With

by Donald Harington

  She began to shiver, but not because she was cold. Maybe she was shivering from dread. Maybe the living things inside her were doing the shivering and it was making her shiver too. She decided that what she really needed was some grass to eat, but all the grass was covered with snow.

  She began to pant, as if she’d already been running for miles, but all the pacing she had been doing, wall to wall, had not tired her that much. She was not panting because of her pacing. But she kept on pacing, and shivering, and panting.

  And then she stopped suddenly and helplessly threw up.

  “Oh no!” Robin said. Robin put her hand on the back of Hreapha’s neck, and that helped, but Hreapha went on heaving.

  Leave her be, said the in-habit. They allus do that, they allus puke right before birthing, just so’s they’ll have a empty stomach during the work. She’ll be okay.

  Hreapha was so happy to know that the in-habit was going to be in attendance at the event that her fears left her for a while, long enough for her to climb into her box-nest and lie down. And then she felt the urge to strain, thinking at first that she needed to do her business, but then she was amused by that thought. It is my business, she said to herself, but not the business of pooping. The business of birthing. She liked the word the in-habit had used. Birthing.

  Might be a good idee to build up the fire a bit, the in-habit told Robin. Also have a towel or two handy.

  So Hreapha strained. And she strained. And she grunted and growled and strained. She really had a reason to be panting now, and between straining she did a lot of panting. Robin brought her a dish of water but she didn’t want it. Not yet.

  You jist might be a bit too young to watch, the in-habit said to Robin. Why don’t ye go sit on the davenport and I’ll keep ye posted.

  “I want to watch,” Robin said. Hreapha didn’t want her to watch, and now even Robert had propped his paws on the edge of the box and was trying to peer into it. Hreapha didn’t want anybody, not even the in-habit, watching. She snarled. “HREAPHA!” she said; go away.

  But then she didn’t care any more. She took a deep breath, bore down, grunted and kept it up for as long as she could.

  Here she comes, said the in-habit, and sure enough she glanced at her flank and there was a pup, covered with slime and a double membrane which, she knew, she had to remove. She licked the membrane and seized it in her teeth and peeled it off her pup. The pup was a female and looked, Hreapha was pleased to note, more like Yowrfrowr than like herself. She was going to have a shaggy coat someday.

  “He’s beautiful!” Robin said.

  She, said the in-habit. It’s a she-puppy. But jist hold your horses, they’ll be more of ’em.

  To make room for another one, Hreapha had to tidy things up a bit: she ate the membrane, the placenta and the afterbirth, not that she was hungry at all at the moment and they certainly weren’t especially tasty but they were edible.

  And then she had to bear down and strain again for a long time before another one appeared. This one was male. She was getting tired, and wished it were all over, but there were hours and hours yet to go. The third pup seemed to be the hardest of all in terms of the time and effort before she could get it out. It was another female, who seemed to look more like herself than Yowrfrowr. Hreapha was too tired to eat the placenta and decided to wait and do it along with the next one. The fourth pup came fairly easy, another male, but Hreapha was exhausted and had to rest for a long time before she could even try to strain again to see if there might be a fifth one. She was so tired that she actually drifted off to sleep, aware that the four puppies were already nuzzling up to her teats and starting to nurse. That was the only pleasure she’d had for many hours and maybe that was what put her to sleep.

  She woke because the fifth puppy wanted out. She didn’t know how long she’d been asleep but perhaps it was long enough to give her the strength to strain again. She strained. Minutes passed. Did hours pass? It was dark outside. Night had come. She kept on straining. She strained so hard it made her dizzy. She felt herself drifting off again, not into sleep but into something dark and black and deep, but she fought her way back from there. She kept ahold of this world long enough to sigh and push out one more puppy. But she had no strength at all to lick the membrane from it. Even with the double membrane covering it she could see that this puppy, a male, did not look like his brothers and sisters. And also that he seemed to be stillborn. All the puppies had their eyes tightly shut but this one’s eyes were not only closed but lifeless.

  She heard the in-habit’s urgent voice, Wrap it in a towel! Wrap it and rub it! Rub it hard!

  That was all she could remember. When she came back into this world again, it was broad daylight; not only had the night gone but the morning too. She felt very sick, and needed to relieve herself, not to do any business but just to make much water. She tried to get up but there were five puppies clinging to her. There was blood all over the man’s clothes lining her nest.

  “She’s awake!” Robin said. “She’s alive and awake.”

  Them pups has started in to nursing again, the in-habit’s voice said, so ye ort to know they couldn’t git no milk from a dead momma.

  “I think she needs to go,” Robin said.

  Go? Said the in-habit. Aw, ye mean to take a leak?

  Robin pulled the puppies away from her, then helped Hreapha lift herself out of the box.

  “I won’t open the door for you,” Robin said. “It must be below zero out there, and you’d freeze to death. Just use that corner.” She pointed to a corner of the room behind the woodpile. There were wood chips there, so Hreapha wasn’t too abashed to make her lengthy markings on them. But then she saw that some green stuff was oozing out of her afterplace, and then she had black diarrhea, and the sight of all that mess caused her to faint.

  When she came to, it was night again. She was in her nest, which Robin had cleaned up, and Robin had also cleaned her afterplace. Her five puppies were not nursing, but just sleeping deeply, snuggled up in a pile with one another. It was very clear that the fifth one did not have Yowrfrowr as its father. But she loved it all the same, and gave its face a lick.

  “She’s awake!” Robin said. “But she’s burning up.” Robin’s very cold hand was resting on her neck.

  They’re allus kinder hot for a few days afterwards, the in-habit said. I reckon she’ll be okay. But she’s had a bad time

  “You know so much,” Robin said. “Did you have a dog when you lived here?”

  The in-habit laughed. Yep, they was allus dogs on the place. But they was jist one of them, Hector, was my own mutt.

  “Hector’s an odd name for a dog.”

  Old Heck used to want to go to school with me, but the trail was just too steep for him. So he’d just sit the livelong day waiting for me to come home after school.

  The in-habit and Robin went on talking, and Hreapha drifted off to sleep again and even had dreams in which she led the whole pack of her five grown-up offspring as they chased a raccoon through the woods.

  Hreapha woke to find the puppies nursing again, and she sighed and just lay there enjoying it, although she still felt very sick.

  Finally she really had to go out. She was not going to do her business beside the woodpile and mess up the floor again. She scratched at the door and whined, and Robin said, “Are you sure you want to go out?”

  “Hreapha,” she said, and Robin opened the door and let her out. The first thing she did was dig down into the snow until she found grass, and got a mouthful of grass and chewed it and swallowed it. Then she did her business, and climbed the porch and scratched at the door. While she was waiting for Robin to open it, she glanced at the outhouse, where the white skeleton, the same whiteness as the snow, was just sitting there watching her. “Hreapha!” she said to him.

  Days and days passed before the puppies finally opened their eyes and looked at her. Until then they were just helpless lumps who could barely move, and couldn’t do their business for
themselves but had to have their mother lick their afterplaces to clean them. Hreapha didn’t mind. It was her job.

  They couldn’t even try to walk until two weeks or so had passed. And it was about that time that they made their first attempts at barking, so that Hreapha was able to determine what each of them wanted to be named. The firstborn male was named simply Hrolf. His sister, who had actually preceded him in birthing, was named Hroberta, possibly in honor of her godfather, the bobcat. The second male was named Hrothgar. And the second female was named Hruschka. But the third male, the fifthborn, did not make the same sounds as his siblings, possibly because his father was a coyote. So Hreapha had to accept that his name was Yipyip. Not only in name but in every other respect, he would stand apart from the others.

  Robin was thrilled with the puppies, and was constantly picking them up and holding them (one at a time of course) and laughed to watch their clumsy attempts to walk and fight with each other. Robert sulked for a few days because of all the attention being paid to the pups, but eventually he discovered that they liked him and he attempted to join them in their play. He was especially fond of the one named Hroberta, and with Hreapha’s permission he took naps with her. The pups slept practically all the time when they weren’t nursing. But then, when they could walk, they discovered Hreapha’s food dish and began chomping away at her doggy nuggets.

  “Oh oh,” Robin declared one morning as she poured some doggy nuggets out of the bag into Hreapha’s bowl, where six hungry mouths were waiting for it. “That’s all there is. There’s not any more Purina Dog Chow. It’s all gone.”

  Hreapha considered teaching her offspring how to suck eggs. But even the chickens were not laying many eggs in this horribly cold weather, when all the bugs and worms and other staples of their diet had gone into hibernation. There were only just enough for Robin.

  Robin opened a jar of pickled pig’s feet and put some of it in Hreapha’s food dish. From previous experience Hreapha disdained it, but to her surprise she discovered her pups loved the stuff…after she took the trouble to pick the little bones out.

  And when Robin opened a can of beef stew, Hreapha discovered that it would suit her just fine.

  By the time the puppies no longer had to suckle milk out of Hreapha but could eat whatever Robin could furnish from cans or jars, the first signs of Spring were in the air.

  Chapter twenty-eight

  The imaginative reader, meaning you, has for some time now been caught up in the idyllic aspects of Robin’s situation. Even before Sog was dispensed with, you had an awareness of the sheer lively entertainment that Robin was experiencing, almost to the point of making her forget the world she had been stolen from.

  Thus it is my unpleasant duty to reveal aspects of her existence which were less than ideal. Sog’s death was decidedly a mixed blessing; it left her figuratively without insulation against life with its unkind vicissitudes, just as the house itself literally had no insulation against the winter cold (in those days the so-called “wind-chill factor” had not yet been discovered, but the howling winds on Madewell Mountain often dropped the temperature well below zero). Despite my own antipathy toward Sog, I was willing to concede that preferably he should have been allowed to continue living for several more months or even a year if need be (for the record, his affliction was a malignant form of degenerative multiple sclerosis which would have been treatable with medical attention). Living a bit longer would have permitted him to fully prepare Robin for the life she was going to have to live without him. As it was, a day would not go by that she did not discover things she needed to ask him, or things she wanted him to do for her, or tasks that required his help.

  If Sog had managed to hang on a while longer, he would certainly have chewed her out for her mismanagement of the household. He hadn’t been at all fastidious himself, but he still would have jumped all over her. She quit sweeping the house, and not because of that superstition he’d given her, “Don’t never drop your broom so it falls flat on the floor, and if you do drop it don’t never step over it.” Sog had often been required to nag her into washing the dishes; now that he was gone, she quit washing dishes entirely, except when she had to have one, and then she just wiped it with a dirty rag. She quit washing practically everything, including herself, her clothing and her bedding, using as an excuse the fact that it was too cold to go out to the well. One morning, when she just had to have some drinking water, she found the well bucket frozen tight to the ice beneath it, and couldn’t pry it loose. She made do with snow melted in a pan on the stove. The stove periodically required having its ashes removed, and although she had a scuttle and a little shovel for that purpose she was negligent in using them, and the stove became inefficient to the point where all the inhabitants (except me) were unnecessarily cold.

  She had no regard for the larder. She had no concept of budgeting the food supply, and thus had already run out of several things that she couldn’t do without, least of all the Purina Dog Chow. She was going to run out of flour in a few more months, and then she’d really be in a pickle. And speaking of pickles, having happily discovered that Hreapha’s pups loved Sog’s pickled pig’s feet, she gave no thought to rationing the stuff. And speaking of Hreapha’s pups, although their thoughtful mother did her best to housebreak them, Robin did nothing to clean up the mess that they sometimes made, with the result that the living room in which all eight creatures were living and from which they were all loath to sally out into the subzero weather was a veritable pigsty, or (since the only evidence of actual pigs were their feet) a crummy dump, uninhabitable by anyone except an in-habit: fortunately, although I could see and hear I chose not to smell. At the age of twelve I was not especially neat and tidy myself; in fact, I couldn’t care less about orderliness, but even I was moved to remark to Robin one cloudy day, This place aint fitten for dogs! If Adam’s mother had been there, blind though she was, she would have fainted. If Robin’s mother had been there…well, of course, if Robin’s mother had been there she would have immediately whisked her daughter out of the place.

  Which reminds me that it has been a good while since we last saw or heard anything from Karen Kerr. Mention was made that she’d been spending a lot of time with the FBI agent, who, Leo’s wife Louisa had remarked, might become Leo’s new son-in-law. If it’s of any interest, as a matter of fact the FBI agent, Hal Knight, did propose to Karen Kerr at Christmas, but she, while confessing her love for him, said that it would not be “seemly” to get married while she was still in mourning for Robin. I’m sure we’ll hear more about her farther along.

  As Hreapha was the first to detect, the signs of Spring were in the air, and it would soon be time for the whole pack of them to get outdoors, open the windows and doors and air out the house, and for Robin, even if I had to get on her case, to do a bit of cleaning.

  In fact she was prompted to do so not by my giving her a talking to, but by the appearance in the yard of the first daffodils. Adam’s mother had once obtained, after a visit to her sister in Parthenon, a peck of bulbs for tulips and daffodils, and had planted them (“naturalizing” is the modern gardener’s term) randomly around the yard, where many of them had received unwitting fertilizer from the toilet habits of Hreapha, Robert, and Robin, as well as all the pups (not to mention the dozens of free-ranging chickens). Now, twenty-one years after Sarah Madewell had gone to California, leaving behind the bright flowers that she had been able to enjoy only through touch and smell (and Adam would never forget the sight of his mother down on her knees gently fondling the daffodils each early March), the bulbs not only continued to bloom but had greatly multiplied. Their coming up seemed to be, for Robin, a sign of renewal and hope. She gathered several to put into a vase for the kitchen table, and the sight of those bright clean yellow flowers in all that squalor tempted her to do something she hadn’t done for months: give the house a thorough sweeping and dusting. That done, she was even inspired to go out to the henhouse and do an awful chore she’d neglecte
d all winter, shoveling the chicken manure into the wheelbarrow and carting it out to fertilize the vegetable garden soil, as she had been advised by the Cyclopædia.

  That done, she was even inspired to go into the barrel factory and straighten things up. Hold your horses! I exclaimed. There aint no call to be moving things around in here.

  “Hi, Adam,” she said. “I thought you’d moved into the house and didn’t stay out here any more.”

  How confess to her that I was her stalker? I generally keep an eye on whatever’s going on around here, I declared. Don’t matter whether it’s the house or this shed or wherever.

  “It’s so messy out here,” she said, sweeping her arms around her.

  But look what ye done, I pointed out, although I was unable to point. You’ve put the bung flogger and the chime hoop maul on the same bench. That aint where they belong.

  “There’s so much junk all over,” she said.

  Aint a bit of junk. Ever one of them tools—stave froe, jointer, swift, stoup plane, horse, chince, backing knife, croze and flagging iron has got a use, and if you was to lose ary one of ’em, you’d be on the spot.

  “But what do I need them for?” she asked. “I won’t ever make a barrel.”

  Naw, but you might could make a firkin.

  “You’re bad, Adam! Did you say ‘fucking’?”

  I blushed, as much as invisible cheeks can redden. Aint you the feisty’un, though? What I said was firkin, which is what’s called a small cask for keeping butter.

  “Where would I get any butter?” she wanted to know.

  She had me there. I laughed at my own slip. And then offered, Wal, ye never can tell, some old cow might come wanderin lost into the pasture some day.

  “That would be nice,” she said. “Would you be able to teach me how to milk it and then how to use the churn to make butter?”

  Why, shore. If you’ll look at the corner over your left shoulder you’ll see a right nice butter churn.