Lambing Season

Jessica Gardner

It’s the end of March, and Marcus isn’t getting much sleep. When the ewes began lambing he moved out of the farmhouse for the season and into the small shelter in the pasturing field, as he does every year. It used to be an old storage shack for drying bundles of grain, a useful halfway point between the many acres of crops and the barn, which gets overfull in summertime. But it wasn’t built to withstand the cold, and Marcus lies on his hard cot with a wool blanket tucked around him to cut the chill coming off the old stone walls.

He’s holding a little body in his arms. A few hours ago, in the very early morning, he left the shelter to make another check on the ewes in labor. There were three he knew had broken off from the flock, and found quiet spots to give birth. The first and second he came to were still uncomfortably standing and lying down again, but the third girl had been the furthest along, and as Marcus cast his torch onto her birthing site, he saw from far off that there were three bodies lying on the ground where there had once been one.
Twins, he thought to himself with discontent.

The rejected lamb was still in its sacking. Marcus had to wipe around its nose and mouth with his cable knit jumper to get it to breathe. He looked at the other lamb beside its mother, born first. It was still struggling to get onto its feet – luckily he’d arrived when they were both just minutes old. There was no use trying to get the mother to feed, though, Marcus knew she wouldn’t take. She’d already chosen one.

Now, in the cold shelter, he holds the nipple of a milk bottle up to the mouth of the lamb at his chest. Eat, he pleads with it. The baby suckles from time to time, but it won’t be any use without a mother’s precious first milk. He knows that without those antibodies, the lamb will be too weak, it’ll die. Marcus can only keep it warm. It has hours, maybe a day or two to live.

A thin strand of the first light streams through a crack in the stones. Marcus wakes without remembering ever falling asleep. He can feel the warm bundle on his chest. Still breathing, thank God.

A pot of something hot rests on the pine table in the corner. He thinks of Annie walking through the fields in the cold to bring it to him. She must not be sleeping well either. When she worries, she tends to busy herself in the kitchen, poking about the cupboards with her sharp beak and plump frame like a great big hen. Her husband never says so, being a man of carefully chosen words, but she knows what lambing season means to him. They never managed to have children together, but every November they share the quiet joy in putting the ewes to the ram, and that almost makes up for things.
He imagined her standing over him as he slept, his large frame wrapped around the lamb’s fragile body. In his mind he couldn’t tell whether she was smiling or crying.
He has to make it out to the other two ewes from last night, so he swaddles the lamb, who lets out a nervous bleat, and leaves it on the cot as he slips into his Wellingtons and walks out the door.

Outside it’s just become morning; the dew still makes a frosty crunch underfoot as he approaches the first site. Mother and baby made it through the delivery, and the lamb is suckling fine, standing on its shaky legs.

He isn’t as comforted a hundred feet off, with the other ewe. He could see as he came closer that the mother was still licking the lamb lying down on the ground, though she must have given birth an hour or so ago by now. As he stands over them, his fears are confirmed. The first stillborn of the season.

Marcus knows more than most people the denial an animal can put itself through. He once had a stubborn three-legged sheepdog that lifted her absent leg to scratch an itchy ear as if it was still there. But the ewe, nudging her lifeless baby, willing it to miraculously wake up, is heartbreaking.

She bleats as Marcus lifts her lamb into his big arms and walks away across the pasture.
Inside the shelter, he works quickly. He has a leather case among his supplies that holds a long, sharp knife, and he decides to use that. Not certain whether his plan will work, Marcus begins making a series of cuts into the skin around the stillborn’s neck and legs anyway. It takes him a good amount of time to loosen the skin from the muscle underneath and remove it intact. He pulls it the way you take a sweater off a child, inside-out over the back, forelegs, and head.

Then he takes the hide over to the swaddled lamb on the cot. It’s a tight squeeze getting the skin to go over the legs and shoulders of the struggling animal, but when he’s done the lamb looks strangely dressed in a woolen vest. He carries it under his right arm out to the pasture, muttering a little prayer in his soft, deep voice.
The mother of the stillborn is pacing aimlessly. The afterbirth had dropped and it lies on the ground two yards away from where Marcus sets down the lamb. He hopes she will feed. The ewe sniffs the vest and does not back away. But when the hungry lamb reaches for her udders, she moves, and faces her milk away from it. She’s still unsure.
Come on girl, he says. The last remains of indigo are seeping out of the sky. He wonders whether the lamb can last until day turns into night again. Come on girlie, he coos.

The ewe and lamb repeat this dance incessantly. She holds her precious milk away from it, but she’s also drawn back to the smell coming off of the vest. The last time she does this, a desperate, shaky cry escapes from the eager lamb. At last, she stands still, closes her pained eyes, and gives in. The lamb closes its mouth around a teat and drinks.
Marcus sighs, and hangs his heavy head in one big, shaky hand. He turns back to the rest of the field. Four more ewes have already secluded themselves in quiet spots away from the flock. He closes his eyes and rubs the tired bags underneath them.