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“Goats?” Climbing in beside him, I shake my head emphatically. “The last thing I need is more livestock to worry about. Besides, I’ve already got a barn cat.”
“Cats don’t count as company.” With the trailer in tow, he drives out to the pasture even more carefully than before. “Goats are actually easier than sheep. Friendlier, too.”
Sam backs the trailer through the gap we’ve left in the fencing. There’s a tense moment after we drop the ramp when it looks like one of the sheep might escape. I remember reading in “A Woman’s Place” how Evelyn enlisted her neighbor’s dog, Charlie, to keep the creatures in line. I could’ve reached out to Joe, I suppose, though I doubt a yapping Jack Russell would’ve helped our cause.
With some whistling and waving on Sam’s part, we manage to get the sheep corralled before closing the fence behind them. The grant also covered a solar pump to move pond water to a trough in the field; Sam helps me set that up, too, then shows me how to make the final connection that sends current through the wires.
“Will the electricity hurt them?” I ask.
“They can feel it for sure, but it’s a very low voltage. This kind of fencing is more about creating a psychological barrier. Once they’ve been shocked a couple of times, the sheep will learn to avoid it. Besides, they’re too busy eating to want to get away.”
Indeed, the sheep have spread out with their noses to the ground, tearing up their favorite grasses.
“They look great out in the green field like that.” Mary Oliver’s line about soft animals drifts through my mind. “Like little clouds.”
Sam tilts his head and gazes across the pasture. “I think the land likes having them here.”
I smile at his personification. “I think so, too.”
When we get back to the barn, Sam raises the prospect of goats again while he unhitches the trailer. “I know a homesteader who had a bumper crop of Nigerian dwarf kids back in March. They’re focused on dairy production, though, so they can’t keep all the bucks. I think they’d rather sell them as pets than send them to the halal butcher. Here, take a look.”
Sam holds out his phone. I squint at a video of gamboling little goats. “They are super cute,” I have to admit.
“They’ll be at the Homestead Festival,” he says, “if you want to meet them.”
“Homestead Festival?”
“It’s the last Saturday of the month, at the Schuywich fairgrounds.”
“That’s September twenty-sixth, isn’t it?” I ask, the date tugging at my conscience.
Sam’s impressed. “Are you one of those people who know the day of the week for any date in history?”
“No.” I don’t bother to explain that tenure applications are always due on the last Friday of September. The twenty-fifth day of the ninth month of 2020 is a date that’s been marked on my calendar for over four years. Even though it’s my choice not to apply, I’m worried I’ll feel like shit all that day; having something to look forward to might help. “What’s a Homestead Festival?”
“Here.” Sam rummages in the cab of his truck for a flyer.
I read over the handout he gives me. It promises a low-risk outdoor activity where homesteaders can share their experiences and sell their products. Looking at the lonely ram, sole inhabitant now of the metal-fenced yard outside the sheep pens, I say, “I guess it couldn’t hurt to meet the goats.”
“You’ll love them, I promise,” Sam says. “You could set up a table, too, if you want.”
“With what?”
“Books, maps, prints. Even if you didn’t sell much, it would be good for you to connect with the community.”
I consider his suggestion. “All I need is a folding table and a few boxes of books, right?”
“That’s it.” Sam’s smile lifts his mask right up to his eyes. “I’ll be at a table, too, for the ag extension. I could pick you up, if you want?”
Today, I’ve ridden beside him in the cab of his pickup for the handful of minutes it took to travel between the barn and the pasture and back again. Even with the windows rolled down, Sam’s scent—an earthy mixture of lanolin and licorice and lemongrass—was strong enough to penetrate my mask. After months of social distancing, the proximity left me unsettled. I can’t imagine such intimacy stretching out mile after mile.
“No, thanks, Sam. I’ll meet you there.”
“Oh, okay, sure. Well, you’ve got a bookshop to open, don’t you? I’ll get out of your hair.” Sam climbs into his truck and shuts the door. Below his farewell smile, the scar on his chin catches the light. How strange, I think, that this man I barely know will carry the mark of a moment with me for as long as he shall live.
As I watch him drive away, a hard nudge knocks my elbow from where I’ve propped it on the metal fence. The ram’s woolly head lifts my hand. I scratch between the nubs of his polled horns. “Now we’re both lonely, aren’t we? I’ll see what I can do about that.”
There’s barely enough time to get cleaned up before opening Red Barn Books for the last time this year. As I jog toward the house, I think about how Sam’s been cast as the wayward child in the story of his family’s success, even though “local representative of the agricultural extension” seems like a respectable occupation to me. I count the syllables of his job description—seventeen. Comparing all that to Sam’s simple name leads me to name to myself some of the enormous things the sound of a single syllable can evoke. Grief. Death. Love. Birth. A great big barn. The whole blue sky. My thrice-hurt heart.
