“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 living 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.