Ross Raisin - Gods Own Country

The sheep gave out a weak noise as I straddled over her. All the struggling had taken the banter out the old lass — a rannock, I knew, for she hadn’t more than a couple of teeth left. Her time was mostly counted. I took hold her haunches and hefted her up, but she was too heavy, she wouldn’t lift. I hardly shifted her, and she wriggled out my grip. It wasn’t so easy as all that, lifting an old rannock like her while you’re balancing on slippery poles and there’s a grum-looking female giving you the death eyes. I stood straight and had a think what to do.

Perhaps you should get your dad, said Chickenhead.

I looked at her, and saw behind that the simple article in the car was goating about, knelt on the seat, singing, his hand shaped into a big nose pressed on his face. I couldn’t hear him — the glass was eight foot thick, to protect from all the robbers there were round these parts — but I knew what he was saying. Bogeyman! Bogeyman! Bogeyman!

Will you get him, then. She still had her hands on her hips. Your dad, will you go and find him?

I’ll manage myself.

I took another hold the back-end, facing otherways this time, looking away from them two staring at me. She’s a bonny one, you know, your daughter, she doesn’t much take after you. You wouldn’t picture her with me, would you? Wouldn’t picture her with the Bogeyman, with a bastard-looking rapist farmer, shows what you know, eh?

Go on, you almost had it then.

My forearms were smeared with muck, and I’d done my back. I decided to try the head-end.

You’ll have to help me here, old girl, I cuttered soft into the sheep’s ear as I bent down to her head, fixing a look ahead of me. Bogeyman! Bogeyman! I heaved her up by the neck, and it seemed she’d understood me because she started scrabbling her front legs and one of them popped out. Bogeyman! Bogeyman! I pulled at the other leg, and when that came free I shunted her forward and she clambered oft’ the cattle-grid, hobbling into the field.

Finally, said Chickenhead. Thank you, and she turned off to get in the car. Thank you, now I can get home and put tea on, and blatherskite about that rude Marsdyke boy. As they drove off, the kid upped his Bogeyman dance, braver now the vehicle was too far away for me to do anything to him. Oh, you’ll never believe what he said to me, that boy. Ask it to move, he said. I’ve never known anything like it, can you believe that? No, Mum, he’s awful — shaking her head, a great frown on her — you must be very upset, Mummy, you sour-faced cow.

♦

The ram arrived not long after, ready to tup our ewes. Me and Sal watched on while the truck parked up, and he stepped on to the walkway Father had made, leading to a holding pen in the field. He paraded down it like a boxer, all eyes on him. Hello, I’m here to rut the women, so of course I’ll be needing my supper soon, I’ve a big week ahead.

It was Norman’s animal. Each winter, he got hired out a week each to Turnbull, then usselves, then Deltons, so we had him a week early this year, on account of Turnbull clogging it. Deltons always got him last, after us, when he’d passed his fettle and was lagged and spent. It was a fair champion job he had, mind, that tup, rutting all the females in the area, and you could tell it’d got to his head. He was always scratching his great curly horns on walls and fenceposts — look at me, look how fine I am, no wonder I have such a way with the ladies. You could be certain he didn’t need the shite cutting off its arse.

Father had built a small house out of old wood and tarpaulin for the tup to sleep in, with a holding pen all round that took up half the first field. We always kept him there a few days before letting him into the flock, to get him mooded right. And we always kept him company with No Bollocks, the wether, for he got too frothed up if he was left alone. He steadied up when he was with the wether — poor castrated sod who kept himself pot-of-one the rest the year waiting for his charver the tup to come and stay, though I didn’t know what the bugger it was them two had to talk about. Been up to much lately, oh, you’ve been rutting have you, that’s nice, I don’t much go in for that myself these days, not since my knackers were sliced off.

Sometimes I went to the pen and watched him. He took no notice of me, even as he stepped through my shadow, he just paced round the rim of the pen, while the wether stayed indoors tidying the hayrack. After a few minutes of pacing he’d stop, sniff the air, figuring where the ewes were. Then he’d belt his head against a post and glare at the barn, as he knew they were other side that wall, going about their business without heeding he was outside and they were all about to be bred — them that wanted to, and them that didn’t, it didn’t much matter to him.

I stood leant over the pen one afternoon, long enough I had pink grooves on my elbows. I was watching him pound at the turf with his front hooves. He’d made a small hole by the fence, trying to dig his way out, or bating his lust.

Come on, Sal, I said, nudging the warm lump by my feet, and when she’d shook herself ready we set off on a wander.

A few months later these fields would be full of lambs pestering at their mothers’ teats, a hubbleshoo of bleats filling the air mixed in with the cuckoo and the chack-chack of fieldfares. Now, though, everywhere was hushed and cold. Not an item of life anyplace save for me and Sal, and a mawngy crow sat in a tree gawping into space. We kept on until we reached the new fence, and I framed up the house. She’d got back from school a half hour before, I’d seen the car. I bided at the fence, watching for when she’d come out with the coal scuttle and walk to the outhouse.

We’d be back with the secret meetings soon. She wasn’t daft. She knew it’d look aslew, the two of us together right after we’d stole Sal back, specially as her parents were friendly with the tomatoes. She was waiting until it was safe again, so I was fair content to know her from a distance, for the moment.

I stared at the spot of wall that was her bedroom, the small black square of window too far out of range, and I pictured her inside, going about her business, changing out of her school clothes. Music playing, singing along to it, looking at herself in the mirror, a fug of soaps and sprays and the smell of her body floating through the room.

I was so lost in her bedroom it was a few seconds before I heard the sound, the coal scuttle clanking as she came outdoors and walked round the front of the house, until she came into view, with a boy. He had the school uniform on. They went into the outhouse together, and even from inside there, where I couldn’t see them, that laugh of hers came dancing up the hill toward me, jinnying and teasing round my ears — you again is it, still watching her, are you? Anyway I must get on, oh it was a funny one, that, a real funny one — and it danced off over the Moors.

We stood watching through the trees. The curtains were shut, course, but I didn’t move my eye off that top window. Sometimes I thought I could hear voices laughing, but it was likely just the leaves chuntering with the wind. I couldn’t tell anything from the outside, the curtain kept shut, nobody coming outdoors except Chickenhead, once, to fetch something out the car. She had a blue apron on, she’d been scouring the cookbooks, well now, what shall I cook them? Best wait till they come down, I wonder if he’s heard the one about the cattle-grid yet?

We fucked off from there before long. Ran down the hillside chasing rabbits and kicking at thistles all the way down until we got to the river. It was low again, since the rains had left, rocks poking out all the way across. Well, Sal, looks like we’re done for now. Only thing for it is to swim across, the tomato army’s gaining on us, they’re not far behind now. I threw a stick in the water and she jumped after, splashing across with it clenched in her mouth until she got over and looked back, the head cocked, befuddled. You aren’t coming too? Course I am, I said, and I stepped my way over the rocks, slipping a few times into the water and wetting my kecks up to the knee. There was a glishy blue stone near the other bank, and I picked it up and rubbed it between my fingers. I’ll be having that, thanks, and I snuck it in my pocket. Then we made our way up the other hillside, an itch creeping up my thigh from the sog in my kecks. We kept upward, passing near the House of Breasts, but Sal didn’t notice, she was too busy jamming her head down rabbit holes to care about that.