it signals a natural contemplative bent.
“What religion are you, Mary?” Ben asked one day.
“Quaker.”
Ben laughed. Then he turned red and bashful. “You’re not kidding.”
“Nope.”
“I didn’t know Quakers were still around, except, you know…”
“Uh huh. Cereal. Motor oil.”
“Heck of a deal.”
“Uh huh. Imagine Catholic puffed rice.”
“I thought Quakers wore funny clothes.”
“Some might say they do.” Ben is always making fun of the denim jumpers that cover me like a tent while I change into my overalls in our unisex locker room. “Bet you’re a Lutheran,” I say to him.
“Missouri Synod.”
Religion is one of our big topics, along with marriage, child rearing, where you can get secondhand clothes, and of course every aspect of animal husbandry and sheep gossip.
Ben’s brother Tom has brought his beautiful Simmental heifers in for the state fair. The bull, with his leery rolling eye, hangs out in the far southeast pen. Last night (Ben told me) he escaped and climbed halfway up the baled hay in the shed. The sheep who are going to the fair have been washed, shorn, and covered in red and blue tabards—decked out as for a medieval pageant.
In the afternoon, I helped Ben shear a couple of rams.
“Tom saw a terrible accident coming in on the freeway,” he told me. “Someone had a heart attack during rush hour and went out of control. Another car rammed him from behind and a cattle truck shot over the top and the whole thing burst into flames.”
Wool is slipping off the ram’s flank in a smooth bat under my clippers. “Are the animals all right?”
“Only one broken leg,” replies Ben.
Later Hank came in and Ben retold the story. “Animals all right?” Hank wanted to know.
“Yup. One broken leg. It was on the ten o’clock news. Did you see it, Mary?”
“Can’t watch TV. The girls have burned it out watching Days of Our Lives. Now we can’t get any reception at all. We’re wondering about what happened to Hope.”
Ben chains a big ram into the fit stand. “Hope got back her memories, but then Bo asked her for a divorce because he’s still in love with Billy, the one he married after Hope was killed and before she came back from the dead. Sammy had an accident and dreamed she had the abortion. Oil your clippers, Mary. I can hear ’em running slow. … I don’t think she wants the abortion. She’s just tormenting Austin. Would you catch me that ram with the shaggy head, Mary, and try not to just chase it till it goes down on its knees. That stresses them.”
“Why do they go down on their knees anyway?”
“Because they’re sheep—”
“And we’re not.”
JUDE TURNED HIS HEAD and shot me his characteristic look of canny intelligence ready-to-be-amused. He was a few minutes old and looking at me from a glass box next to the delivery table. That gaze remained distinctive, accentuated by the glasses he had to wear from the age of thirteen months.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.
