget pointed out as she led another sheep into the shearing pen, “we’re
paying this man by the hour. Aren’t you supposed to be turning the sheared sheep out to pasture?”

  “Right,” Lori said, and hurried after the newly released animal with a rope. “Where’s that dog, anyway?”

  Bridget hesitated, looking around. “I don’t know.” She sounded uneasy. “He’s awfully quiet.” That was never a good sign.

  Noah came into the barn behind Bridget, with Bambi following close at his heels. “Noah, get that deer out of here! Can’t you see we’re busy?”

  “I need the posthole diggers if you want me to start on that fence.” But his attention was on Farley, who was wrestling the sheep to the ground, and he looked interested enough in the proceedings to take his time finding the posthole diggers.

  “Well, they’re not in here.”

  Farley flipped the sheep over to pin its hooves together, as he always did, the sheep bleated in protest, as it always did, and Bridget objected, as she always did, “Do you have to be so rough?”

  Bambi wandered forward, neck stretched out to investigate, and that was the beginning of the perfect storm. The sheep Farley was restraining suddenly noticed the deer looming over him and began to struggle and bleat loudly just as Zeb fired up the electric shears. Lori, seeing her opportunity to get involved in the actual process, abandoned the already sheared sheep she had been leading out the back door to the meadow and rushed forward to help. Farley lost his grip on the sheep he was holding, and as it flung off its hobble and lurched to its feet, Rebel, who had been watching from a silent crouch in a shadowed corner, lunged forward in a frenzy of wild barking.

  Bambi sprang over Zeb’s crouching back and flew out the door. Zeb dropped the shears in astonishment. Bridget screamed at Rebel, who chased the sheared sheep out the back door and around the barn. The unsheared sheep, having escaped from Farley, charged after its flock mate in blind agitation, knocking Lori to the ground as it passed.

  Bridget rushed to help Lori up. Noah, with a shout, took off after Rebel, who had Bambi in his sights. Farley retrieved his soda can from the post on which he had stored it, and spat. Zeb took off his hat and shook his head.