The Last Shepherd

4. LAU

| 20 »« 4 l au When I was fourteen, about a year after Aitatxi and Oxea’s deaths, I asked Dad about cutting down the oak tree in the pasture. The sun was falling away as we sat on the porch drinking iced water—only Dad’s iced water had a little scotch in it. We’d spent the entire day working on the new barn, and I was still trying to shake out the tingling in my fingers from the thousand plus hammer blows I’d delivered. The old barn’s roof had collapsed a month earlier. One night, the sound of it sent Dad and me running through the dark. “Now, then, lucky we didn’t pen the sheep in here tonight,” Dad had said as we picked through the fallen wood. “How come it fell?” “I guess time just grew too heavy for it,” Dad said. And I picked up a board and used my foot to break it in two and didn’t tell my father that what he’d said didn’t make any sense—that “time” didn’t weigh anything. Because I knew if I said that, Dad would sigh and look tired in a way that had nothing to do with it being late or his needing sleep, and that would make my stomach feel hollow and my mouth go dry. So instead I pointed up through the hole in the barn’s roof. “Look, there’s Orion.” “The hunter,” Dad said. “How’d he end up getting turned into a constellation again?” “Now, then,” Dad said, and explained how the goddess Diana put Orion into the stars after accidently shooting him with an arrow; and while that didn’t make any sense either, it seemed to lighten the heaviness of time for | 21« » my father. He smiled and talked about building a new barn as we walked back to the house. A month later, when we started working on the new barn, I figured it was a good time to get rid of something old as well. So I kicked at a loose plank in the porch and told Dad how we could use the tractor to pull down the oak tree. “Now, then,” Dad said, “you know that tree was here when Aitatxi bought this land?” “It’s old,” I said. “Besides, everything will be clearer when it’s gone.” Unlike what Dad had said about the weight of time, me saying how the tree being gone would make everything clearer seemed like it made sense, but didn’t. Everything was already clearer. The old barn that had blocked the view of the pasture was gone. And we were building the new barn off to the side, so that from the porch the pasture and the oak tree were clearly visible. But I knew what I was saying was right and could only hope Dad could see it as well. Staring out at the oak, he shook his glass so that the ice tinkled. In the growing darkness, the tree looked like something a little kid would draw, with a perfect round top and straight trunk. But that wasn’t how it really was. The limbs were gnarled and twisted. The bark thick and cracked. And when the wind blew like tonight, every branch creaked with age. And as my father was looking at the tree, it changed. Dad leaned forward. His eyes unblinking, his breaths quick. And I knew what he was seeing. It was like when something appears in the clouds—a face or hand—that wasn’t there a moment before. Two dogs at the base of the oak. A zakua on the ground between them. A rope hanging from one of the tree’s limbs. And Oxea hanging from the rope. But shapes in clouds don’t last. And neither did these. The wind moved through the tree and blew the dogs, the zakua, the rope, and Oxea away. At least for Dad. For me, Oxea would always be hanging from the oak tree. And so the tree needed to be cut down. Nothing would be clear until it was. “Now, then, your mother used to rock you to sleep in her arms beneath that tree.” Dad leaned back into his chair. “Said the sound of the wind in the leaves was like a sleeping potion to you.” | 22« » “She did?” “And when Amatxi first arrived...