Rose in a Storm (16 page)

In the rear of the barn, Brownie, the steer, had stuck his head in through one of the barn windows, blown open by the wind. He was reaching in to eat from a dwindling bale of hay, the other bales too far from the window for him to reach. Like the sheep, the cows and steers had no food, all of the feeders now shrouded in snow and ice.

Sam would have seen the cat Eve lying near Winston, purring softly as the pompous rooster circled beneath the roosting hens. Inside the barn, the chickens still had some feed, but that was dwindling as well. And the chickens would never venture outside in a storm.

The water buckets were all frozen. Snow blowing in from the windows was spreading across the floor of the big barn, which was dark with the power out, but brightened by the reflected light of the snow.

A few barn swallows had taken refuge in the upper reaches of the barn. Rose looked up now and then as a mouse dared to make a move across a hay bale.

It was the wild dog who seemed to most need her time and attention. Rose sensed he was weakening further. He lowered his head, and, in that dank and cold place, she felt a chill and
began to tremble. The moment became theirs, in the way of dogs, in their particular kind of language, beyond the awareness of people. The wind still blowing, they sorted through the smells in the barn, the sounds of mice and rats crawling in the corners.

There was a sadness about the wild dog, a sense of gravity. Even covered in burrs, sores, and wounds, he was a handsome, proud dog, weary of his life alone, without work or purpose.

This farm was the wild dog’s now, too. As long as he was able, he was grateful to once again have work. He had an innate respect and affection for this intense little dog. She was dutiful, serious, and smart, as he had once been—as he would be still while he lived.

Rose was not so old, had not been through the same things. But in a way, she and the wild dog were peers now. Out on their own, living off their instincts, without human direction, and so much work still to be done.

R
OSE
,
STILL SHAKEN
, made her way through the snow and ice to the farmhouse to check on Sam. She found him still on the sofa, sitting up and cradling his arm. She watched as he took more pills from the bottle near the table, and after that, he nodded off into a fitful sleep again.

When she returned to the barn, she found it quiet, the chickens clucking and sleeping, the big steer munching on hay, the day edging along, even though the difference between day and night had become almost irrelevant in the fury of the blizzard.

Rose could feel that the storm was vast, and not nearly over.

The sheep, calling out from the pole barn, were already
restive, hungry. The ewe was still calling out for her lost baby. The coyotes would surely return, hungrier, better prepared, strong and in greater numbers. The foxes would be hungry as well.

By evening, the animals would be looking in earnest for food and water. There would not be any. The sheep would require her presence, to keep them calm, perhaps to fight off the coyotes. And they would expect her to lead them to food as she did every other day of their lives.

The barn seemed suffused in soft light, a light warmed as if by the blood of the animals themselves. The wood, roof, and pipes in the barn all groaned, creaked, and hissed in a strange symphony, but the animals looked to Rose, sensing she was the leader.

Brownie stopped eating, the goats stopped complaining, the chickens opened their eyes in their roosts and tilted their heads, cocked their eyes at Rose as if awaiting some instruction from her. The wild dog sighed, raised his head. Eve lay down in front of her. The swallows quieted in the rafters, and even the anxious cries and howls of the coyotes up on the hill seemed to grow softer.

Rose was unnerved by the attention and focus. She did not know what was expected of her. The images racing through her mind slowed, changed, calmed. For a moment the storm simply
was
, and it seemed almost beautiful, and timeless.

Rose and the animals sat in this way for a long time.

B
UT AS QUICKLY
as this quiet had descended, life returned. The mood shifted once again, and this time of communion, of reflection, was over.

Cold, hunger, fear—all began to insinuate their way back
into Rose’s consciousness. Rose, like the other animals, was about life. Whatever had just transpired in the barn, all of their instincts were adamant about one thing: survival.

As the morning wore on, the wind shrieked, the snow thickened again, the cold infiltrated through the cracks and crevices of the barn. The mice started skittering around, and the animals returned to their natural manners. Eve vanished into the rafters; Brownie began hungrily seeking hay again; and Winston once more sounded his ear-shattering crowing.

Around midday, Rose heard a pop, then a hiss. She trotted outside and looked up to see a bright-blue ball shoot up from the farmhouse far into the sky. It burned more brightly than any moon or sun or star, and all she could see was that it came from the porch. She could not fathom what it was, but she watched it, transfixed, as it rose higher and higher and burned ever more brightly, even through the clouds and snow.

The sheep began bleating, and she turned away from it, listening as it hissed its way back down to the ground, far out in the woods.

Rose’s mind raced, a jumble of confused images, none of which really seemed to fit. There was no pasture, no hay in the feeders, no water in the troughs. No Sam on his machines to move things around.

R
OSE LOOKED
for Sam, where her direction came from, where work began. She lowered her head for the long and tiring climb over the drifts to the farmhouse. Every step was difficult, and her coat was covered in snow, her eyes crusted, her breathing still painful as she worked her way toward the house, the wind blowing straight into her face.

She was well outside the gate when she heard the wild
dog’s warning growl from far behind her. She looked up and was surprised to find herself face-to-face with three coyotes, surrounding her in a circle.

The coyote she knew was not among this group, and, looking into their eyes, it was instantly clear to her that they had not come for the sheep or the chickens. They had come for her. They were hungry, determined, deployed in killing mode, and began to howl and bark, signaling to one another that they had found a kill, they had found food and were now calling to the others for help.

Rose did not calculate odds. She could run or fight—but she had never run, not from a sheep, or a ram, or a cow. She would not even have known how to do it. Standing her ground was simply what she did, and she lowered her ears and bared her teeth as one of the coyotes met her eyes in response.

She knew the attack would come from the other two, that his role was merely to keep her focused, toward him. She prepared to fight and was as startled as the coyotes at the loud bang and flash of light that erupted from the farmhouse window. Almost before she could move, the coyotes were in flight, up the hill and into the woods.

Sam shouted something from the window behind her, and she turned to get her bearings. Then she bounded to the back door of the farmhouse, and into the kitchen, where Sam, swathed in slings, limping, his face twisted in pain, was standing with his rifle by the back door.

S
AM’S HEART
was racing, the adrenaline pumping hard enough that it masked some of the pain in his arm. He’d stepped outside to scan the horizon for the rescue he hoped was coming in the wake of his flare. There, he’d seen Rose face-to-face with
three coyotes. Once she was inside, he told her to stay. She lay down and closed her eyes to rest. She was awakened when he got up and stumbled to the back door.

“Rose,” he said. “I’ve got to get out there. I’ve signaled for help, which means I’ll be gone for a few days at least. But I’ve got to get some more hay to the animals. They’ll starve if I don’t get some food out to them.”

She watched as he threw a parka over his shoulders amidst groans of pain. She followed him to the back door and stood in the doorway.

“Rose, get out of the way,” he said. “I have to get out there. I can crawl if I have to—”

Sam had come to see Rose as an extension of himself. He rarely even had to give her a command—she often anticipated him, but when he did, she responded instantly. He loved her for it.

Now, he was shocked by what he saw. Rose was standing, her head low, almost in a working crouch. She was uttering a low growl, her teeth were bared. She was not moving.

At first he thought she must be reacting to something behind him, or something she saw or heard outside. But he looked—no, she was looking right into his eyes. She was growling at him.

He finally managed to sputter, “Rose! What are you doing? Bad girl! Get out of my way. What’s wrong with you?”

He yelped in surprise as Rose lunged forward and nipped at his left hand when he tried to reach for the doorknob. He staggered back, and the door fell closed. When he reached out again, Rose went for his hand again. Sam shouted and fell back once more.

“Rose! Let me out. What’s wrong with you? Did you get
bit by something rabid?” Each time he opened the door, she lunged at him, growling and snapping.

For a long time the door remained closed, and then he managed to open it a crack.

He gave her a long look. He thought maybe she had gone mad. She met his gaze. The two stared at each other for what seemed a very long time.

Sam looked at this creature, battered, matted, and clearly near exhaustion. She lowered her head but met his gaze. She was not mad. She had been with him every step of the way, through every minute of the storm. She’d rounded up the goats and cows when they had run off, she’d contained the sheep. He was surprised to notice the swelling on the right side of her head, a bump as big as a pear. Something had kicked her or fallen on her.

And she had dug him out of the snow. He would be frozen, dead, in the snow if not for her. He remembered calling out to her, and somehow she had heard him. Now she was telling
him
something. He owed it to her to listen.

Sam remembered her faithful love of Katie when she was sick. Rose was not only an animal he needed to run the farm, she was all he had.

Looking at her eyes, runny from the snow and ice blowing into her face, he knew there was no way she would quit or back down. He couldn’t ever strike at her. And he could see that she was clearly taking a real beating working in the storm, something he had been too absorbed in his own troubles to fully notice.

Soon they both would be heading out, away from the farm. He had to accept that. He couldn’t leave her in this awful mess.

Rose did not waver. She was silent so long as he was still,
but if he moved forward an inch, the growl rose from her throat. She is not letting me out, he thought. He looked at the blood on his hands, the blood on the sling, felt the awful pain in his arm and leg. He remembered his grandfather: Love the farm, but love yourself, too.

He closed the door and hobbled back into the house, where he lay down on the sofa. “Okay,” he muttered. “We’ll wait for help.”

Rose did not understand what he said, but she recognized the resignation, the submission. She waited until he was settled back on the sofa before returning to the barnyard on her own.

ELEVEN

T
HERE WAS A BREAK IN THE STORM LATE THAT AFTERNOON
,
AN
interruption in the heavy falling snow—although the killing cold was, if anything, worse.

Rose’s ears pricked up at the sound of a powerful, thumping engine. The sound came from above and was still very far away. In her mind she connected it with Sam. She left the barn and began climbing over the drifts, stumbling back toward the farmhouse.

Her paws still hurt. Her head hurt even more. Numerous different images rushed through her mind, conflicting concerns. The cows and steers might still freeze, right where they stood, if they didn’t move or eat. The night before they nearly had. This image was shoved aside as the chop-chop sound of a helicopter drew closer, deeper into the valley, through the mist and fog and snow. It was heading straight for the farm, and Rose locked on to it.

*   *   *

S
AM HAD BEEN
thinking about the flare ever since he’d shot it off, wondering if it had been seen. By now, Sam guessed that his arm had become infected. He hoped he wouldn’t lose it. Shooting pains and fever were spreading through his body. Earlier that day, during a brief break in the storm that had coincided with the agreed-upon time for sending up such signals, he had crawled out into the front yard with his flare gun and launched the little rocket into the sky, trailed by a column of smoke. He knew that other farmers would be looking for the flares, and also that choppers might be circling over the trapped and isolated farms, looking for signals. If it didn’t work, he planned to try again in a few hours.

Sam had attempted to pack an overnight bag. He tried to stay awake through the drowsiness and the chills, and kept calling out to Rose to come in. There was no way he was leaving her alone on the farm; she would come with him. But if anything went awry, he wanted to make sure she wasn’t without food. So he used his good arm to pull a huge bag of kibble off the shelf and dumped it by the back door, the dog door, so that she would have food if somehow they got separated. The effort cost him, and took him a long time.

But this was just to put his mind at rest. He was determined to get her to leave. She would mind him. She always had. Except for that morning.

W
HEN THE HELICOPTER
appeared across the valley, the animals heard it long before Sam did. As it got closer, it dropped rocket flares and crackling fireworks to alert Sam to its arrival. The engine noise made the animals anxious, the booms frightened them. Rose herself jumped at the sudden bangs.

She ran to the back door, anxious, unable to sort out this
new happening. She came in under the overhang, pushed open the swivel door, and was startled at the pile of dog food on the floor, and the bowls of water, one of them already covered with a thin sheen of ice. With a low growl, she went looking for Sam, her ruff standing on end.