Susan Kiernan-Lewis - Free Falling

“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?

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.

David went to Seamus and Dierdre’s at least once a week and usually twice. He always came back exhausted but arms full of preserves or late fall garden harvest and instructions from Dierdre to Sarah—on how to weave, the best place to dig for peat, and better ways to make goat cheese. When he was at home, he checked the rabbit traps, gutted and skinned the rabbits, cleaned the stalls, and constantly checked or mended the security of the doors and fences. If he could stay awake, he spent his evenings writing the philosophy book he had always been too busy to work on back home. With John, he had created a movable chicken pen that allowed the birds to spend every day on a fresh patch of grass. With effort, it could be moved with both of them dragging it. On the days that David was gone, John could hook it up to his pony and move it by himself.

For Sarah, her day began before it was light out. In the dark, she would pray. Later, she lit the cook stove and made the tea. At first light, she often wrote to her parents. If she had yeast she made muffins or if not made biscuits for everyone’s breakfast. She kept the cottage spotless—not easy to do with so much of their lives happening outside in the dirt and the wind. She cleaned and mended their clothes. She kept an inventory of the food cellar and made careful plans for their future meals. She milked the little goat daily and made bread dough every other day. She went in the barn often to check the horses for injuries. Evenings, she knit or read aloud. Sometimes she tested John on his Latin or French vocabulary. And she rode Dan at least a little bit even if it was only in the paddock every afternoon, rain or shine.

There was snow on the ground this morning and Sarah was glad that David had not tried to come home the night before. The sun was up and made mesmerizing sparkles on the snow. She began the ritual of starting a fire in the cookstove.