Susan Kiernan-Lewis - Free Falling

“Dierdre said they should be fine in their coop for the winter,” he said, reaching for another muffin.

“I had no idea it would snow this early in Ireland.” Sarah said as she poured her own tea and sat down.

“Dierdre said people are leaving the area,” David said.

“What do you mean? They’re leaving Balinagh? Why? Is it better in the cities?”

“I guess they think so. Or maybe they’re just moving to be closer to family. I mean, look at us, here. It’s really hard just making breakfast happen. Most people wouldn’t live like this if they had a choice.”

“I don’t like the feeling of being out here by ourselves.”

John hopped up from the table.

“I’m tacking up Star,” he said, shrugging into his jacket. “Gonna check on the sheep in the far pasture.”

Sarah frowned. Give it to God Give it to God Give it …She looked at David.

“Yeah, I’ll go with him,” he said, shivering in anticipation of the cold. “Wait up, sport,” he said. But John was already gone.

“It is hard here,” Sarah said.

“Yeah,” David said. “But unlike everyone else, we don’t have a choice.”

He pulled on his jacket and one glove, tucked another muffin into his pocket and followed his son to the barn.

Sarah put the dishes in the sink and punched down the dough for the bread she was planning for lunch. She was going to serve up the goat butter she had made earlier. John was right. They were all going to get rickets.

An hour later, she wandered out to the barn to pat a few horses’ noses. It made her feel more confident the more she was around them. She picked up the chicken feed bowl and visited the coop first. The three chickens were huddled on their perches eyeing her with malevolence, it seemed to her. Hey, I don’t make the weather , she thought, tossing them a spray of seed which they ignored. She looked around for the rooster. He was probably strutting around outside somewhere. She felt under each hen and brought away two eggs which she tucked one in each of the pockets of her jacket. She felt as proud as if she’d laid them herself. Fresh eggs meant a decent meal even if there was nothing in the rabbit traps today. She heard a noise behind her and whirled around. David stood in the door, cradling his hand to his chest.

“Oh, my God, you gave me a start,” Sarah said, double checking that her jerking hadn’t broken the eggs.

“I saw the coop door opened and just wanted to make sure it hadn’t been left open accidentally,” David said as they both moved out into the sunshine.

“Why aren’t you with John?” Sarah asked. “I thought you were going with him to check on the sheep.”

“Sarah, he doesn’t need me. He’s fine.” He held up his bandaged hand. “With this, it was more trouble than it was worth to get up on the horse. He didn’t have the patience to wait and I didn’t think it was necessary.”

“This is not a safe place to be wandering about anymore, David. I thought Dierdre made that clear to you.” Sarah tried to fight down the surge of fear that began to radiate from her.

“We can’t live like scared rabbits, either, Sarah.”

“ Alive scared rabbits,” she said, suddenly furious with him. “He’s barely ten. You let him do too much. And why didn’t you tell me about the gun?”

“I thought you’d do pretty much what you’re doing right now. You tend to be jittery. I didn’t want to add to your anxiety.”

The arrogance of him thinking he was less anxious than she was! Sarah was a second away from cracking one of the eggs on his head when they both heard the staccato pounding of the pony’s hooves on the hard packed dirt road behind them.

“He’s back,” David said, frowning, as he looked over her shoulder.

Sarah emerged from the coop to see John ride up to them, wheel his pony around and slide to the ground. His hair was wild and blowing, his eyes huge and his cheeks red from the cold.

“Dad!” he said. “You gotta come!”

Sarah grabbed his arm.

“What is it? What’s happened?”

“It’s the sheep. Something’s got at ‘em,” John said, his eyes wild and darting from parent to parent. “One of ‘em’s…one of ‘em got killed.” Her son looked like he might cry and Sarah felt her stomach tighten.

“Okay, show me,” David said heading toward the barn to saddle Rocky. John shoved his pony’s reins to Sarah and ran after this father.

Sarah stood there with the two eggs in her pocket and the pony’s reins in her hands. She watched them enter the barn and wondered when it was that John had stopped wearing his hard hat.

“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?