Yelling for Cub, Dellarobia ran and slid down the hill in a direct path for the back door. Amazingly, he appeared there. She sat on her cold bottom, panting, still fifty feet or more from the house. “Get up here!” she yelped. “Get that bucket in the barn, the emergency stuff. No, bring towels and hot water. Bring that hot milk on the stove.”
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“Damn it, Cub, just do it.” She rolled onto her knees and clambered back up the slick path she’d just compressed, a perfect sledding route. Without ever fully gaining her feet she made it back to the puddle of lamb, swearing at the mother that stood blandly chewing now, some distance away from this thing that had definitely not happened to her. Dellarobia flung off her gloves and touched the dark creature. Its heat shocked her, the warmth of the place it slid out of one minute ago. She unwound her wool scarf and scrubbed the lamb out of the milky caul, then cleared its eyes and nostrils, but it was not breathing. It was limp as a rag when she lifted it, legs dangling. Dellarobia shut her eyes tightly so tears wouldn’t freeze in them. It looked like a toy, with big Yoda ears, the legs and tender hooves perfectly formed, the body covered with glossy black curls.
She’d never known Cub could move so fast. Huffing loudly he came, with kitchen towels slung over his shoulder, hustling sideways up the hill carrying her Revere Ware pot by its handle, the milk. By some miracle he stayed upright with that. She ran the last few paces to meet him and grab the pan and towels. The milk was still very warm. What other man, ever again, would just do as she commanded, no questions asked? She felt overwhelmed with love and loss and nostalgia for this bond that was not even yet in her past, while she sopped a towel in the warm milk and watched Cub see the lamb. Watched his face fall open like a glove compartment, helplessness and sorrow jammed inside. She could lose her nerve again. She always did.
“I don’t know, Cub, I don’t know,” she kept repeating. Hester had predicted she would fail at this. She rubbed the little ringlet-covered body, scrubbing hard, like shining up the kids after their baths, warming this corpse with the soaked towel and then with her own breath. She blew into its tiny damp nose, then compressed the small belly, feeling for life, but felt nothing and nothing. The small head lolled, no hint of resistance. The body was already starting to go cold.
“Don’t you dare die on me. Damn it!” She wound a dry towel around the hind legs for a grip, it was so very slippery, and staggered to her feet. “Okay,” she said to Cub. “Okay, watch out, stand back.” She stomped out a tiny arena in the snow and spread her boots wide and began to turn, gaining traction as she could, swinging the lamb in a circle. By the third revolution it flung out like a girl’s ponytail on the merry-go-round, she felt liftoff. Its small weight pulled as she turned and kept turning, mindless of her own voice as she thrummed out a pulse of curses: Breathe, damn it, damn it, damn it, come on, breathe!
When she fell on the ground, the world kiltered on its axis. The boughs of the forest behind her lurched, blackish and mossy looking. The sun creeping up behind them was a crystalline brightness popping and shimmying through the glass branches.
“Dellarobia, what in the hell?” Cub asked finally. Or she finally understood what he was asking. He was beside her on his knees. She sat up.
“Here, put it against your skin. To warm it up.”
Cub unzipped his jacket and thrust the lamb under his sweatshirt, wincing only slightly at its slimy chill. He held it there.
“Oh, my God, Cub. Where are the kids?”
“They’re fine. The stove’s off. They’re watching TV.”
“Did you tell them not to get off the couch? Was Cordie eating anything?”
“They’re fine,” he repeated.
Dellarobia fell back against the snow. A snow angel, waiting for the crazy world to give her an all-clear for landing. Shortly she sat up again.
“Let me see it,” she said. He extracted the limp thing, and she held it close to her face, watching. “Cub. Its heart is beating, I swear to God.” Faint and fast, a pulse fluttered through the damp curved belly against her cold hand. No muscle tone, no flicker of eyelids, no sign of life, but that pulse. She stuck her index finger down its throat and scooped at a viscous phlegm that completely filled the narrow, serrated shaft of the little gullet. She felt the sandpaper texture of its tongue. Faintly it pulled against her finger, suckling. Dellarobia exhaled a loud cry that could have passed either for pain or laughter. She rewrapped the hind legs in the towel and got up to swing it again.
This time they both shouted, Cub begging her to stop. But she didn’t, even though this flinging felt murderous to a mother who’d cradled feeble infant necks and sheltered soft fontanelles. Dellarobia felt reckless, turning and turning, swinging that child until she lost her feet again. She lay panting. Cub looked both outraged and deeply anxious, basically positive that she’d lost her mind.
“Go call Hester,” she said. “Ask her what to do if a lamb’s born not breathing.”
“Jesus, Dellarobia. What are you doing?”
“I don’t know what I’m doing. Just go!” she screamed.
Cub fled. Dellarobia massaged the little body again, noticing it was a female, then tucked it under her shirt and lay back down until the worst of her dizziness passed. It seemed fully possible she might kill something here. She sat up and cradled it in both hands, watching. Faintly it moved, moved, the narrow head lifting at an angle, tilting the outsize ears. She listened to its belly and could faintly hear breathing, not wheezy like a croup but stuffy, like a head cold. She blew into the nostrils and pressed the belly again, again, compelled by the near sensation of breath. She rubbed and massaged and warmed it until Cub returned and collapsed beside her.
“Mother says if there’s no sign of life when it comes out, it’s dead.”
“You came back up here to tell me that.”
“That’s what she said. She says lay it in the straw with the mother in the barn. If you let it be dead with the ewe awhile, that helps them some way.”
Dellarobia glared. “Helps who?”
“I don’t know. I’m sorry.” Cub retreated to the familiar grounds of remorse and insufficiency, the terms of his existence, ratified by marriage. He could construct defeat from any available material and live inside it, but for once Dellarobia didn’t go there with him. She was going ahead. She found she could not abandon the effort. Accepting death, she’d done that, but here was another story: bringing life in. Not good-bye but hello, screaming it, please. She massaged the dark curly hide until her own knuckles glowed red against it, and when she paused, the lamb tried to lift its head again. It opened its eyes and looked out. Life arrived. Dellarobia began to cry, yelping sobs.