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9 tulip and daisy and what looked like bluebonnets and marigolds, small sunflowers , purple orchids, and twisted vines from dense jungle. A light rain tapped at our windshield. He turned to me and muttered, “We in Spain.” A smile widened his face. “Yes, Dad, we are.” 2 “Put the light here.” Dad pointed. Placenta oozed off his hand. I moved the beam as frost floated in the light. My hands and legs shook through my thin pajamas, coat, and stocking cap. In a bed of straw, a ewe lay on her side, stomach bloated, heaving up and down in painful rapid rhythm. Plumes of warm air billowed from her snout like a steam engine. Her long ears drooped around a black face, and glassy eyes, dull and empty, teetered closer to death than life. When she bleated, her neck craned back and out squeezed a dry, cracking voice. Across her belly where Dad had wiped his hands, streaks of red and pink stained the wool, and in the beam the blood looked more black than red. Two hours past midnight, the barn was twenty degrees warmer than the February air outside. Darkness and stillness surrounded us. The trough had frozen over. No water. The other ewes bunched on one side to stay warm and give privacy to their sister ewe. A seven-year-old ascribed such courtesies to sheep and cows, even trees and rocks. Dad knelt in the straw behind the ewe, his hot breath visible in the light, puffing at half the sheep’s pace. By his feet sprawled a lamb—bony-legged with oversized hooves, eyes closed, maybe six pounds, unmoving, un-breathing. The tongue dangled to the side. I stared at the little thing. Dad had partially covered its head with straw, but I could see the contorted face, the hanging tongue, the short agony, the permanent death. My seven-year-old mind took the image and stored it up, allowing me to recall it with immediate clarity through life. My light wandered as I studied the baby carcass. “Put the light here,” Dad said again with urgency. Sweat rolled down his cheeks and steam curled from his balding scalp. He 10 reached at my hand and moved the light to the right spot. Blood touched my skin and I squirmed. Lifting the ewe’s hind leg, he eased his hand into her birthing canal. She groaned as the cervix widened around his burly forearm. Her glassy eyes dulled as spirit drained. “Leppie, come on, Leppie,” Dad whispered in the quiet. He pushed in up to the elbow and with his other hand pressed on her belly. A strained, painful high-toned whimper came from her dry throat. “Come on, Leppie,” Dad half spoke, half hissed. My light fixed on the elbow. Anxiety made me warm and I did not blink. His arm came out. Pinched between two fingers, surrounded in red syrup, he had hold of a wet ear. Pulling gently, he coaxed out a black stubble crown, then a nose and neck, one leg, a second leg, then all four. The placenta ejected into the straw. My light followed the lamb out. It lay still in the straw. After wiping his hand and arm on the ewe’s wool, he punctured the thin sack around the lamb’s face. Fluid spilled out. He hooked his finger in the small mouth and scooped out gunk. Still no movement. He cleaned a finger on his pants and reached in a second time. The ewes at the end of the barn stopped chewing their cud and a cathedral quiet fell as a heavy pall. Dad blew in its mouth and the lamb’s long tail twitched and wiggled like a starter switch. There in the straw lay new life. I took a breath. The weakest, smallest bleat broke the cold darkness. The newborn had found its voice in the world. The little creature’s mother meekly raised her head and cracked a pitiful whimper of welcome before plopping down. After her, the ewes across the way sounded off, one after the other, as a happy chorus. Those who understand sheep best have good reason to declare them among the most unintelligent beasts on the planet. But on this evening, I considered such judgment to be incomplete or inaccurate as I listened to the ewes moderating their voices depending on the mood of the barn—chewing their cud in wait, remaining still at the moment of birth, or...
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