The lambs kept coming. Two living. One dead. Four living. One missing, presumed dead: Lem arrived one morning to find Ida examining a bloody spot just outside the field shelter. “Hawk,” he said, pointing to the wing marks in the dirt where the bird had touched down, snatched the newborn lamb, and lifted off.
But by April Ida could look out over twenty-two snow-white lambs bouncing among the oat-colored ewes, a pair of ram lambs roughhousing, and a hundred different shades of living green shoots poking through the winter dead. She’d made it through winter. She’d lost only four sheep. She would receive her full payment. She should be—she could be—she would be happy.
There was one ewe left to go. Ida watched it circling, pawing, circling; she stayed guard at the fence until the animal’s water bag broke and she made her decision. The lamb would come soon now; Oliver had seen newborn lambs but not one coming, and here was his last chance. She raced up the hill to fetch him.
The three Peases, or rather two Peases and one Nye, were sitting together eating breakfast, which Ida took as a good sign. That Oliver didn’t run from the room when he saw her she took as another. “Who wants to see a lamb born?” Ida asked.
Oliver looked at Hattie. “You do,” Hattie said.
Admittedly, there was a certain risk involved. If something went wrong it wouldn’t be the joyful experience Ida was hoping for, but then again, it would be a shared experience, more shared than Ida had anticipated. Hattie and Ruth came too.
When they got back to the field the ewe was lying on its side and clearly paining. Ida left Hattie and Ruth at the fence but took Oliver by the hand and led him behind the sheep. She lifted the tail and saw two feet and one nose. She breathed easier.
“Grab hold of the feet,” Ida told Oliver. “The ewe will try to push the lamb out and when she does you pull ever so gently. Really, you’re just going to keep it going straight, that’s all.”
Oliver looked up at Ida. “Like reins?”
“Just like reins.” Ida helped Oliver place his hands but kept hers lightly covering them. She could feel the push. “Feel it?” Oliver said nothing, but his hands drew back with the impetus of the lamb. “Now pause. Okay, here she goes again.” Oliver and Ida pulled twice more, and the lamb slid to earth in front of Oliver’s knees. Oliver looked up at Ida again, beaming now. The ewe licked away the sac, the lamb shuddered its first breath and struggled to its feet. It was going to be all right. By the time Ida and Oliver had stood up and brushed off the dead grass, the lamb was feeding, tail moving in ecstatic circles.
“Its name is Bett-see,” Oliver said.
“It’s a boy.”
Oliver thought. “Ben-jie.”
When they joined the others at the fence, Hattie gave Oliver a big hug of congratulations, but Ruth turned to Ida. “Lucky for you. Four dead already.”
Ida smiled sweetly.
Oliver fed Betty and while he did so he chattered on with more words than Ida had heard from him since he’d arrived, none to do with his fairy-tale father, some of it mere padding, using the expedient of one particular word stated over and over. Betty was really really hungry. Betty had gotten really really big since he’d last seen her. Betty really really really wanted to meet her brother Benjie. Ida held Betty up by her forelegs so Oliver could feel the full belly, and when he was forced to admit Betty was really really full, he gave her a final pat and trailed after Ida up the hill.
At the door to the house Ida said, “I won’t come in. But I did want to tell you one more thing. That farm belongs to your aunt Ruth now, but it was once your father’s. He’d be proud of what you did today.”
“I made a lamb!”
“You helped it be born.”
“I made it.”
All right, Ida could let that one go. “One more thing, Oliver—I have some pretty good stories about your father. You just let me know if you ever want to hear one.”
By now Ida was prepared for the first three parts of Oliver’s standard response: the look, the pause to think, the skittering away, in this case up the steps to the door. The fourth part was always the wild card: silence, or a follow-up question, or some other tall tale about his father. This time Ida got the silence, but it was followed by a second look over the shoulder that Ida took for a good sign.
When Ida returned to the house she found a letter waiting from Henry:
It appears the second party in question is not in town at present—I’m told he’ll be returning at the weekend. In the meanwhile I’m making a dash to New Bedford to see my daughters but plan to be on-island again by Monday. I’ve been thinking a good deal and should very much like to speak with you then.—H.
Ida read Henry’s letter through twice; it was perhaps the most unsatisfying letter she’d ever received, and the second reading didn’t improve it. Was she supposed to hang suspended in air till Monday when Henry told her whatever he wanted to tell her? Well, she would not.
Ida looked out the window. Lambing was over. She could breathe now. She could see now. The colors of spring had begun to intensify, to saturate the view: a new, vibrant green pierced the ground in the pastures; a mauve wash in the trees hinted at young buds sucking up the revitalized sun; a new clarity had appeared in the sky. If Ida were going to hang suspended over anything, she decided, it would be the seat of her bicycle. She changed into the proper clothes, put her sketch pad in the basket, added her paint box and a jar of water, and set off.
But where to? Time to try a new direction. Ida turned off the main street onto the county road and kept on pedaling until her thighs began complaining, until she looked aside and saw a large pond alongside a greening meadow, a salad of greens and blues and silvers and golds with a dark strip of ocean beyond. Ida knew how to paint a woman’s skin whether it be pale or blushing; she knew a man’s bearded face or a razor-chafed clean one; she knew silk and linen and muslin and wool and what happened to those fabrics and shapes when a man’s or woman’s shoulders and thighs pushed against them. She knew everything there was to know about hands folded, hands clasped, hands at rest, hands gripping cloth in an attempt not to show their owner’s nervousness. She knew brown and green and hazel and blue eyes and knew how many different colors went into each of them. She knew lamplight was warmer than window light; she knew the problems a strong, slanting window light could cause when it struck a subject. What didn’t she know? Grass. Pond. Ocean.
Ida wheeled her bicycle into the meadow and lay it down on its handlebar. She removed her jacket and, using it as a blanket, sat and stretched her legs out straight, her paper laid out flat across her knees, her paint box and water jug at her elbow. A few quick lines gave her the suggestion of her composition; why, this was easier than a sitting or standing person, with four limbs and a neck and so much clothing to account for! Sky first, Ida decided; that soft but strengthening blue could cause few problems. She wet her brush and streaked it back and forth across the paper, wetted the brush again, picked up ultramarine and a dot of yellow ochre and cadmium red, and there it was. Or wasn’t. Too much ochre. Too dark at the horizon. Ida hastened more wet onto the page, but an intrusive breeze had already dried out the paint and now her too-wet brush had caused an unwelcome bloom in her sky. Perhaps a cloud . . . Ida squinted off at the sky: no clouds. Ida didn’t want her first plein air painting to be a dishonest one.
Ida did better with an egret that was poised on a rock nearby. “There is no such thing as white,” Mr. Morris had lectured her. “You think that cloth white? Look! Look!” And Ida had looked and seen that indeed what she took for white cloth was in fact full of purples and golds and yellows, and so it was with the egret. Ida gave it a lavender cast in the cool shadows and sat back, pleased, until she noticed the rock it stood on floated over the page untethered; Mr. Morris had taught her better. She amended this with a wash of yellow green to suggest the spring marsh grass and felt happier, felt the truth of what Henry had said to her but now added a second level of understanding to it: as she painted to honor herself she also honored Mr. Morris. The feeling lasted until she attempted the pond; the colors were the right dance of greens, yellows, golds, and silvers, but the water just sat there; it didn’t dance, and all Ida’s efforts to enliven it only turned it muddier. Perhaps she honored no one, after all.
But Ida kept at it till the rising cold and damp had worked through the double thicknesses of jacket and skirt deep into her flesh and bone; she pedaled home encumbered by an old frustration she’d have once blamed on Ezra. But in truth, didn’t it still belong to Ezra? Ezra was the one who had spent all her money, sold the farm to Ruth. Ezra was the one who had trapped her here and cost what little time had remained with her mentor. But no. Ida was the one who had agreed to the marriage. Ida was the one who had agreed to the move. She’d been happy enough to leave her sorrow behind, and if in her befogged state she hadn’t quite understood what else she was leaving behind, she could not, in that, blame Ezra. Oddly, to shoulder blame instead of shoving it off on Ezra felt freeing.
Ida parked the bicycle in the barn, fed Betty, and went to the paddock to check on the lamb. The lamb was fine, but there was something wrong with the ewe; she stood against the wall with head down, sides heaving; she walked in jerky circles, throwing her head back along her flank as her eyes jumped wildly. Ida let herself into the paddock and sidled closer; she stripped off her jacket, reached under the ewe for the far leg, pulled it forward and tipped her. She felt inside and sure enough, there it was: a second, retained lamb, the wrong end facing outward. Ida ran for the house, the phone, Lem, but no one answered; Ida returned to the sheep and found her still on her side, panting. Ida reached in and pulled a back leg forward; she pulled another; the lamb caught at the hip and would come no farther. What would Lem do? The ewe was fading, her breathing gone shallow; which to save, ewe or lamb? By now Ida doubted the lamb was even alive. She took hold of both legs and threw the whole of her weight backward against the grip of the ewe; she fell flat on the ground, but the lamb came with her.
Dead.
Number five.
Ida sat, breathing hard, taking stock. This fifth dead lamb was the one that would cost her, unless . . . unless she said nothing about it. Ruth had no idea this particular ewe had carried twins; in fact, she’d witnessed a successful birth only a few hours earlier and had likely put the numbers out of her head till the next season of lambing. All Ida need do was put them out of her head. The Peases all had their secrets after all: Oliver, the farm, the gold. It was about time Ida carried a secret of her own.