Heart of a Shepherd (3 page)

I hate when she acts up and Dad's watching. I talk smooth to her and give her a little slap on the butt with my rope, and then she moves clear up to the edge of the higher bank so that blackberry branches snag on my shirt and break off and stick to my jeans.

“Hey, Spud, no fair!” I growl at her. Still, she's moving, so I don't complain too much. We come up on the calf, and she shies away from us. Good thing there's nowhere for her to run. She's a scrawny thing, maybe only a few days old. I toss a loop over her head, thankful I don't have to rope this calf from a run because the truth is, I'm not much good at roping. I tie her off to my saddle horn, tell Spud to stay, and walk over to check her. She's really dirty, and she has cuts and bruises from her fall. I feel her leg bones all the way down, and they're sound.

“Come on, baby. Let's go find your mama.” I give the rope a tug, and the calf stretches her neck forward but she doesn't move.

“Come on now. Mama's waiting.” I walk behind her and give her a shove from the back like a cow does when she wants her calf to move along. I give her a couple more shoves, and the calf starts walking.

“That's the way, baby.” I pull on the rope, and she follows me step by step. I get back in the saddle. We ride nice and slow down the wash, with the calf a few steps behind, until we are at the spot where Spud brushed me against the blackberries. Only this time, Spud stops dead and puts back her ears.

This is not a good sign. I love Spud, but she has her stubborn moments.

“Come on. Let's go. Git up now,” I say.

Then I lose my temper and kick her. Spud just snorts, and I am about to kick her again when something about the way she's breathing makes me think she's afraid. I look up at the sky for a thunderhead and along the rim of the gully for cougars. Suddenly, from the ground, I hear the faintest shiver of dry grass in the still air. Before I can even look, Spud rears up and kicks. She bucks me right off. My hat and rope go flying. I come down flat on my back. All the air whooshes out of my lungs. My head is ringing. I still hear the swoosh, and in a second I can see it—a rattlesnake zigzagging through the dead grass, straight at my face.

I am dying to jump up and run, to scream, to breathe. Spud rears up again and tramples the snake with her front feet. I hear a hiss and a faint rattle—the
snake is still moving. Just as I finally pull in a ragged, dusty breath, Dad jumps into the gully between me and the snake with his Colt .45 drawn. He takes aim, but doesn't need to fire. The snake is broken in the middle. It drops its head, struggles to lift it again, and uncoils. A dark line of snake blood rolls downhill in the dust.

“You all right, Brother?” Dad holsters his gun.

I nod, even though I've never felt worse in my life. Dad goes after the calf, and I get on my feet and look after my horse. She's a little spooked, and sweaty. I'm glad I'm not the only one. I give her plenty of strokes and soft talk, and when I look up, Dad's standing there with the calf, waiting for me.

He looks me over for a minute and says, “You're going to be more bruises than body come morning. There's nothing worse than coming off a horse onto rocks. Did you break anything?”

I shake my head, and he puts a hand on my shoulder. “Are you ready to ride on?”

As soon as Dad touches me, my whole body starts shaking like a leaf. “I've been scared of snakes for a while, but I guess it's going to be a permanent thing after this.”

“A healthy fear of snakes won't bring you to harm. Might do you some good, if you decide to stick with ranch work.”

I try to smile, but I'm still shaking.

“You don't have to be brave,” he says, real quiet. “Neither of us does. A man's life is not so much about courage. You just have to keep going. You have to do what you've promised, brave or not.”

“But I don't want you to go, Dad,” I whisper, and then I hug him as hard as I can and say it over and over: “Don't go, Dad. Don't. Don't go.”

And Dad hugs me, and he says nothing, but I can feel him cry.

O
CTOBER

“Good game,” Grandpa says, and he stands up from the kitchen table to shake my hand.

I say “Good game” back, just out of habit. It's our usual Sunday night chess game, and I still haven't found a way to beat him.

Nobody ever beats Grandpa. My brothers don't even play chess with him anymore. Dad beats him once in a while, but Dad's been in Iraq for two months and sixteen days. Grandpa goes to the shelf by the wood-stove in the living room and reaches down the felt-lined cigar box that holds the chessmen. We lay them in, ebony on one side and ivory on the other because you wouldn't want the troops to mingle and then have to kill each other the next day, would you? It would be bad for morale.

Grandma's got four lamb bottles and a fresh light-bulb waiting for me. She holds up my barn coat and I slide it on, catching a draft of molasses cookies from the left front pocket. I get a wink and a little shove in the direction of the door. Grandma understands about playing chess with Grandpa. I guess she loves all her grandsons the same, but when it comes to chess, it's me she's rooting for. She's got a whole stack of big sisters, so she always says, “Brother, us youngests ought to stick up for each other.”

Daylight is still hanging over the Strawberry Mountains, but it's dark enough to see Jupiter two fists up from the barn roof. I hear music coming from the hired-man shack. It sounds magical and sad, like something elves would play. Ernesto plays his pipes in the evening sometimes. When he first came, in September, I loved to hear him play. Now I know he only plays on nights when the letter from his kids in Ecuador is late. Usually a letter comes once a week. Every Friday afternoon, when Grandma comes home from her two hours at the little post office in town, Ernesto is waiting, with his hat in hand like it's a sacred moment.

I know just how he feels, because I hardly ever have a letter from Dad. I know it's a command thing. Battalion commanders are too busy to write. Still, I'm
glad it's not my job to tell Ernesto there's no mail from home.

I slide back the barn door and walk past the stalls in the dark, heading for the warm glow of the lamb crib. I climb over the rails and hop in. A mound of pearl white peeks out of the hay, and I count four noses. They're the bum lambs. That's what you call it when the ewe dies and leaves a baby. It hardly seems fair. Being an orphan is depressing enough without being called a bum too. If I can keep these lambs alive all winter, I'll tag them in the spring and keep them in my own flock.

I kick the straw around a bit to find a spot that hasn't been pooped on and settle cross-legged in the corner of the pen, leaning back against a hay bale. The lambs aren't supposed to have names—only horses and dogs are allowed to have names—but I call them Frodo, Merry, Pippin, and Bilbo. I know better than to call one Sam, because Sam is my favorite Hobbit in the whole story.

I pull Pippin into my lap. “Drink up now. I want to see some muscle on these ribs.”

Pippin makes a dive for the nipple. Lambs are the sloppiest drinkers. They jerk their heads around and dribble. I shift Pip to the right so I don't get milk drool
in my cookie pocket. I wish there were more than four lambs, because they'd keep warmer in the huddle. It's going to get cold tonight.

When Pippin's done I tuck him under my knees, but he's got other ideas. He runs in circles for a bit and then starts jumping up on the hay bale and butting his head on the top rail of the lamb crib. Frodo's all for running around too, so I have to hold him snug to get him to drink his formula.

Frodo has definitely gained a little, but Merry's got a rattle in his breathing. I lift him up and press my ear to his ribs. It's not my imagination. He's got some kind of gunk in his lungs. If he's sick, I should keep him away from the other three, only he'll freeze alone and the others need him for warmth.

I hate this part of ranching. It's way worse than losing at chess. Animals die, and it feels the same amount of awful every time.

By the time I'm done feeding Merry and Bilbo, Pippin is tired again. He flops down in the hay, and the rest of the lambs pile in on top of him. I settle Merry in the heap with his nose pointing toward the other lambs’ tails. I put a fresh bulb in the heat lamp and pull it low over them. It's probably not enough. I hop out of the crib and get the bottle of holy water that sits over
the barn door. Grandma uses it for the lambing and calving season. She never said I couldn't have some. Grandpa doesn't really hold with holy water and praying to the saints, but he lets Grandma steer the religion around here. I flip up the plastic spout, shake a drop or two on Merry's head, and say Saint Patrick's blessing:

I think about those cougar tracks Grandpa saw yesterday in the hills behind our ranch.

I trace a cross on Merry's head and then cover him up the best I can with straw. I put the holy water back and slip outside.

It's wall-to-wall stars now, with nothing to block the view except the empty branches of the big cotton-wood. I lean on the barn door and look up. The Herdsman constellation ought to be rising over by the
notches of rock where Starvation Creek cuts through. The bottom half of him is still behind the hills at the north side of our land. I stay to watch him rise, because he's the constellation Dad and me picked to watch over me while he's gone. A second later, I change my mind because it's getting really cold. I pull out my cookie and head for the house.

Grandpa is finishing up with the sheep. He keeps a gun pretty close when there are cougars around. I don't want him to think I'm sneaking up on him. He'd probably shoot first and check species second. I belt out some Alleluias, spraying cookie crumbs all the way up to the house.

I reckon my grandpa's the only Quaker member of the National Rifle Association. He's a dead-serious pacifist and the best marksman around. He's gotten coyotes, cougars, and even a full-grown bear. No trophy antlers cluttering up our parlor, though. It's not the Quaker way to shoot a vegetarian.

It's too bad. Over at the VFW, they make a venison stew that gets me begging for seconds before the bowl's even half empty. We spend a lot of time over at the VFW because Grandma is a veteran of foreign wars. She drove some general in a jeep all over France in the
Second World War, and as if that wasn't enough, she maintained the Army Reserve motor pool for about a hundred years. She's got a scrapbook full of pictures and maps and signatures of famous people she's met. The one that's framed and hanging on the wall at the VFW meeting hall is when her general met General Eisenhower right after the Battle of the Bulge. Grandma's the one holding three briefcases, a shoebox-sized radio, and a thermos of coffee. She's tall as any man, with curly red hair and a movie star smile.

Grandpa hates that picture. “That's no way to treat a lady,” he says.

Grandma just laughs. “That's exactly the way to treat a corporal.”

It's my favorite picture because it's plain to see: those generals were winning because Grandma had them all working like a fine-tuned tractor. There's not a machine on our ranch that would dare drop a bolt while Grandma's around. She's got hands like a basketball player, and when she lifts up the hood, well, any truck in its right mind would know she means business.

The light from the kitchen window makes a square pool of yellow in the front yard, and the shadow from
the flag by the front door makes a ghost shape when a gust of air hits it. I walk up the front steps and slam the door quick to keep the warm air in. I slump down on the bench in the front hall, pull off my boots, and hang my coat on the peg between Frank's and Dad's.

In the kitchen, I leave the empty lamb bottles in the sink. Grandma sits on her rolling stool by the computer and orders cow vaccines online. I pull up a chair at the kitchen table and unwrinkle my fractions homework.

Grandpa comes in last. I can hear the thump of him taking off his work boots in the front hall. He walks around the corner into the kitchen, leans over to kiss Grandma, and then warms his hands on the china coffeepot before refilling Grandma's mug.

“Second dinner, Brother? Plenty of stew in the pot,” he says.

Actually, it'll make third dinner for me tonight, but who's counting?

“Mhmm,” I say. I get up and bring a bowl to the stove. “Don't you want any, Grandpa?”

“No thanks.”

I fill up my bowl and get back to my homework while Grandpa takes out his journal and sits in the easy
chair by the woodstove. Deep quiet settles around us. It's too cold for bug noises and too calm for wind noises. Sometimes it gets so quiet at night, I'd swear you can hear the stars twinkle.

Grandma finishes up her computer business and spins around on her stool. “There's an e-mail waiting for you. Are you done with that math?”

I give a yes grunt, rewrinkle the page, and tuck it down in the bottom of my backpack, where the wrinkles will get pressed in good. I know I've got them all right, but it's best to keep up appearances.