But then I thought of a better solution. Unrolling my presentation, I carefully went over it, editing out some of the phrases that Charley had called my attention to. Then I rolled it up again and wrote Claudia Hambro’s name and address on it.
When the bus reached Inverness Park, I got off and walked up the road to Mrs. Hambro’s house. Without making any noise that would disturb anyone in the house, I slipped the pages of the presentation under the door. Then I left.
After I had gotten almost all the way to Inverness — walking took much more time than using the bus– I suddenly realized that I hadn’t put my own name on the presentation. For a moment I halted and toyed with the idea of going back. But then I realized that Mrs. Hambro would know whom it was from; there would be a telepathic communication between her and me, as soon as she saw the presentation. And, in the presentation itself, there were Fay’s name and Nat Anteil’s name, of course. So she would have no trouble discovering who had left it.
Cheered up, I reached the house with rapid steps. I had actually opened the front door and started inside before I remembered, all at once, that in a month the world was coming to an end, on a date that I had decided, and that all these people, Charley and Fay and Nat Anteil and Gwen — all of them would be dead anyhow. And so in a sense it did not matter. It did not matter whether I got the facts to Charley or not. It did not matter what Charley did as a result of knowing those facts. Nothing any of them did mattered. They were just so much radioactive dust, the whole bunch of them. Just handfuls of black, radioactive, ashy dust.
That realization, that picture of them, stayed in my mind vividly for days after that. I could not get it out of my mind, even if I wanted to; several times I tried to think of something else, but that picture came right back.
(thirteen )
One afternoon, when Nat Anteil drove over to the Hume home, the two girls greeted him excitedly as he parked his car.
“One of the sheep had a lamb!” Bonnie shouted, as he got out of the car. “She had a lamb just a couple of minutes ago!”
“We saw it through the window!” Elsie shouted at him. “The Bluebirds saw it; we were baking bread and we saw four black feet and I said, Look there’s a lamb, and it was. Mommy says it’s a female lamb, it’s a girl lamb. They’re out in back on the patio looking at it.” The girls skipped and raced along beside him as he went through the house and opened the back door onto the patio.
In an iron and canvas patio chair Fay sat in her yellow shorts and sandals and halter, sipping a martini. “One of the ewes gave birth,” she said, over her shoulder. “While the Bluebirds were still here.”
“The children told me,” he said.
She continued to gaze out over the field, past the fence and the badminton net. After a moment he made out the sight of the ewe. She lay on her side, like a great bag of gray and black. He could not see the lamb. The only motion was an occasional twitch of one of the ewe’s ears.
“That means they’re agitated,” Fay said. “When they twitch their ears. It’s a sign of distress in sheep.”
Presently the ewe struggled to her feet and he saw a tiny black spot on the grass. It was the lamb. The ewe nudged it, first with her nose and then with one of her hoofs. The lamb arose, shaking, and the ewe nosed it toward her sacks of milk.
“It’s already nursed,” Fay said. “I shut the dog in the bathroom, so if you go in there don’t let it out. Last year that god damn dog killed all the lambs. She found them when they were just born. They evidently still had the blood on them, and she apparently thought they were just meat.”
“I see,” he said. He sat down on a wicker chair to watch with her. The two girls, after hanging around awhile, went off on their tricycles.
Fay said, “It looks to me like she’s going to have another. See how fat she still is.”
“Don’t you think it’s just the milk?” he said.
“No,” she said.
Later, at sunset, while he was bringing the girls’ tricycles indoors, he saw the ewe lying on her side, again. This time the near part of her shuddered rhythmically, and he realized that Fay had been right. He went indoors to the kitchen. At the stove Fay was mixing a salad.
“You were night,” he said. “She’s in labor.”
Fay said, “It’ll be born dead. If there’s more than an hour lapse between births the second one is always dead.” She left her salad and went to get her coat.
“Maybe not,” he said, knowing nothing about sheep but wanting to say something to cheer her.
Taking the lantern –the sky had become dark and stars were appearing– they walked out across the pasture, to the ewe. Now she had gotten up and was cropping grass. Her lamb lay nearby, its head up.
“I’ll call the vet,” Fay said.
She telephoned the vet and talked with him for a long time. Nat wandered about the house, glancing out now and then at the field. Now he could see only the outline of the eucalyptus trees far off, along the highway.
Appearing from her bedroom, Fay said, “He says to call him back in an hour if nothing happens. He said possibly we could get her to walk around; that might speed up the birth. But he agrees that if it’s been this long there isn’t much chance.”
They had dinner. And then, before cleaning the table, they again put on their coats, got the lantern, and went out onto the field.
The light flashed first on one ewe, then another. “No,” Fay said, continuing to walk. “Flash it over there,” she said, pointing.
In the light he saw the ewe standing up, trailing behind her a web of black. The web, sagging like a cloth hammock, led to a pool of wet black in the grass. To him it looked like refuse, something voided. But Fay, walking toward it, said in a flat, empty voice, “It’s a dead lamb. A big lamb.” Bending down she said, “A perfect lamb. Looks like a male. It must have just been born.” With both hands she began to strip the bloody, wet web from it. Mucus trails covered the lamb’s face. “A male,” she said, turning the lamb over.
“Too bad,” he said, feeling no emotion, only a physical reaction, a revulsion to the blood and mucus web. Not wanting to touch the thing he hung back, now feeling guilt.
Fay reached into the dead lamb’s mouth and opened its jaws. Then she began pressing its nib-cage, again and again. “It’s still warm,” she said. “Usually I come out and find their stiff bodies. This one was too big. It took five hours. He was cut off too long.” Now she had lifted the lamb by its hind legs and was slapping it. “You do this with baby puppies,” she said. “No,” she said. “It’s hopeless. Too bad. A perfect big buck lamb. Isn’t that strange? It gets so far, five months growing, and then it dies. What a shame.” She continued to massage it and clean its face and slap at it. The ewe, with her surviving lamb, had gone farther off. “They know when it’s dead,” Fay said. “Sometimes they’ll nuzzle it for an hour, trying to get it on its feet. She knows this one is dead. She isn’t trying to get it up.” Now she stood up. “Look at my hands,” she said. “Blood all over them.”
He said, “You want me to put it in the garbage can?”
“It’ll have to be buried,” she said.
Now he did not feel so squeamish. He picked it up by its hind feet. How heavy it was. Carrying it before him, he walked back toward the house. Fay came a step or two behind, flashing the light for him.
“Probably she could only have nursed one anyhow,” she said. “We’ve brought them in when they were too weak to get up, and washed them and dried them and fed them kano syrup and water and sent them back out. We never got a buck lamb. They’re so fragile. There’s always a good chance a buck lamb will die — they’re too big to get out.”
Using the pitch fork and shovel he dug a hole near the cypress trees, where the soil was moist.
“Anyhow,” he said, “you still have the other one.”