Free Falling

by Susan Kiernan-Lewis

  CHAPTER NINE

  “Why, exactly, do you have to spend the night out there?”

  “Because if I don’t John will do it and I’m sure his mother doesn’t want him out all night armed with a rifle waiting for sheep killers to show up. Besides, he’s right. We have to protect the sheep.”

  David was mounted on Rocky. Sarah handed him the rifle and a small bag of cold biscuits with goat butter.

  “So you’re going to be doing this from now on? Are a few sweaters really worth it? Because I thought we agreed the sheep aren’t really of value to us beyond their wool.”

  “Look, Sarah, I don’t know what their value is to us. But if we have to end up eating every fluffy one of ‘em or starve to death come January, I’ll be glad I didn’t throw them away in October.”

  The dead sheep had been savaged. It looked to David as if it had been killed by a wild animal, so he mentally checked marauding gypsies off the list of suspects. Even so, the flock needed protection.

  That first night, he loosened Rocky’s girth and tethered him to a bush. Next time, he decided, he would leave the horse behind and just walk the two miles to the pasture. The sheep had found a natural stone windbreak and had bedded down nearby. David decided to join them. The spot where the one sheep had been attacked was still evident but it didn’t seem to bother the flock. They grazed carelessly around the area which was still stained dark with the victim’s blood.

  David settled down on a blanket on the ground. He put the gun beside him.

  This was nuts beyond believable, he thought. I’m sitting in a pasture at night with a gun protecting a flock of sheep. My flock of sheep, in fact. He stared up into the autumn night sky and saw the stars so clearly he thought for a minute he must be hallucinating. He pulled a blanket over his shoulders and shivered.

  He felt a wave of sleepiness push over him and he leaned back against the stacked stones that served as the windbreak. He figured he could sleep. If the sheep didn’t wake him, Rocky surely would if someone or something was creeping about. He felt in his pocket for one of the biscuits. The grease from the goat butter coated his fingers and he licked them clean.

  He appreciated that Sarah seemed to jump right in and figure out the skills they needed to help them survive. That was a part of her that didn’t surprise him at all. He unwrapped one of the biscuits and bit into it. In their old life, she was always so together. No matter what life threw at them, she dealt with it. He’d gotten used to that. On the other hand, he knew her ability to function came at a price. She took anti-anxiety medication to help her control what she insisted was a rational but constant fear. She said it had to do with a parent’s normal concern for her child’s safety, but really, in his opinion, it was a fear of just about everything.

  He finished the biscuit and wiped his fingers on his jeans. He had to admit there was a lot to be afraid of nowadays. Even Dierdre was scared and she was the toughest lady he knew. He was grateful that Sarah seemed to be keeping it together in the face of this new, terrible situation they were all in. His worry now that she really did have something to be afraid of was a simple one: How was she going to handle things when her meds ran out?

  He remembered for a moment the woman he had fallen in love with so many years ago. Sarah had been downright fearless in those days. It’s a terrible thing to realize the person you thought you knew was just a cover for the person they really were. He wondered if she thought that about him. Had he changed since they’d come to Ireland? It was only three weeks but he now had callouses he never imagined owning back then. He closed his eyes. And here he was sitting out in the middle of a pasture a hundred miles from nowhere in the middle of the frigging night, waiting to shoot someone for messing with his sheep. Yeah, not in a million years could he ever have imagined that scenario back home. And David found himself smiling as he dropped off to sleep.

  “Whoa, you’re a heavy sleeper, Dad. What if I were a wolf or something?”

  David woke to the sight of his son walking toward him and leading his pony. It was daylight. David yawned and stretched, instantly feeling every rock and stick that had dug into his back and hips while he’d slept.

  “Hey, John,” he said. “I don’t suppose you brought a thermos of coffee?”

  John started counting the sheep.

  “They’re all there,” David said, getting up and picking up his blanket. “Rocky was my early warning device and he didn’t go off all night so I know we’re fine.”

  “Mom says breakfast is ready. I’ll take over now.”

  David packed his saddlebag and tightened Rocky’s girth.

  “I don’t think predators will attack in the daylight,” he said.

  John frowned. “Is that true? They only attack at night?”

  David realized he had no idea.

  “Only at night,” he said. “Don’t stay out too long, okay, sport? I’m going home to catch some shut-eye.”

  “I’ll be fine,” John said. He gave the gun a glance as David mounted with it, cracked open over his arm.

  “You don’t need the gun,” David said. “Something comes, throw rocks at it or come get me.”

  “Fine,” John muttered.

  Back at the cottage, a hot breakfast of scrambled eggs, biscuits and tea awaited him. And something else.

  “Eat fast,” Sarah said when he’d peeled off his jacket and sat down to his breakfast. “We don’t know how long he’ll be gone.”

  David had a forkful halfway to his mouth before he realized what she was saying. He bolted his food, grabbed a quick slurp of tea and met his wife in the corner of the cottage that served as their bedroom.

  It had been over seven weeks since they’d touched each other in any kind of intimate way.

  Later, Sarah quietly did the dishes and let David sleep. It was raining again, turning the thin layer of snow on the ground to slush. She realized she didn’t even care about the rain, about how it affected her intention to tack up Dan and go keep John company at the north pasture. She tried to think of even one time she had been rained on back in the States. She moved from house garage to car to office parking garage and never even owned an umbrella. She didn’t need to. She never got wet.

  She realized as she mounted Dan and moved out of the frontcourt of the house that she had felt no anxiety tacking up the horse. She tried to remember when that had stopped. She leaned down and patted the horse on the neck. Probably about the hundredth time she’d moved him out of the stall to clean up after him, or transferred him from barn to paddock. She was halfway to the pasture before she’d realized she was wearing only a thick wool knitted cap for protection against a fall. She’d left her own hardhat in the barn.

  She never brought Dan out of a walk, just felt the peaceful rhythm of his gait through her hips and kept her eyes anywhere but on his feet. She left the road after fifteen minutes and let the horse pick his way through the snowy pasture. Trust that he knows what he’s doing, she thought. She watched the birds, the horizon of grey clouds looking like more snow on the way, the slate-blue sky.

  The air was crisp and mean against the exposed portion of her face, but also made her feel alive. She listened intently for any sound of her boy and his flock. As she got nearer, a sensation like nervousness tingled in her chest until she realized it was joyful anticipation. The world around her was beautiful and she was an integral part of it. She could see John from the top of the little knoll she had just climbed. He sat on his pony as still as a statue, watching the flock and scanning the surrounding scrub and pasture. When he saw her, his hand went up in a wave and he began to move toward her.

  “Did you bring the gun?”

  “No, why?”

  “I found the culprit,” John twisted in his saddle and waved his hand to indicate that the animal was somewhere behind him. “A dog. He looks starved. We’re gonna have to shoot him.”

  Sarah gaped at him. Was her own ten year-old son suggesting they kill a dog?

  “Are you serious?”
r />   “About what? That a dog’s killing the sheep?”

  “No, about wanting to kill the dog.”

  “Mom,” John sounded like he was world-weary having to explain something so basic as his reasoning to her. “I don’t want to kill the dog. I want the sheep to not get eaten.”

  “Maybe we could catch the dog,” she said with no conviction.

  “So he can eat our chickens? Or Lucy?” (He’d named the goat.) Miz McClenny says once a dog’s eaten a chicken or a sheep, he can’t unlearn the wanting for them.”

  Sarah felt a wave of exhaustion and resentment. Why do we have to go through this? Why does my child have to even consider killing an animal we’ve taught him to consider a pet? Why does everything have to be so hard?

  “Dad will do it,” she said tonelessly. “If you’re sure it’s the dog.”

  “Saw him with blood on his face. Saw him stalking the flock.”

  “Okay. Let’s let Dad sleep a little longer. We’ll stand guard on the flock in the meantime. Unless you’re cold and want to—”

  “I’m good.”

  Sarah looked at the sheep. They’re oblivious, she thinks. Danger is so close and they don’t know. They’re too stupid to be afraid. Then she looked at John and watched him as he continued to scan the horizon, the brush and the rest of the pasture. Maybe, she thought with surprise, maybe they’re not so stupid.

  Suddenly, she spotted the dog but not before John launched a handful of rocks at it. Sarah watched the dog retreat—but reluctantly, she thought. It looked like someone’s pet. Not a dingo or something wild. Just something hungry and desperate.

  Like us.

  She filled her jacket pockets with the small but heavy rocks John had collected and then sent him back to the cottage to fetch his Dad and the gun.

  “And don’t come back with him,” she told him. “Grab a bite to eat and feed Star. You don’t need to see this.”

  “Mom, I saw Old Yeller,” he said. But she could see he didn’t want to argue the point with her.

  Later that evening, David returned from the pasture. Sarah couldn’t remember ever seeing him look so tired. She and John had heard the rifle report an hour earlier. John hadn’t looked up from the saddle he was trying to mend, but she could see he had registered the shot.

  She and John met him in the frontcourt. David tossed the reins to John.

  “Put him to bed for the night, will you, sport? Your old man’s beat.”

  Sarah put her hand on David’s sleeve and then jerked it back. Something was moving in the knapsack he had used to store the gun.

  “Oh, yeah, there’s this,” David said, widening the neck of the sack.

  “Puppies!” John cried out, with laughter in his voice. Sarah tried to remember the last time she had heard that happy childish tone come out of his mouth.

  “Their mother was just trying to feed them,” David said as he pulled out two black Labrador-mix puppies.

  “You killed…you had to…” John said.

  “Yeah, you were right, sport. She would’ve been impossible to rehabilitate. Sorry. But then I found these little guys. They’re starving.”

  “Not for long,” Sarah said fiercely. She gathered up the dogs in her arms and spoke to John. “Hurry with Rocky, and then come help me, okay? I’ve got some goat milk in the house.”

  John ran to the barn with the big horse.

  “There were three,” David said tiredly. “One died on the way back. I parked it under a stone out there.”

  “Oh, David.”

  “A real survivalist would’ve strangled them all,” he said. “The last thing we need is more critters to feed.”

  Sarah reached up on tiptoe and kissed him.

  “We’re not savages yet,” she said. “You turned a bad day into a sort of miracle.”

  He drew an arm around her as they walked back to the house, their earlier closeness coming back to both of them like a strengthening shield.

  “Now, if we can just turn some bags of sawdust into a rump roast, I’ll be good,” he said.

  * * *

  Finn sat in the trailer across the table from his brother and one of the bowsies who followed him without question. He smiled at the thought. That would be just about everyone. He shuffled the cards and dealt them out to the pockmarked gypsy he knew for a fact he shared a mother with.

  He had a plan, a bloody, wonderful plan.

  It might not work as well for the culchies around here who knew him or the rest of his “family” but it would work a charm for everyone else. Especially now, with all that’s happened. It wasn’t just him and his kind feeling the lack but everyone. That evened things up some. They’d all feel more agreeable to opening their doors to a rag-tag group of survivors than they would a lying, thieving gang of gypsy hoodlums. Finn found himself chuckling and his brother looked up from his cards with a worried look on his face. Finn grinned at the bowsie and then his brother. He knew he would win the hand and the one after that. He knew they let him win. It was one of the perks of rank.

  Might not even need to use force at first, he thought, laying down his winning hand on the table. At least not with the ones who didn’t know him. But then, need and want were two very different things.

  Didn’t he, of all people, know that, if nothing else?

  CHAPTER TEN

  Then once I actually get off the horse, my older body aching and creaking like it will never limber up again, I’m not done yet. Instead of going inside to create some artificial world we got so used to in Jacksonville, I have to tend to the animals. Even if I’ve got blisters or aches or desperately have to go to the bathroom! In a way, it’s actually marvelous to learn that you can’t control every moment of your schedule according to your whims and preferences. It’s particularly marvelous for your grandson to learn that lesson now, at his age, and marvelous that David and I are able to learn it-for the first time-at our age. Just as I can no longer automatically control my comfort level by flipping on an air conditioning switch, I can’t just park my transportation in the garage and get on with the next thing on my to do list. My transportation needs untacking, rubbing down, feeding and releasing into the paddock.

  David’s grandfather used to tell David that when he was a boy he always said “no” to one thing every day. I guess that’s a concept that seems insane (or at least nonsensical) in today’s America. But maybe it has value in this new life of ours. I’m glad to see my son already understands how to do it. Me, I’m still trying to learn. Will write again later. I cannot tell you what a day I have ahead of me today!

  Sarah put down her pen and flexed her fingers. The house was quiet. David had spent the night again at Dierdre and Seamus’s. Sometimes he ended up working so late that he just stayed. Unlike the first time it happened, Sarah had learned to hold off on the panic attack until noon the next day when she would inevitably see him riding over the rise. John was still asleep. Outside it was as dark as night, yet she knew her workday had begun. As soon as she lit the cook stove and boiled the water for their tea, she knew he would begin to stir.

  They were two months into their new life.

  As Dierdre had predicted, the village of Balinagh had virtually emptied. The dairy and all of the other shops were boarded up. The cottages on the perimeter of the town were empty as well. If they wanted news, as unreliable as it always was, they needed to go to Draenago for it—an impossible twenty miles further south. Sometimes they saw people traveling on the road and looking like they had all their belongings with them. Sometimes people actually showed up in their frontcourt asking for food or news.

  They hadn’t seen anybody now for nearly three weeks. Dierdre predicted they were the only inhabitants left in all of western Ireland. While there was no way to know for certain, the thought made Sarah feel strangely safer.

  John had gotten the idea to spell out “U.S.A.” in white stones on the upper pasture so that when the rescue helicopter finally came for them, someone would know there were Americans li
ving there. Sarah and David had exchanged a look when John had suggested it but didn’t discourage him.

  Life had fallen into a steady routine. John knew what he needed to do on his end: bait the rabbit trap; groom and feed the horses, goats and chickens; count and move the sheep; try to train the puppies. At night he repaired and cleaned tack, memorized Latin and French from a textbook they’d found in the cottage and taught himself chess gambits. The rest of his time was spent exploring the Irish countryside on horseback and watching the sky for the helicopter he knew was coming.

  David went to Seamus and Dierdre’s at least once a week and usually twice. He always came back exhausted but arms full of preserves or late fall garden harvest and instructions from Dierdre to Sarah—on how to weave, the best place to dig for peat, and better ways to make goat cheese. When he was at home, he checked the rabbit traps, gutted and skinned the rabbits, cleaned the stalls, and constantly checked or mended the security of the doors and fences. If he could stay awake, he spent his evenings writing the philosophy book he had always been too busy to work on back home. With John, he had created a movable chicken pen that allowed the birds to spend every day on a fresh patch of grass. With effort, it could be moved with both of them dragging it. On the days that David was gone, John could hook it up to his pony and move it by himself.

  For Sarah, her day began before it was light out. In the dark, she would pray. Later, she lit the cook stove and made the tea. At first light, she often wrote to her parents. If she had yeast she made muffins or if not made biscuits for everyone’s breakfast. She kept the cottage spotless—not easy to do with so much of their lives happening outside in the dirt and the wind. She cleaned and mended their clothes. She kept an inventory of the food cellar and made careful plans for their future meals. She milked the little goat daily and made bread dough every other day. She went in the barn often to check the horses for injuries. Evenings, she knit or read aloud. Sometimes she tested John on his Latin or French vocabulary. And she rode Dan at least a little bit even if it was only in the paddock every afternoon, rain or shine.