Dirty Chick (6 page)

Hamish's skepticism about our credentials was perfectly fair. Farming was his livelihood, and we thought it was some kind of a lark. You don't see dairy farmers moving to the city with big ideas about being cardiologists for fun. “How hard could it be?” they might chortle, spitting tobacco and hitching up their jeans. “I'll just git me a book from the library.”

Which is more or less what we were doing. Playing at being in the country, like those eighteenth-century oil paintings of Marie Antoinette herding sheep. Not that we were French nobility. We were just another couple of hyper-entitled Americans with liberal arts degrees and a farm dream.

Clearly, I had no credibility with the locals. And for the first time since middle school, I actually wanted to fit in. I liked these
friendly people with their backyard sheep and their kids, their easy discussion of chicken bowels and the slime coat on an eel. I didn't understand Hamish, but I respected him. I wanted to learn some of his skills.

“Maybe we should get a real animal,” Peter suggested. “We might redeem ourselves that way.”

“What about a goat?” I replied. “Amanda said we could just
have
Pearl. We wouldn't need to pay for her or anything.” I left out the part about goats being a lot of work, because that seemed like a minor detail.

“A goat, huh?” Peter looked skeptical. “What do you get from a goat?”

“Cheese, of course! Delicious cheese!”

“
Cheese!
” Silas yelled, jumping over to his father. He was wearing a matching red shirt and sweatpants. Hopping up and down with excitement, he looked like a demented elf. “Cheese, peese!” he hollered.

Then he reached out a hand and tried to touch Peter's computer. Peter
hates
this. Children who touch his computer pop letters off the keyboard and smear greasy handprints on the monitor. “Stop it, Silas!” Peter snapped. “That's Papa's computer!”

Silas found this hilarious, and resumed hopping. He pulled a tiny car out of his pocket and then tried to touch Peter's computer with the car.

“
Ha!
” Peter barked. “Not even with the car, Silas!” He put up his hand. “
Stop
.”

Miranda made her entrance then, sporting a purple feather wig and a rainbow bathing suit. As usual, she wore her shiny black gumboots. “Papa!” She strode to her father.

“Yes?” he asked, turning away from Silas, who immediately started pounding the computer.

“Do you want to smell my finger?”

“No.”

“It smells like poop!” She placed her finger to her nose, inhaling as though sniffing a fine wine.

Peter looked at me wearily. “What were we talking about?”

“Beats the hell out of me.”

“Goats,” he said, sighing. “We're getting a goat. I guess we'll call Amanda in the morning.”

Eventually we calmed the children down. I washed Miranda's hands and pulled off her gumboots, convincing her that cotton pajamas were more suitable sleepwear than a feathered wig. We tucked in the kids and read them a story, then checked on the alpacas and put the chickens on their roosts. Finally, we lay down to sleep. Our bed was situated beneath a large picture window, and on clear nights we could see thousands of stars, just above our heads.

Peter kissed my neck and reached for my hand in the dark. “Don't worry,” he soothed. “We'll find our place here.”

“Are you sure? What about Silas?”

“He'll find his place, too. It's good for him out here. Chasing chickens, petting his dog.”

I sat up. “Wait a minute. What's that?”

“What's what?”

“There's an alpaca nose on my leg.”

Peter pulled me to him. “No, baby. It's not an alpaca. It's just me.”

SHEEP ON A SPIT

M
arch and April see the end of summer in New Zealand, bringing cloudless days and the beginnings of a crisp autumn wind. Our house had a number of mature trees scattered on the property, and it occurred to me one day that they were laden with fruit. Peaches, quinces, apples, and figs—we picked them by the bushel and could barely keep up with the cascading harvest. These were not the perfect specimens I was accustomed to purchasing from supermarket shelves. Pick an apple, and you were likely to find it hollowed away by ravenous wasps. Quinces fell from the trees, where they rotted, growing swollen and black in the late summer heat. One day I bit into a peach, savoring the sun-ripened flesh, until the pit cracked open and an earwig slithered out.

I dropped the fruit, spraying chewed peach on the deck.

“What's wrong with you?” Peter asked, looking up from the six-foot pole he was sanding. I think he was planning to herd alpacas with it.

“These peaches are full of bugs. And the apples have wasps. And I don't have a clue what to do with the quinces.”

“What's a quince?”

“Exactly. I think it's some kind of medieval thing. They made jam with it or something. And wine.”

Peter stopped sanding. “You make wine? From a quince?”

“Well,
I
can't. But I'm sure it's not that hard to do.”

“Antonia.” Peter stared at me intently. “What's our weekly wine budget?”

“I don't know . . . sixty bucks?”

“So start making wine! Think of all the money we'll save! Thousands of dollars each year!” Peter paused to take a breath, his eyes growing manic. “Maybe it could be a business. Quince wines of New Zealand. It's a fantastic business idea.”

“Easy now.” I held up my hand. “Maybe I should make a bottle first, to see if it's drinkable.”

I ran the idea past Autumn. “Sure, lots of people do it,” she told me over the phone when I asked. “Cider mostly, but you can make wine with any fruit.”

“Don't you need yeast and sugar?”

“Can do. Or you could go basement. Skin makes it all the time. Says he just puts a jug of apple juice on his kitchen bench, lets it sit till it starts to ferment. Then he drinks it till he gets the shits.”

“Sorry, who?”

“You haven't met Skin? Aw, he's great. Knows everything there is to know about country life.”

“And his name is . . . Skin?”

“Yep. Married to Lish, the lady who drives the school bus. Anyway, he's the one to ask about brewing country wines.”

I guess I should have hung up and called Skin, but I have to
admit, I was intimidated. First, by the prospect of talking to an actual person named Skin, and then by the notion of a wine that you “drink until you get the shits.”

So I got out a book from the library. A few pages in, I learned that wine making is really not hard. As long as you keep your equipment clean, it is actually insanely easy to make some very palatable country wines. Just about anything will ferment into alcohol, including pea pods, ginger, and those sneakers you don't wear anymore.

Well, maybe not the sneakers. But cider making couldn't be easier. You grind up apples with a juicer, then add some sugar and wine yeast. Keep the juice in a covered bucket for a week or two, stirring it every day and leaving it in the sunshine to stay warm. Then you pour it into something called a demijohn, which is a giant glass jug that holds about five gallons of booze. Last, you fit an airlock and wait for a month.

The resulting elixir is dry, delicious, and completely deadly. There's a mathematical formula you can use to calculate the alcohol content of homemade wines, but after one glass I was too drunk to add and stopped trying. Within a month, I was brewing gallons of the stuff—on the back deck, in the bathtub, and in the pantry. Buckets of cider and wine were spilling out of the closets and crowding the corridors. The children tripped over them when they walked into the kitchen, searching in vain for a healthy snack. I hardly had time to go to the grocery store, and when I did, it was only to bring home twelve pounds of sugar and loose tea for tannins.

One day, I snapped at the kids. “Where are the raisins?” I demanded.

“
Away
,” Silas announced. He was driving a toy car along the kitchen counter.

“You used them all to make booze,” Miranda said with the wide-eyed clarity that only a hungry three-year-old can muster.

We brewed hard apple cider; quince and fig wines; beet, ginger, banana, and apple wines—but my favorite was the peach. This was partly because it tasted like peaches, but mostly because it lifted me up on feathery angel fingers and flew me to the Land of Enchantment. Then it dumped me there until Monday morning, when my kids looked dirty and the weekend was gone.

The difficulty with homemade wines is that they're strong, they're free, and they don't give you a hangover. I always thought the headache was a consequence of drinking too much alcohol, because it's morally wrong to have too much fun. But it's the chemicals in commercial wine that make us sick, not the booze. My wines contained fresh fruit, water, sugar, and yeast, and they never gave anyone a hangover. Essentially, they were intoxicating happy drinks that grew on trees and had no consequences.

Except our being drunk all the time, which is a consequence itself if you're trying to live a life that's based in reality.

“Where are my pants?” I demanded the morning after an especially exuberant night of quince wine.

“Don't you remember?” Peter responded with a smile. “You took them off so you could scramble up the water tank to pick figs in your underwear.”

“Ah, yes.” I smiled, reaching for the coffee. “That was sensible.”

Peter's face clouded with concern. “Antonia? Maybe we should share some of this wine with our friends.”

“Why?” I demanded, sucking back my coffee. “I need it. I'm thirsty.”

“Well . . .” Peter considered. “After the third bottle of cider, we tend to lose track of the kids.”

“So? They learn independence. They get to survive in the wild.”

Peter ignored this. “Why don't we have a party? Meet some of the locals out here. Give 'em a taste of our hooch.”

“Fine,” I said, scowling. “As long as it's just a taste. I don't want them cleaning me out of peach wine.”

I was going to invite people for a barbecue, but Autumn had a better idea. “Get Skin to do sheep on a spit,” she told me Tuesday when she dropped by for coffee and a chat. “Best sheep you'll ever eat. He'll roast that beast all day.”

Still feeling anxious about a person named Skin, especially one who roasts dead things on spits, I introduced myself to Lish, the school bus driver. With flowing Polynesian hair and a wide, warm smile, she was easy to approach. I clipped Silas in his seat belt and hesitated, then finally asked, “Lish, right? And your partner's name is . . . Skin?”

“Yep.” She nodded. “Too bad for me, the mongrel.”

The sparkle in her eyes told me she was joking. “Do you think he would mind cooking a sheep for us? Like if we have a party on Saturday?”

“Sure.” She grinned. “No worries. Glad to help.”

“Should I . . . how much does he charge?”

“Ah.” She waved me away. “Just flick him a case of bourbon and Coke. He'll be happy as!”

“Great,” I said, somewhat bewildered. “Saturday, then. If it's okay, just tell him to come round whenever.” I slid the bus door shut, blowing a kiss to my son.

“I'm not completely sure,” I reported to Peter that night, “but I think a person named Skin is bringing a dead sheep to our house on Saturday.”

Peter raised one eyebrow and waited.

“He's cooking it. For the party. For bourbon.”

“What's bourbon?” Miranda wanted to know.

“It's a drink,” Peter told her. “A grown-up drink.” To me, he said, “Do I have to dig a hole? Build a fire?”

“No. Apparently he kills the sheep today, then he guts it and lets it hang for a couple of days, then he shows up on Saturday with the gear.”

“May I please have some bourbon?” Miranda inquired.

Silas was engrossed in reconstructing the pieces of his watermelon rind, which he'd formed into a perfect half circle. “Ba,” he commented.

“That's right!” I stroked his head affectionately. “The sheep says baa.”

“Until we shove a pole up its ass and roast it on hot coals,” Peter clarified.

“Seriously?” I shot him a look. “Was that necessary?”

“No,” he conceded. “I guess not.”

What was necessary was locking up the alpacas, because children were coming to this gathering, and we'd already let our German shepherd chew on one of them. So early on Saturday morning, Peter and I ventured into the paddock where Kenny, Henri, and McTavish were peacefully chewing grass and pretending to be cute and not evil. The plan was for Peter to back them into a corner, where I could easily slip on their harnesses.

“Just follow me,” Peter urged. “I've got my lance.”

“You mean the stick?”

“It's a lance. I'll take one of these camels out if I have to.”

Doubtful, I looked at the stick. “Let's hope it doesn't come to that.”

We edged forward, Peter using his stick to separate Kenny from
the others. “
Beeeeeehn
 . . .” Kenny warned, working a wad of green slime in his mouth. “
Beeeeeehn
 . . .”

“Oh, shut up,” I told him, slipping the harness over his snout. “Aren't you supposed to hum? And cure the lame?”

We'd successfully harnessed the alpacas and were tethering them to three wooden posts in the back paddock when a gold sedan rolled down our driveway. There appeared to be an old, rusted oil drum strapped to its roof.

“That'll be Skin,” Peter muttered, and I noticed he didn't put down the stick.

A slight, wiry guy unfolded himself from the driver's side and started untying the oil drum from the roof of his car. Getting closer, I saw he had a mess of dreadlocks coming out the back of a well-worn beanie. His skin was brown and creased, with a patchy gray beard and moustache across the lower half of his face.

“Howzit?” He grinned. “I'm Skin.” He tilted his head, and I caught a glimpse of his eyes, which were strangely out of place on his scraggly face. They were dark brown, soft, and gentle.

“Let me give you a hand with that drum,” Peter offered, and then walked around to the far side of the car to help Skin lift it. He'd put down his stick, but I was tempted to pick it back up again. Despite the nice eyes, this guy didn't look safe. I made a mental note of where my kids were.

Skin lifted his arms for the oil drum, and when he did, I saw the buck knife, snug in an old leather sheath, strapped to the side of his belt.

“Where you want her?” he asked me, then nodded to Peter and winked. “Best to ask the missus these things, I reckon.”

“Er, over there by the garage, I guess,” I stammered. “Does it really take all day to cook?”

“Takes a wee while,” he said, nodding, and snapped open the lid of his trunk. “She's a big 'un.”

With that, he lifted out a bald sheep carcass the size of a six-year-old child and flipped it over his shoulder as though it were nothing but a big bunch of flowers. He pulled a five-foot steel pole out of the car, then laid the sheep on the grass and lifted two of its legs up. With a moist crunch, he slid that pole through the carcass until it came out the other side, wet and glistening.

“I think I'll go back in the house,” I volunteered. “Check on the kids.”

I stayed clear of Skin for most of the day, making salads and chasing my kids inside. He sat out on a deck chair with Phoenix, petting the dog's shaggy head, sipping the drinks that Peter brought him, and turning the crank handle on the side of his drum, which I now knew had been made for molasses. By evening, the sheep's flesh was a taut, shiny mahogany, and the steam wafting toward the house made my mouth water.

Our friends seemed to arrive all at once: Amanda and Nick in their silver minivan, Autumn and Patrice in their old Toyota pickup. Both these families had three kids apiece, and soon the children were swarming, tearing around the property with bare feet, helping themselves to fruit juice, and pedaling the kids' bikes at top speed. Titou and Miranda swiped a party-size bag of Doritos from the kitchen, then clambered up into the totara tree with their plunder.

Maria stepped out of a dark blue pickup truck and sniffed the air appreciatively. She was wearing navy capris that showed off her splendid legs. “Wasn't sure what to think when you asked us for sheep on a spit,” she commented. “Means something else in England.”

“What's that?” Amanda asked.

“Two blokes on one lady,” she explained with a ribald wink. “Getting done at both ends.” She poked two fingers in the air to illustrate.

Children started screeching behind us. I turned in alarm, scanning the crowd for broken bones.

“
Skin!
It's
Skin
!” Sophie and Amelia hollered, pouring out of the van and tearing past us toward the sheep spit, where the fathers were standing and chatting. The two girls crashed headlong into Skin's legs, and he scooped them up, flinging them over his shoulders like wiggling sheep carcasses. Lucy staggered behind her big sisters, holding out her arms to be lifted. Even Silas was delighted, flapping his hands and grinning at the uproar.

“Oh, God. I thought they were screaming,” I said to Amanda. “Are they scared of him?”

Amanda shook her head and laughed. “Not Skin,” she said. “Kids adore him. He's like the Pied Piper of Purua.”

Sophie and Amelia were now trying to scale this man like a tree. Though his frame was small, Skin had arms as strong as steel cables. He lifted each girl with one hand and allowed her to walk up the front of his legs with no strain at all. Then he dangled her out over thin air, squealing and giggling, before depositing her gently on the driveway.