On the afternoon of the day after the first killing frost, I was coming around the barn carrying a sack of straw when I saw Charles turn in from the road and start down toward my pasture. He had on his gray fedora hat with the low crown and the turned-up brim, and his arms overflowed with turnip tops to bring the sheep in with. He had a rope, too. Charles had just shaved and was bleeding freely around the chin. One arm encircled the greens; with his free hand he mopped away at the blood. I thought, “I guess Charles has come to get that ewe with the cough.” (Maybe I should explain that Charles has his sheep in with mine—I let him use my pasture and he lets me use his, and we alternate the sheep back and forth because they get better feed that way.)
It was cold, clear weather, and the wind had a bite to it. The darkness comes early these afternoons. I put my sack down and set out across the field toward the stile, the dachshund following, expectant, full of an instinctive notion that something might be up and that it might involve sheep. Charles was calling them. “Knaac, knaac,” he said, and the tame ewe came bobbling up from the cedars, tolling the others in. Charles handed out greens all round. The sheep surrounded him, ate thankfully. When I was halfway to the stile I saw him let the greens fall to the ground; his left arm went out and took one of the ewes suddenly by the wool at the base of her neck. She ducked, backed away madly; Charles was jerked forward and flung himself on her shoulders, tackling her hard, his jacket riding up around his neck and his hat slipping back off his forehead. It was a big ewe, and she took Charles with her, plunging and slipping among the rocks. I walked on, climbed the stile, picked up the rope that Charles had dropped, and walked over to where the two of them had fallen after the last spasm. Charles’ chin was buried in the ewe, the blood showing red in the dirty gray wool. Gathering her strength, she bolted. I took a quick hold on her rear end and went along with them. As she dropped I threw my leg over her back and we came to rest, with Charles breathing heavily on account of his asthma. The dachshund tested out one of her legs, going in cautiously, nipping, then withdrawing quickly. We all three, the ewe, Charles, and myself, lay there a second, breathing.
“I found out what was the matter with that engine,” said Charles.
“The magneto?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said. “Bert was down this afternoon tinkering with it.… This gets my wind awfully.” His wind was almost done. He rested his head on the sheep and closed his eyes, as though he would soon sleep.
I passed Charles the rope, which had a knot near one end so that when he made a noose it wouldn’t draw tight. Charles tied it around the ewe’s neck and I made up the coil.
“Miss Templeton was over to my house earlier,” said Charles. “That woman has had everything the matter with her a woman can.”
“I better take the dog up,” I replied.
“Wait till we get her over the stile. She must weigh nearly two hundred.” Charles pushed her eyelid back with his big fingers, exposing the eyeball with tiny veins of blood. “That’s a good ewe—look at that blood,” he said.
The dachshund, almost insane with the kill, withdrew and went forward to finish off at the throat. His mouth clogged with wool. Charles heaved on one side and I pushed from behind, but it was hard work. It was mostly a case of waiting till she wanted to go. The ewe backed against me, then jumped furiously ahead toward the stile. The rope caught in Charles’ foot and he was down, against a rock; the dachshund quickly transferred to him and danced about him while I grabbed the line and held. We eased the ewe up the first step of the stile and she crumpled. Charles’ breath was coming short and we had to rest. I had one knee on the stile, one hand under the ewe’s tail to keep her from sliding back. We didn’t want to lose what we had gained. The ewe went limp on us and was dead weight.
“Will you have to take the magneto to town?”
“Yes,” he said, “I can’t do anything with it. Let’s give her one more, but watch when she goes over the other side she doesn’t jam you.” He took out a dirty handkerchief and held it against his chin. “I can’t seem to stop bleeding once I start.”
“Why don’t you get a styptic pencil?” I asked.
We both lifted together and the ewe stumbled to her feet on the stile, fell forward on the other side, and plunged down. Charles made it up over in time, wheezing, with the rope, and snubbed her as she bolted for the bushes along the fence. The dachshund was under her, fighting his way up through wool.
“Why don’t you use it?” I asked.
“Doesn’t do any good. I rubbed it on these cuts, but it doesn’t stop. I always bleed a lot.”
“You heard her cough lately?” I asked.
“No. But it might be the worms. You can tell—if they brace themselves with their front feet planted forward when they cough, it’s more likely it’s worms than a cold. If it’s worms, we want her out of here anyway. It might just be a cold. She’s a damn good ewe.”
I got hold of the dachshund’s tail and pulled hard. He came out whimpering and I took him in my arms.
“I’ll put him in the house,” I said. “We’ll get along better.” As I walked up to the house my boy came out and ran toward us, catching up a switch as he came. I went on with the dog and shut him in the kitchen, breaking his heart for the millionth time. When I got back the boy was prodding and Charles would pay the line out while the ewe ran, and then jump along at the end of the rope in long, impossible strides. His hat was on with the bow on the right-hand side, and it was twisted slightly. The ewe was always either running hard or at a dead stop.
“I’ll take the rope,” I said, “if running gets your wind.” Charles handed it over.
“The ram ought to be here this week, hadn’t he?” Charles asked.
“Yes. It’s a yearling. Do you think a yearling can handle this size flock?”
“Sure,” said Charles. “That’s a lot of nonsense about not breeding too much. Frank Bickford had a thoroughbred Jersey bull and he wouldn’t let it breed only twice a week. Damn bull died of loneliness.”
At the end of a long run the ewe veered off the road in front of McEachern’s house, which is just this side of Charles’ place, went down on her knees, then sank. The boy and I went down with her, hanging on. Charles caught up with us, walking. His breath was coming better. He knelt down beside the ewe. Her eyes were closed with weariness and grief. The boy stroked her tenderly. The sun had gone, and the car that came along had its parking lights on, showing clear and clean-cut in the dusk, with no glare. “She’s dead,” said the boy. “Her eyes are closed.”
The McEacherns’ little girl came out of the house and stood watching. “Is that sheep dead?” she asked.
“Can you go after the ram with your truck when he comes?” asked Charles.
“Yes,” I said. We pushed the ewe and she went on and turned into Charles’ yard. I held her while he went and got a pinch bar to tether her to.
“Come in, won’t you?” said Charles when the ewe was tied. “I’ll show you my new cat.”
It was good and dark now. My toe caught on the edge of the linoleum rug.
“This place smells like a monkey cage,” Charles said, “but I never do anything about it when Sarah’s away. She’ll be back Tuesday. I had a letter.”
The boy and I groped along, and Charles struck a match and lit a lamp. I sat down in an old rocker by the stove and the boy stood beside me, his arm around me. Charles put the black kitten in my lap and it settled there.
“What’s the iron pipe out back?” I asked.
“I’m going to pipe water into the house,” said Charles. “Sarah wants it and I guess she ought to have it. I got a pump from Sears a year ago, but I never put the pipe in. I don’t like to get things too handy around here.”
He took down from the mantelpiece, one by one, the photographs of his four grown children and showed them to me. They were high-school graduation pictures by a studio photographer. He had shown them to me before, but he took them down again. “I haven’t anything else to be proud of,” he said, “but I am proud of them. They’re good kids. A couple of them are married now.”
I studied their faces gravely.
“That son’s my favorite, I guess,” he said.
“He looks fine,” I said.
“This war’s a terrible thing.”
“Yes, it is.”
“What do you think’s going to happen?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
The kitchen was warming up. We lit cigarettes and sat and smoked. My boy stroked the cat. Charles put the photographs back on the mantelpiece under the picture of the ship. He had got his breath back. I felt pleasantly tired and comfortable, and hated to go, but it was suppertime. I got up to leave.
“Those lambs will be cunning, in the Spring,” Charles said.
“They sure will.”
As we walked back along the road, the boy and I, I noticed that the ewe was grazing quietly at her tether. Overhead the stars were bright in the sky. It looked like a good day tomorrow.
“What did he mean when he asked you what was going to happen?”
“He meant about the war.”
“Does anybody know what’s going to happen?”
“No.”
“Do you?”
“No.”
“Do people have to fight whether they want to or not?”
“Some of them.”
When we got near our house we could look down and see the sheep in the pasture below us, grazing spread out, under the stars.
“I can hardly wait to see the lambs,” said the boy.