Part 5
Caleb’s feet found his boots while he was still reaching for his coat. He took the hook from beside the door and the large flashlight from the kitchen drawer.
Outside, he couldn’t distinguish his hand from the air around it.
The crook caught the yard gate. He worked through, found the top wire with his glove, and started counting posts.
Ten. Twenty.
He kept the flashlight low. It gave him a small, usable patch of frozen grass, but nothing beyond it. His gloved fingers slid along the wire between posts.
At sixty, a barb caught his sleeve. He pulled until the cloth tore and kept going.
Mamama had stopped calling. The bell still rang, hurried and uneven.
Ninety. A hundred.
He heard a coyote ahead, then another answering from farther to the right.
At two hundred twelve, he reached the turn above the creek.
He knew the crossing. In daylight, he could have walked it while thinking about something else. Now he set the hook down ahead of him and tested the bank with one boot.
The ice at the edge broke under his weight. His foot slid, and he landed on one knee in shallow water. The flashlight struck something hard, bounced from his hand, and splashed into the creek.
Its light went out.
Cold water filled his boots. Caleb got one hand around the last fence post and pulled himself upright.
Across the creek, the bell was still moving. Mamama brayed again near the draw.
The ewe called, and beneath her voice came a small, thin bleat.
Caleb let go of the post.
He felt through the crossing with the hook, then crawled up the far bank, dragging the staff beside him. Frost broke beneath his palms. At the top, he got to his feet and stood still long enough to listen.
June was moving to his left. The ewe was ahead.
He reached the hook forward and swept it low. It touched sagebrush; he went around. Its end dropped into a hole; he shortened his step and crossed it.
A few yards farther on, he tripped anyway. The ground struck the breath out of him. He lay with his cheek against frozen grass, waiting for his lungs to work.
The lamb bleated again, weaker this time.
Caleb pushed up onto his knees and continued.
His outstretched fingers finally touched wool. The ewe stamped and blew at him.
“Hold still, girl.”
He ran a hand down her side and crouched. Two lambs lay beneath her. One was trying to stand, its wet legs folding and straightening. The other remained in the grass, making that thin sound.
A growl came from his right.
Close.
Caleb stepped across the lambs and planted the hook. He drew breath and shouted the long, carrying call Basilio had used to turn sheep across a canyon.
He hadn’t made that sound since boyhood. It scraped his throat raw.
He shouted again.
Mamama answered.
Her hooves came hard over the frozen ground, straight toward his voice. June’s bell approached from a wider angle.
Something furry brushed the backs of Caleb’s legs.
He swung the hook behind him and struck empty air. Light feet moved through the grass, coming around him toward the lambs.
Mamama reached him so closely that her shoulder knocked him off balance. She turned at the sound of those feet and kicked with both hind legs.
A coyote cried out.
From the other side of the ewe came June’s bray. She charged after the second animal, and the bell went with her.
Caleb held the hook out, listening. Two sets of quick feet retreated toward the draw. The yelping grew faint, then disappeared beyond the rise.
The bell slowed.
Mamama came back first. Her muzzle found Caleb’s chest, and he laid his free hand against her neck. She was trembling. His fingers trembled against her coat.
He stayed over the lambs, one hand on the jenny and the other gripping the staff.
A bright beam passed across the creek bottom.
It swept up the draw, caught two pairs of eyes near the ridge, then returned to the pasture. An engine came through the gate. Russell’s pickup stopped nearby, its door opening before the engine was shut off.
“Caleb?”
He came across the grass carrying his rifle and the handheld spotlight. The beam moved from the ewe to Caleb’s wet jeans and torn sleeve.
“Where’s your flashlight?”
“Bottom of the creek.”
“You came the rest of the way without it?”
“It wasn’t helping much before.”
Russell raised the beam. Caleb squinted, trying to put Russell’s face together from the glare, and turned slightly past him.
“What are you telling me?”
For six years, Caleb had found a way around that question whenever it came near him.
He kept his hand on Mamama.
“After dark, I’m blind. Have been a long time. It’s taking my daylight sight, too.”
Russell lowered the beam to the grass.
“Basilio knew?”
“He took me to the specialist.”
The light moved slowly to Mamama. Her eyes reflected it, cloudy and pale.
“She can’t see either?”
“No.”
Russell drew air through his nose. “I laughed at her.”
“Yes.”
“And I ran my mouth about you.”
“I was there.”
Downstream, the sheep were settling. June lowered her head, and the bell gave one soft note.
Russell looked toward the ridge.
“I’ve got forty poison devices up there. Lost thirty-one lambs since lambing started.” He shifted the rifle to his other hand. “How many here?”
“None.”
Russell turned the spotlight back to the twins.
“Let’s get these two warm.”
They loaded the ewe and both lambs into the pickup and took them to the shed. Under the heat lamp, the ewe immediately began licking the weaker twin. Caleb crouched long enough to feel it lifting its head.
Behind him, Russell cleared his throat.
“Come on. Get in the truck.”
They drove the creek bottom until dawn, Russell working the spotlight while Caleb rode with the window down. For a long stretch, there was only the engine and the sound of tires over rough ground.
Then Russell said, “Thursday suppers.”
Caleb kept his face toward the open window. “I couldn’t get home afterward.”
“And mornings. Waiting till nine.”
“Needed the sun up.”
Russell glanced at the hook between Caleb’s knees.
“I watched you carry that for six winters. Thought you were trying to look like your granddad.”
“Some of that, probably.” Caleb moved his thumb over the worn grip. “Mostly I needed to know what I was stepping on.”
Russell drove around a patch of soft ground.
“At the bank, I told myself I was doing right by Basilio. If you couldn’t hold the place, I wanted it in the hands of somebody who’d work it his way.”
“That’s what I’ve been doing.”
Russell’s jaw tightened. He kept driving.
Later, as they passed above the flock, he asked, “How can you tell where they’ve gone?”
Caleb tipped his head toward the open window. From below came the slow, familiar knock.
“June tells me.”
When daylight reached the creek, they counted on opposite banks. Russell called his figures across the water. Caleb checked them against his own, moving through the flock until every ewe and lamb had been accounted for.
Back in the shed, the twins objected loudly when Caleb tagged them. Two hundred seven. Two hundred eight.
Both were standing now.
Russell had a thermos in the cab. They drank coffee at the tailgate while sunlight reached the upper slopes. Caleb’s wet trouser legs had stiffened in the cold, and his knee ached every time he shifted.
Russell turned his cup between his palms.
“Your granddad used to tell me not to leave a ewe alone with the night. I always pictured a rifle when he said it.”
Caleb looked toward the creek pasture.
“He left eyesight out of it.”
Russell drank, then lowered the cup.
“I’m calling the bank when they open. That loan officer heard plenty from me this winter. He can hear the rest.”
Caleb held his coffee with both hands.
After a while, Russell asked, “Where would I start looking for jennies?”
“Sale on Saturday. Back pens.”
“You mind company?”
“Not if you’re driving.”
“I’ll drive.”
Russell poured the last of the coffee into his cup. At the pickup door, he stopped and looked toward the flock.
“What did you name the old one?”
“Mamama. Grandmother.”
Russell nodded once. He got in carefully, setting the empty cup where it wouldn’t spill, and drove through the gate.
Caleb went to his own pickup. He opened the door and reached behind the seat.
The white cane came out with its plastic still intact. He worked a finger under the wrapping, tore it free, and carried the cane to the house. Inside the porch door, he stood it where he would find it when he next went to town.
Then he returned to the fence with Basilio’s hook.
There was enough sun now to see the nearer sheep. June stood among them, Mamama a few steps away. A ewe moved between the jennies, followed by her lamb.
Caleb rested his forearms on the top rail and closed his eyes.
The bell sounded below him, paused, then sounded again. He turned his head as it moved through the flock.