Between the deer getting into the green beans while Lucky was with us as we took Maude’s truck garden extras to the farmer’s market and vandals breaking down tree limbs getting to the peaches nearest to the road, and every single wild, fruit eating bird in North America zeroing in on our orchard, we certainly didn’t lack for things to do! Plus we had to get school clothes because the prospect of trying to reach around the growing mound in her belly to sew us clothes that would be out dated by next week was simply beyond anything Mom was prepared to do and she let us know so in no uncertain terms! Johnny hit the ceiling when he found out he could only put his expensive miniature race cars on hold until Spring because he had to buy jeans and undershorts and socks, and yes, I admit, I hoped that playing ‘The Good Child’ would allow me to get the extra skirt I wanted-it didn’t-Mom said if I could learn to clean a carburetor I could learn to sew at school…parents! A misbegotten and shortsighted species I fear!!!!! I wanted the clothes to go to school THIS year not next year!!!! But she was having trouble with her feet swelling after the first stop so I’m afraid that pouting only helped me. Even the rare treat of eating at McDonalds while Mom embarrassed us both hugely by sighing as she propped her feet up on the unused chair was hardly the delight it would have been under other circumstances. When Bonnie and Howie’s Mom joined us, we managed to escape while the adults commiserated like they enjoyed being miserable if there were two of them, and we met Tiffany and her Mom shopping for shoes, so the three of us slipped the parental constraints giggled ourselves silly and shared out charge so we all had enough for an Orange Julius as the Mall finally closed at nine p.m. Tiffany’s mother picked us up on her way to work and dropped us off at her house, reminding Tif that she had noisy neighbors on either side that would report any signs of partying or boys at her house and that she would call unexpectedly to make sure we were still there, which we endured because parents seem to think such lectures are really going to make a difference-NOT!

            Then we took old blankets out doors and laid out our backs, talking about keeping exotic pets like Spider’s Breath, or the endangered species of Big Cats who outgrew their owners like Mrs. Ferringer used to rescue; the thickly clustered constellations and stars hovering near, boys, s.e.x. at which we deemed ourselves experts since all three of us remained as untouched as the day were born, and then talk got around to having babies and we yawned ourselves to sleep sharing the most horrific birthing stories from our family’s darkest closets; then slept out of doors till a wandering raccoon frightened us all so badly we raced indoors and had to take turns doing the potty dance while we waited at the only bathroom’s door. 

            The next big event that I can remember other than the small bumps and pitfalls of being the odd person out at a new Church where everyone had grown up knowing each other was the autumn morning when we were sitting out in the garage washing three days collections of fresh eggs that we kept stored in buckets in the walk in refrigerator. As it cooled, the hens laid fewer eggs and were much more protective of the clutch they were trying to hatch.  It was so unusual to have a car pull up the lengthy path from the paved road that we all paused, sitting up straighter on the backless stools to watch the car approach. It was a different color than what we expected so I was both surprised and a little disappointed to find out it was only Maude, until a lean man in new clothes got out of the passenger’s side and looked around as he stood by the car, as if he were inspecting the property to buy it! I tried not to allow the bad feelings to rise up so quickly but I was just getting used to the hard work and routines that went with trying to raise several cash crops on the same small piece of land. He tried smiling at us to defuse the hostility but Mom was the only one with experience at hiding her true thoughts with a polite smile.

            I know its an inconvenience, but I need the Girl to come watch the sheep. If she can.  “  ‘Aunt’ Maude added slowly, seeing my mother’s reluctance and my lengthy silence at the suggestion. I was looking at her, imaging all the tattoos I’d heard about that were suppose to cover her arms and upper torso from her days leading the female half of a bike gang in West Chicago. We owed her so much I amused I’d have to go that the please and thank you’s were mere civilities but until I’d already put on my coat and driven back to my Uncle’s house in total silence I didn’t know the reason for it. My parents were of the generation that kept kids in the dark if they didn’t have to know something scary and the fact that there were two hungry younger hunters on the loose out there…well, that’s still pretty scary! Their mother had been shot illegally, but dead is dead, and the main body of the group wanted to find and trap them before they hurt someone or starved to death. There’d already been one incident with some people poaching firewood from our wood lot who’d gotten badly scratched up and a hefty fine from the Judge since they were cutting in areas preserved for the Spotted Owl – the only loop hole the Conversations could find so they could protect the Old Growth forests on the steeps sides of the magnificently wild area surrounding us. Maude shove a rifle in my hands, heard my whimpering excuse that I didn’t know how to use it, told me to ‘Aim, hold my breath and squeeze the trigger’ before it got too close to me.

            “  Yeah, right!  “  I thought disdainfully. “ I’ll let the experts do their job and I’ll do mine! “

            I was able to bring Lucky with me since Uncle Charley had left last night with Tug and Spike and the main body of the trappers. Now that I would have enjoyed sharing! I couldn’t even begin to imagine what had gone on getting that group ready, or riding all day with a packhorse following me! It sounded so romantic! But we were stuck with eighteen mature ewes in full coat and only four lambs, a sobering reminder of why Johnny had been so quiet all weekend! The sheep seemed to think our only thought was seizing them by the neck and throttling them for they ran around the pen in sheer terror and after ten minutes of not being able to get them out the open gate, they were mighty close! I was red in the face and about at the limit of patience when the lead Ewe suddenly noticed the gate to the pasture was open and she fled, leaping over a small stone or a spider, and sure enough, more than half of the remaining sheep who followed her instinctively mimicked her gesture as they bolted for the leaden sky on the near horizon.

            “ Go, Dog! “  Maude said sharply and Lucky stopped, his tongue lolling out of his mouth, then suddenly he lowered his head and sprinted, up the hill away from the sheep, as if her were returning to the isolated cabin he’d shared with the old hermit for most of his life. Maude looked like she wanted to seize the loaded rifle from my hand and use it on him but I pretended that I needed it and I set out at a lope, quickly out distanced by the wily bags of wool! But just as the Bell Ewe reached the summit, Lucky sprang up from the grass, causing them to veer right! I let out my breath in relief and began to wonder if dogs could think? Or had they simply done this to him so often he knew what to expect?

            Despite the threat of rain, the morning passed peacefully and after the first hour of being taunt with suspicion and fear at every little rustle or noise, I began to unwind and listen to the cheerful tune of the hidden creek. There was such great distance and beauty around me I felt as if I were at the center of the world, an empty world where the animals outnumbered the shadowed illusions of Native American hunters as I pictured them. It became so still just after ten o’clock that I could hear the sound of the generator Dad was using on the Christmas Tree lot, thinning out stragglers and removing the lower branches which the growing trees had discarded had allowed to wither as their growth continued past the seedling stage. We’d contacted a local tree harvester about bringing his equipment on site to harvest the lumber along the proposed route for my Uncle’s go-cart track and Dad had promised I could learn to operate the mobile saw and mill plainer since it was a closed system where the person working the hydraulics stood at the opposite end of the actual cutting blade while the machine held and pushed the log but he seemed to think that I’d cut off everything of value if I used the hand held trimmer and since I was ambivalent about all the rough jobs I was currently learning to do, I didn’t quarrel too much; but the weight of the loaded rifle in my hand frightened me half to death!

            By high noon the sheep found places to lie down and rest and I was beginning to be able to tolerate them, if only because they stayed in one place, and because they were my only freedom to come out here in the wind and the sun and dream as if I had some place to be. With the half-grown lambs ‘gone’ there wasn’t a lot to watch so I brought out my clipboard and lined paper and began to write down some of the verse that had been haunting my thoughts at odd moments, usually when I was in the shower with shampoo in my eyes and couldn’t possibly write them down. I felt odd and a little sad that many of them, which had pleased me in their construction, were gone forever-to where it is that sung songs and unremembered prose drifted too at the edge of the galaxy. From time to time Lucky would raise his head but I spoke softly to him, afraid to risk ticks by petting him after he’d run through the thick underbrush.

            I found myself waiting for the clouds to part, implying that God had noticed how advantageously I was alone, so maybe we could chat some more, but instead a slow laziness and discontent filled me and I closed the notebook in disgust. I couldn’t ’emote’ on command, but I could allow my thoughts and my spirit to absorb the softened edges of the day and the weight of the hours as bird sounds and insects noises kept the creek company until the heat of the day crept in. I found my head nodding and sat upright, having stretched out my arms to yawn when I suddenly saw a tawny form stand upright in the shoulder high grass and then crouch again, in hungry impatience.

            Two thoughts hit my conscious mind simultaneously as I looked around franticly and counted soloed white lumps. There is no end to the Universe and no center and Mountain Lions have to be on the ground to build up the moment they need to run toward their prey and ambush it, the movies not withstanding! Then I saw Lucky at the center of the grassy knoll, playing with a stick that he threw up in the air in his own game of ‘fetch’! I tried to scream, but only a strangled if loud screech emerged and he stopped, head up, watching me, his back toward the now motionless lump behind him! I grapped for the rifle, praying that my voice had frightened the youngster away, praying that Lucky would turn and see his danger and run…surely he could out distance the little young beast with this much head start, but the wind must have been blowing in his face, for he simply stood there wagging his tail like a stupid house pet!

            I ran, sending the flock to their feet and scattering them in twenty different directions, screaming louder and louder as I became more afraid for my beloved companion. I’d already lost so much!

            “  Please don’t! Please don’t! Please don’t!  “  I sobbed as I ran, a kind of mantra since I already knew from experience that God was going to allow whatever would happen to happen, so I couldn’t appeal to Him!

            I guess Lucky thought I was playing some kind of game for he couldn’t see the sheep from where he was in the bright sunlight and I screamed at him at the top of my lungs as I ran. We both heard the snarl of rage and hunger as the wind shifted downhill to where he’d run, now facing the shocking large yellow form picking up speed as it raced toward him, its tail aloft and moving like the rudder of a ship!

            “  Don’t! Please don’t! “  I screamed as I slid to a stop on the uneven ground. My boots caught on the stubble of last year’s dead growth, threatening to throw me to the ground but there wasn’t think to think. Dread, cold dread seized me as Lucky suddenly made a strange noise, knowing his life was in danger from the larger form bearing down on him. I didn’t want to kill anything! Especially not a youngster just trying to survive on its own after its mother’s murder but I couldn’t let it hurt the dog who’d already gone through so much!

            I threw myself to one knew, lined up a shot with the shoulder of the maneuvering beast and pulled the trigger, my eyes blurred with tears, my heart stopped with pain at what I was about to do. The force of the gun’s recoil threw my shoulders backwards and I saw a narrow tree limb sever itself from one of the trees on the other side of the meadow as surely as if a marksman had been aiming for it. But the sound of the shot caused the cat to whirl in the air, doubling back like a piece of yellow paper being folded in half, biting at the redden dart stuck in his hip as if fell and lay very still.

            I heard the sound of voices as two men rushed out from the trees just behind where the juvenile male had launched its attack but I couldn’t understand what they were saying over the loud thumping of my heart. I’d killed something! The horror made me retch and I pushed myself to my feet with difficulty, cursing the day I’d ever been born! My rational mind tried to remind me of the tree branch I’d seen flying but I was in too much pain to listen! Then they reached the limp form and Lucky came crawling to me on his belly, whining piteously. My next thought was that someone I’d hit them both! And just as I was beginning to think and not merely react, a stranger strode up from the clearing behind us. Lucky leaped to his feet, teeth bared, a deep growl in shaking his throat muscles. I tried to rebuke him, but I was mute with terror.

            “  Good dog, Lucky, isn’t it?  “  The Stranger coaxed, daring to kneel in the damp mud and tree refuse. It seemed to unnerve the frightened dog, for he tucked his tail tightly under his legs and crept near to me for protection.

            “  Bruce Sullivan. We met this morning. That was a brag thing to do.  “

            “  I missed. “

            “  Luckily. Though I don’t blame you for trying. He’s a nice dog, what kind is he, do you know?  “  Using his voice to calm me as much as reassure the dog.

            “  Catticus Aversion’ous…I believe.  “  I said in a shaking voice.

            “  Why are you trying to make a joke at a time like this?  “  My Inner Voice demanded scornfully; but an adult was near, so I was safe.

            Bruce Sullivan repeated the name, smiling, and I could see he’d been as tense and worried as I’d been. He looked up. There were now two men and a young woman kneeling at the side of the motionless animal while my Uncle Charley and another stranger carried down a metal dog carrier big enough to hold a Great Dane! I could hear the complaining whine of a four-wheel drive’s tires as a large Land Rover backed down the grass hill.

            The group, now standing, seemed very excited as Mr. Sullivan and I approached from the east. Dan Yates was the Naturalist in charge and he seemed to accept me as easily as he did his two college age volunteers, actually affording me a little extra status since we ‘owned’ the land. I think I was experiencing my first crush on someone outside my age group, but at the time I simply thought it was because he was so confident about what he was directing the others to do. Lucky and I were invited to go along with them to their temporary camp where the captured female was being held, and I declined, since I had the sheep to regroup, unless they were in Canada or California by now but Uncle Charles surprised me, insisting I go along with them since I’d allowed the flock to be scattered. No matter how kind everyone else was to me, all I could see was my failure to please him, and I couldn’t seem to lift my eyes to make eye contact with anyone, using Lucky as my excuse.

            It started to rain just as we closed the car doors. Thick, pelting rain and it made me want to cry all the more. I was ashamed of myself, without rally being sure why. Lucky headed straight for the back porch and disappeared under it through a hole barely one forth his size and I blamed myself for that too. Mom and Dad were really excited by all the commotion and it was Johnny, oddly enough, who noticed my silence and kept watching me. When I had my back turned, unloading the dishwasher, he walked up behind me and put his arm around my waist.

            “  Nothing you do is ever going to be good enough, Sissy. Don’t take it personally. “  He whispered in encouragement and I couldn’t hold back the tears any longer. Had it been an adult I would have made up a cover story about having to shoot, but with it being my younger brother, I just leaned my elbows on the cracked basin and cried until I could breath.

            “  Thanks. “  I said at last, straightening as we heard Dad’s heavy footfalls coming toward us in the hall. We had something we shared. We had something that we hid from the adults instinctively. I’m not sure why, but it seemed important at the time.

            That night as I knelt to say my prayers I felt as alone and vulnerable as I had in waking up in strange beds while people coughed around us and slept on iron beds pressed much too closely together. I knew where I was sleeping tonight and tomorrow night, I knew we could spend the day here if we wanted too, we didn’t have to pack our few belongings and walk out of the door into a strange and alien world who tried to pretend we didn’t exist. I didn’t have to send Lucky to the Pound simply for a bed to stay in for the night and too much pasta with too much spices and garlic sauce! The pastry on the counter were ‘day olds’ but they weren’t frozen or stale, and if I was still hungry, I could scramble up some of the soft shelled rejects or double yoked eggs from out hens, and yet I felt as isolated and alone as if I’d just walked in from a day on the moon! When, without warning, a reassurance flowed through me and I found my fingers unclenching. Even while I’d been trying to write in my notebook, the Lord had guided the Volunteers to be in the right place at the right time. Lucky wasn’t hurt, only frightened! Johnny had coaxed him out with a can of his favorite doggie beef stew but he’d gone right back under the porch. Dr. Peter said he could feel a small swelling where some of the stitches might have torn, giving him pain, but that we didn’t need to bring him in unless he stopped eating, or wouldn’t come out from under the house.

            I’d just about worn myself thin with Charlie’s IM’s from California and I might have embellished a few things by things I heard afterwards but I could tell she was envious of my ‘exciting’ life up here in Oregon and we’d closed off unwillingly like being the last person to hang up when we lived just a couple of houses apart, but I hadn’t expected anything like this. This quiet calm and reassurance whether I’d though to call out to Him or not.

            “  Thank you.  “  I whispered just as the door opened and a cobweb covered lucky trotted in.   

            “  You’re welcome, Princess. “  Daddy answered, thinking I meant him. I wouldn’t have let the unhappy dog up on my spread until I groomed some of the gray film off his coat, but he sighed so happily as he turned around and laid down that I didn’t have the heart to rebuke him and try to force him down off the bed. ‘ Ticks and Brown Recluse Spiders, yeah, rural life was great! ‘ A part of me mocked but I was too content to be angry and too tired to stay up and ague with myself. 

            “  Thank you. “  I repeated, as if God couldn’t tell who I was talking too, but I felt so warm and cozy as I slid between the close spaces of the sheets that I didn’t care.

            The next morning the guy from feedlot showed up for the heifers and hung the hens upside down by their scaly yellow legs until they went limp. From blood rushing to their heads? I don’t know. But by the time he was ready to put them in the crates at the back of his truck they no longer attempted to flee him. It made me glad that God wasn’t like that, bad things didn’t happen to us to make us malleable but as the trees shivered in the gray mists the silences began to wrap themselves around me and I paused, looking out at the immense acre where we would spend the day severing ripe pumpkins from their vines so the Public could come and pick their own, as they had the vegetables and fruit left after the first gleaning, for a fraction of what they would have had to pay for simply reaching out to their grocers shelves for firm, ripe, evenly grown items. Misshapen, dirty on one side, dusty, not quite ripe, too ripe for the Farmer’s Produce Mart, what was left behind would be plowed under next month, returned to the land that had given it support while it grew to shapes and purposes first designed in the Creator’s mind. It mad me wonder how many farmers were atheists when you were face to face with Nature and God’s creativity on a daily basis but I was careful to keep such thoughts to myself while Maude rebuked me and made a point of sending Tug and Spike out with me with the sheep who seemed to have forgotten yesterday’s terrors.

            But once I was free to allow myself to stand visibly where the sheep and the dogs could recognize me, I found myself reflecting on the strange events which had lead us up here, to be a shepherdess and would-be auto mechanic, the way Charlie teased me about on line last night. I’d met an older woman who had an animal act in Vegas in her youth and shared her last day with her, I’d met a street wise girl with numerous body piercing and a really bad attitude that attempted to cover over her fear of dying of Aids just when she had given birth to a new baby daughter. I’d met a Jewish Veterinarian still in love with his dead wife, a Librarian who actually believed in my poetry, a lovely Christian girl who secretly dreamed of being a Rock Star and a girl who had a pet Iguana who liked to lay on sun warmed rocks. I’d made peace with my kid brother and tried my best to stay even-tempered with a woman rumored to be tattooed from her Biker days, and I’d stood by my father’s younger brother as he struggled to put thirty year old demons to rest by creating a Go-Cart Village that would have made Walt Disney envious, and I’d survived trying to kill something wild-to keep my pet from being killed and devoured. Now, I admit, I could have put that last one on my ‘List of Things I Could Really Live Without!’ but I was feeling so many changes going on inside me, and I couldn’t begin to guess what direction my next step would be in….I guess in short, a typical teenager. A typical teenager living on the edge of Old Growth Forest with a Christmas Tree Farm in her back yard and no way to earn money for a new blouse, much less a cell phone battery, and with a sense of belonging with the land, with my family, and with my view of the world I wouldn’t have considered valuable in spring!  

            The next thing that really sticks out, after the lovely people we met from town who wore straw hats and came to pick pumpkins a few weeks before Halloween and had the time to stay and chat with us as Mother sat at the card table trying to find some way to get comfortable with her belly so pronounced, was my experience with Chuck Harrow’s team and meeting Jeanette Whitworth, a petite, five foot three inch blonde who ran the portable milling machine like she was related to Hulk Hogan! All I had to do was to help roll the log to be planed from the pile to our left unto the hydraulic arms waiting to life it upright unto the flat bed of the two parallel planks that formed the platform for the log to be cut to size. With a push of a lever, the machine roared into life and the huge log was carried forward into the overhead housing which protected the spinning saw and a thin cut was made that removed the bark and the circular growth of the tree’s natural cured trunk. Then it was carried back and the cleats laid down so the mechanisms could turn the freshly cut portion flat on the table and a second pass was made, again clearing off the rounded shape to form the familiar flat board I was familiar with from the lumber shops and Home Improvement Stores. The piece of wood was rotated automatically by darkly colored cleats as she knew which handle to press and in what direction, for what length of time; then she paused, moving her hand away so there wouldn’t be any mistaken movement as Kevin Reardon brought out an old fashioned t-square, having her rotate the half sawn log in small increments until the cut edge was in perfect alignment, Otherwise the finished log would be uneven and useless. He made four measurements, beginning at the top of the table nearest to her, all the way to the end of the log. Then she completed the third and four cuts.

            By now, it was an oversize and massive pillar, but with another adjustment to the width of the blade, she was able to ‘rip’ the log into seven useable lengths, turning the raw log into recognizable planks of lumber.  The smell was intense, burning pitch, the heat of the saw blade, the stench of wounded wood but at the same time, it drew me as nothing else had at that time as I watched Loretta, her sister, running the small ‘Bobcat’ to drag the logs into place and carry the finished lumber away to dry. I simply wasn’t used to seeing women doing such hard, skilled labor, and again the feeling was creeping in, unawares, that I could truly do anything I had a genuine interest in! I wasn’t locked into being a legal secretary or a schoolteacher if I wanted to make a living wage! And the best part of all-I could keep my feet firmly planted on Terra Firma, thank you very much!  

            That night we ate Dad’s meatloaf, and my feet were aching and the skin was so taunt from being swelled that Mom and I sat on the couch with them soaking in warm water and Epsom Salts commiserating with one another’s memories and going through the new list on Baby’s name from the Internet. As I snuggled next to her I noticed an odd smell that wasn’t so much her perfume as the way her body chemistry shaped it so uniquely and I was filled with a sudden pride in her, in us, in what we’d made happen from what could have been a total disaster, and we began to talk about Pastor Doug and his wife in San Francisco. It was like I was talking with Charlie after school it came so easy. Odd…but I even remember the feel of the tweed in the fabric of the couch as we leaned back against it, munching on homemade caramel popcorn and sharing common, inane, and positively unimportant conversations about the wall paper, the scarecrow we were trying to design and the fact that the hens had only laid three eggs in two days. I was loved, and we didn’t even have to say it to know how true it was!  

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End Chapter 8