THE SUMMER I WAS FOURTEEN my parents sent me to boot camp on a farm. It was one of those action-adventures for troubled kids, you know, get up at four A.M. to do the milking and how much trouble can youreally get into? (The answer, if you’re interested: score pot off the ranch hands. Get stoned. Tip cows.)Anyway, one day I was assigned to Moses Patrol, or that’s what we called the poor son of a bitch who pulledherding duty with the lambs. I had to follow about a hundred sheep around a pasture that didn’t have onegoddamned tree to provide even a sliver of shade.
To say a sheep is the dumbest fucking animal on earth is probably an understatement. They get caught infences. They get lost in four-foot-square pens. They forget where to find their food, although it’s been in thesame place for a thousand days straight. And they’re not the little puffy darlings you picture when you go tosleep, either. They stink. They bleat. They’re annoying as hell.
Anyway, the day I was stuck with the sheep, I had filched a copy of Tropic of Cancer and I was folding downthe pages that came closest to good porn, when I heard someone scream. I was perfectly sure, mind you, thatit wasn’t an animal, because I’d never heard anything like this in my life. I ran toward the sound, sure I wasgoing to find someone thrown from a horse with their leg twisted like a pretzel or some yoho who’d emptiedhis revolver by accident into his own guts. But lying on the side of the creek, with a bevy of ewes inattendance, was a sheep giving birth.
I wasn’t a vet or anything, but I knew enough to realize that when any living creature makes a racket likethat, things aren’t going according to plan. Sure enough, this poor sheep had two little hooves dangling out ofher privates. She lay on her side, panting. She rolled one flat black eye toward me, then just gave up.
Well, nothing was dying on my patrol, if only because I knew that the Nazis who ran the camp would makeme bury the damn animal. So I shoved the other sheep out of the way. I got down on my knees and grabbedthe knotty slick hooves and yanked while the ewe screamed like any mother whose child is ripped away fromher.
The lamb came out, its limbs folded like the parts of a Swiss Army knife. Over its head was a silver sac thatfelt like the inside of your cheek when you run your tongue around it. It wasn’t breathing.
I sure as shit wasn’t going to put my mouth over a sheep and do artificial respiration, but I used myfingernails to rip apart the skin sac, to yank it down from the neck of the lamb. And it turned out, that was allit needed. A minute later it unbent its clothespin legs and started whickering for its mother.
There were, I think, twenty lambs born during that summer session. Every time I passed the pen I could pickmine out from a crowd. He looked like all the others, except that he moved with a little more spring; healways seemed to have the sun shining off the oil in its wool. And if you happened to get him calm enough tolook you in the eye, the pupils had gone milky white, a sure sign that he’d walked on the other side longenough to remember what he was missing.
I tell you this now because when Kate finally stirs in that hospital bed, and opens her eyes, I know she’s gotone foot on the other side already, too.
“Oh my God,” Kate says weakly, when she sees me. “I wound up in Hell after all.”
I lean forward in my chair and cross my arms. “Now, sis, you know I’m not that easy to kill.” Getting up, Ikiss her on the forehead, letting my lips stay an extra second. How is it that mothers can read fever that way?
I can only read imminent loss. “How you doing?”
She smiles at me, but it’s like a cartoon drawing when I’ve seen the real thing hanging in the Louvre.
“Peachy,” she says. “To what do I owe the honor of your presence?”
Because you won’t be here much longer, I think, but I do not tell her this. “I was in the neighborhood. Plusthere’s a really hot nurse who works this shift.”
This makes Kate laugh out loud. “God, Jess. I’m gonna miss you.”
She says it so easily that I think it surprises both of us. I sit down on the edge of the bed and trace the littlepuckers in the thermal blanket. “You know—” I begin a pep talk, but she puts her hand on my arm.
“Don’t.” Then her eyes come alive, for just a moment. “Maybe I’ll get reincarnated.”
“Like as Marie Antoinette?”
“No, it’s got to be something in the future. You think that’s crazy?”
“No,” I admit. “I think we probably all just keep running in circles.”
“So what will you come back as, then?”
“Carrion.” She winces, and something beeps, and I panic. “You want me to get someone?”
“No, you’re fine,” Kate answers, and I’m sure she doesn’t mean it this way, but it pretty much makes me feellike I’ve swallowed lightning.
I suddenly remember an old game I used to play when I was nine or ten, and was allowed to ride my bikeuntil it got dark. I used to make little bets with myself as I watched the sun getting lower and lower on thehorizon: if I hold my breath to twenty seconds, the night won’t come. If I don’t blink. If I stand so still a flylands on my cheek. Now, I find myself doing the same thing, bargaining to keep Kate, even though that isn’tthe way it works.
“Are you afraid?” I blurt out. “Of dying?”
Kate turns to me, a smile sliding over her mouth. “I’ll let you know.” Then she closes her eyes. “I’m justgonna rest a second,” she manages, and she is asleep again.
It’s not fair, but Kate knows that. It doesn’t take a whole long life to realize that what we deserve to have, werarely get. I stand up, with that lightning bolt branding the lining of my throat, which makes it impossible toswallow, so everything gets backed up like a dammed river. I hurry out of Kate’s room and far enough downthe hall where I won’t disturb her, and then I lift my fist and punch a hole in the thick white wall and still thisisn’t enough.
To say a sheep is the dumbest fucking animal on earth is probably an understatement. They get caught infences. They get lost in four-foot-square pens. They forget where to find their food, although it’s been in thesame place for a thousand days straight. And they’re not the little puffy darlings you picture when you go tosleep, either. They stink. They bleat. They’re annoying as hell.
Anyway, the day I was stuck with the sheep, I had filched a copy of Tropic of Cancer and I was folding downthe pages that came closest to good porn, when I heard someone scream. I was perfectly sure, mind you, thatit wasn’t an animal, because I’d never heard anything like this in my life. I ran toward the sound, sure I wasgoing to find someone thrown from a horse with their leg twisted like a pretzel or some yoho who’d emptiedhis revolver by accident into his own guts. But lying on the side of the creek, with a bevy of ewes inattendance, was a sheep giving birth.
I wasn’t a vet or anything, but I knew enough to realize that when any living creature makes a racket likethat, things aren’t going according to plan. Sure enough, this poor sheep had two little hooves dangling out ofher privates. She lay on her side, panting. She rolled one flat black eye toward me, then just gave up.
Well, nothing was dying on my patrol, if only because I knew that the Nazis who ran the camp would makeme bury the damn animal. So I shoved the other sheep out of the way. I got down on my knees and grabbedthe knotty slick hooves and yanked while the ewe screamed like any mother whose child is ripped away fromher.
The lamb came out, its limbs folded like the parts of a Swiss Army knife. Over its head was a silver sac thatfelt like the inside of your cheek when you run your tongue around it. It wasn’t breathing.
I sure as shit wasn’t going to put my mouth over a sheep and do artificial respiration, but I used myfingernails to rip apart the skin sac, to yank it down from the neck of the lamb. And it turned out, that was allit needed. A minute later it unbent its clothespin legs and started whickering for its mother.
There were, I think, twenty lambs born during that summer session. Every time I passed the pen I could pickmine out from a crowd. He looked like all the others, except that he moved with a little more spring; healways seemed to have the sun shining off the oil in its wool. And if you happened to get him calm enough tolook you in the eye, the pupils had gone milky white, a sure sign that he’d walked on the other side longenough to remember what he was missing.
I tell you this now because when Kate finally stirs in that hospital bed, and opens her eyes, I know she’s gotone foot on the other side already, too.
“Oh my God,” Kate says weakly, when she sees me. “I wound up in Hell after all.”
I lean forward in my chair and cross my arms. “Now, sis, you know I’m not that easy to kill.” Getting up, Ikiss her on the forehead, letting my lips stay an extra second. How is it that mothers can read fever that way?
I can only read imminent loss. “How you doing?”
She smiles at me, but it’s like a cartoon drawing when I’ve seen the real thing hanging in the Louvre.
“Peachy,” she says. “To what do I owe the honor of your presence?”
Because you won’t be here much longer, I think, but I do not tell her this. “I was in the neighborhood. Plusthere’s a really hot nurse who works this shift.”
This makes Kate laugh out loud. “God, Jess. I’m gonna miss you.”
She says it so easily that I think it surprises both of us. I sit down on the edge of the bed and trace the littlepuckers in the thermal blanket. “You know—” I begin a pep talk, but she puts her hand on my arm.
“Don’t.” Then her eyes come alive, for just a moment. “Maybe I’ll get reincarnated.”
“Like as Marie Antoinette?”
“No, it’s got to be something in the future. You think that’s crazy?”
“No,” I admit. “I think we probably all just keep running in circles.”
“So what will you come back as, then?”
“Carrion.” She winces, and something beeps, and I panic. “You want me to get someone?”
“No, you’re fine,” Kate answers, and I’m sure she doesn’t mean it this way, but it pretty much makes me feellike I’ve swallowed lightning.
I suddenly remember an old game I used to play when I was nine or ten, and was allowed to ride my bikeuntil it got dark. I used to make little bets with myself as I watched the sun getting lower and lower on thehorizon: if I hold my breath to twenty seconds, the night won’t come. If I don’t blink. If I stand so still a flylands on my cheek. Now, I find myself doing the same thing, bargaining to keep Kate, even though that isn’tthe way it works.
“Are you afraid?” I blurt out. “Of dying?”
Kate turns to me, a smile sliding over her mouth. “I’ll let you know.” Then she closes her eyes. “I’m justgonna rest a second,” she manages, and she is asleep again.
It’s not fair, but Kate knows that. It doesn’t take a whole long life to realize that what we deserve to have, werarely get. I stand up, with that lightning bolt branding the lining of my throat, which makes it impossible toswallow, so everything gets backed up like a dammed river. I hurry out of Kate’s room and far enough downthe hall where I won’t disturb her, and then I lift my fist and punch a hole in the thick white wall and still thisisn’t enough.