M. Wren - A Gift Upon the Shore

And slept the peaceful sleep of the muscle-weary, slept in the bliss of ignorance.

As befitted the first day of summer, the sky was clear, the sun hot, and it was on this day that Josie Pearl, the white-and-tan Nubian doe, chose to go into labor. But Rachel didn’t discover that fact until noon.

Mary had called Connie and Jim after breakfast and gotten a busy signal. There was an implied assurance in that, and she and Rachel went about the morning’s work, feeding and watering the animals, weeding the garden, cleaning the chicken house, and collecting eggs. The hens were producing extravagantly with the long summer days. It was when Rachel went to the barn to get fresh straw for the nests that she discovered Josie Pearl’s plight.

And again Mary found herself an assistant midwife.

The impending nativity attracted an audience. Rachel always left the barn door open during the day so the goats could come into its shade. Now they all gathered, drawn by the insatiable curiosity of their kind. Pan—black as night, silky beard bearing stars of dandelion seeds, the noble, fecund lord of this small harem—loudly demanded a rail position, but Rachel asked Mary to take him to his shed north of the barn. When she returned, Rachel had Josie inside the stall in the corner of the barn, while Persephone, her kid, and the three remaining does peered through the slats.

Persephone’s delivery had been so easy, but Josie was having a hard time of it, since she had, with typical perversity, initiated herself into motherhood with twins. Once the necessary preparations were made, Rachel and Mary settled into the stall, Rachel constantly talking to Josie, stroking her head, giving her something to brace against when the contractions came. Josie, between contractions, crooned softly, talking to her kids.

The alternating contractions and crooning continued for over an hour before the front hooves of one of the kids appeared in the vulva, then retreated, while Josie stood panting, gray tongue hanging. As the afternoon stretched on, the kid made its teasing appearance, only to retreat, again and again, and as inexperienced as Mary was as a midwife, she knew Josie was weakening, her kids’ chance at life dwindling. At length Rachel had to offer more than reassurance.

“Mary, hold her head for me. Just keep talking to her.”

Mary knelt in front of Josie, stroking her rough coat, trying to keep the anxiety out of her voice as she murmured reassurances. Rachel moved around to the doe’s hindquarters, and when Josie began straining with another contraction, Rachel said, “I can see the head!” She grasped the protruding legs with one hand, worked the other slowly, gently into the birth canal, while Josie panted and heaved, and finally on the surge of a last contraction, Rachel pulled the kid out.

A double handful of wet hair slicked in the remains of its embryonic sac, and Mary’s pent breath came out in a sigh of relief. Rachel shouted, “Give me a towel, Mary—hurry!” And when Mary brought a terrycloth towel from the shelf on the wall, Rachel cleared the kid’s throat and nose with her finger and toweled it vigorously, smiling at its outraged bleating. Then she laid the kid under Josie’s nose, and the doe began licking it. It was a black buck, so small and shaky Mary couldn’t believe it might survive. Yet second by second it drew strength from its mother’s tongue, and soon it was staggering to its feet. Rachel cleared Josie’s teat with a few pulls, then squeezed the first drops of thick colostrum into the kid’s mouth.

The second kid, a doe, came with relative ease, and Mary was ready with a clean towel. Rachel surrendered the kid to her, and Mary rubbed it, laughing at the novel sensation of this new life warm and vital in her hands. It was entirely perfect, black like its sibling, its exotic, horizontal-pupiled eyes bright and strangely knowing. Almost reluctantly, Mary offered the kid to its mother.

A few minutes later Josie rid herself of the placentas, and Rachel wrapped the pink-gray masses in newspaper and took them outside to bury them. Mary stayed in the stall, watched Josie licking, nudging, crooning to her newborn, while they wobbled about on fragile legs. So natural and inevitable, this age-old cycle of birth, and Mary knew she must one day take part in it. These infant animals were exquisitely beautiful in some sense that transcended aesthetics, and her yearning for that beauty was at this moment intense and undeniable.

She looked up, distracted by a rustling in the straw on the earth floor of the barn. Rachel had returned and stood leaning on the stall’s gate. She said, “Josie, you did yourself proud.” The doe was too occupied with her offspring even to look up. Rachel took her watch out of her jeans pocket where she had put it for safekeeping during the birthing. It was a mechanical watch with a dial on which the date was revealed in a tiny window. She insisted she liked to see time in a circle; it reflected the realities of existence on a spherical, rotating world. Now, as she buckled the strap to her wrist, she frowned. “Damn, it’s nearly three. We’d better try Connie and Jim again.”

On their way to the house, they were joined by Topaz and Shadow, who had kept their distance from the barn for the last few hours. Goats had no tolerance for dogs, nor any compunction about butting or trampling them. Once inside the house, Rachel washed her hands and put fresh water down for the dogs, then went to the telephone in the north studio. Within a minute, she returned to the kitchen, where Mary was at the sink downing a glass of water.

“Still busy. Damn phones are probably out of order again.” She took the glass Mary offered and drank half of it, then went back to the telephone.

Mary felt her mood of quiet elation undermined by a whisper of apprehension as she followed Rachel into the studio. She listened to Rachel’s end of the conversation, heard the name Joanie. One of the nurses at the clinic. When Rachel hung up, her eyes were narrowed, focused inward. “Joanie hasn’t heard from Connie today, but she didn’t expect to. It’s Connie’s day off. I think… maybe we’d better walk down to their house.”

“But if you got a busy signal…” Yet Mary could find no assurance in that to dispel the fear taking root in her mind.

“It probably means Connie or Jim were on the phone when we called.” She mustered a smile as she added: “We’ll just go check on them, and if everything’s okay, they can give us a cup of coffee.”

Mary heard the dry, gravel crunch of their footfalls as she looked south at the distant, silent blocks of houses. They might all have been empty for any sign of life in them. She turned, stared up at the Acres house, and stopped, realizing she was holding her breath at the same moment she realized what sound she was listening for and not hearing: Sparky’s bark. They were close enough to the house for Sparky to be aware of them and raise his usual strident alarm. She glanced at Rachel, who had stopped with her. She seemed to be listening, too. Then, as if Mary had asked a question, she nodded and continued toward the house.

Jim’s brown van was gone. There was no garage, so if the van wasn’t in the driveway, it wasn’t here. The dogs paused a few yards ahead in the driveway, sniffing the wind. Then Topaz curled her lips to show her teeth, Shadow retreated toward Rachel with an uncertain whine. And Mary felt her skin crawl with dread. She shivered as she walked with Rachel along the tree-shadowed path to the south side of the house. The front door was open a few inches. She thought, I don’t want to go in there .