Worms

The first ewe died in the night. Claire woke with the sun and found the body piled under a tree. She had feared this moment all summer, stepping out into the lingering night fog to find death in the backyard. But she had pictured a violent end, blood-matted fur, stomachs ripped open, intestines steaming: coyotes, yellow eyes shining in the dark of the trees. She woke every night, listening, and when she thought she heard the coyotes yelling, she’d grab the .22 from where it leaned by the back door and shoot out into the dark sky, hoping to scare them off. As she stood just outside the door in pajamas and rubber boots, the bullets cracking through the air like whips, she would become, for just a moment, someone else—someone born to do this.

But Claire was an indoor-woman, born in Boston, not Vermont, only here because she’d made an indoor-woman mistake in whom and how she loved, biting off so much more than she could chew that she could no longer remember how to close her mouth, to swallow, and as she stood, now, just outside the electric fence, staring at Rapunzel’s body (she had that name before Roger bought her), she had no idea what to do. The ewe was old, the oldest in the flock. Her eyes were open, bewilderingly blank. Her jaw hung open, too, as though she were preparing to call for help. White froth splattered the grass beneath it. Claire shivered. The ewe’s two living lambs nosed her udder absently.

If Roger were here, he would know what had happened to Rapunzel. He would be upset, but only because he’d lost a ewe who had reliably given him lambs several years in a row. He’d be glad she died before winter, before she ate up hay and grain that could have gone to the healthier sheep. Not worth nourishing a ewe that was just going to die on you come spring. He would pull her out of the pen and bury her somewhere. Then he would move on, something he was good at once, when he was healthy, and unsentimental in that health.

Claire went to turn off the electric fence. Somehow all of this responsibility had fallen to her, and she had to find her own way through.

________

As Claire tried, futilely, to budge the body, she remembered watching the sheep being sheared just before the lambing. Roger wasn’t up to it, and Claire clearly couldn’t do it, so he’d found a woman willing to shear them in exchange for their wool. Dolly showed up in a rusted pickup, a small, dense woman in beat-up overalls with freckles and a buzz cut. When she turned away, Claire realized there was a baby strapped to her back. Dolly grabbed the first sheep by the wool and flipped her onto her rear in one motion, propping her into a sitting position that was unsettlingly human. She held her between her legs, running an enormous pair of clippers along the ewe’s pregnant belly with one hand. When she needed to reach a new spot, she just flipped the ewe onto her back or her side. It took less than two minutes to denude each sheep. They were stunned wobbly as they walked away. Watching all of this, Claire had felt silly for feeling superior to the women she’d known in the city because she wore less makeup than they did, went for more sensible shoes. Dolly didn’t even need hair, could do all this, and still be a mother.

Recalling this, Claire tugged at Rapunzel’s stiff legs again, but it was taking her five minutes to move the body a single inch. All the while, the two lambs stood there watching, bleating.

________

Inside the house, Claire found the phone to call Steve. The dog, Charlie, trotted over from wherever he’d been dozing. He liked to eat in the morning and go back to sleep for several more hours, as had Claire, when she lived in the...