Rictor

[Robemillner]

THE MAKING OF THE MAN

I was raised on a small farm in a remote territory rarely frequented by the widest flung traveler. We grew potatoes and my father raised sheep in the mountains that ringed a valley. Many times, I would meander around the lambing corrals while my father and the other men worked. Lambs are pitiful creatures, always bleating and whining, eyes empty of expression like watery glass. The one fascinating aspect of a lamb is the reflective nature of the eyes. I could see myself in them, clearly and free of intrusive light. I saw myself as I was.

When the mother ewe is ready to "drop" or give birth, she is placed into a pen where she and the offspring can be observed. If the birth ends with a happy little lamb and if mother and offspring have no difficulties bonding, the pair is moved to a pen with ten others where they become used to being around other sheep. Every now and again, a free-spirited ewe decides she does not want to be bothered with mothering and rejects her lamb. At times, I found myself waiting for that moment of rejection, almost wishing it to happen. My own mother was like a free-spirited ewe and abandoned me when I was a six-year-old boy. In my mind’s eye, she was a fleece covered fancy type of woman who truly seemed to speak in the same baleful bleats of ewes in heat. Just as the ewes would casually drop their lambs in the pen, so my mother dropped me in the arms of a nurse and waddled off to some far-off destiny that involved insurance salesmen and Fuller Brush men. All creatures eventually must follow their own, including ewes and lambs that are eventually herded into groups of fifty or more again and again, until a herd is formed of a thousand ewes ready to hit the open range.

Rejected or orphaned lambs are called “bum” lambs, and I raised about fifty of them each year. Every morning I would fill root beer bottles with milk and slap on oversized nipples which I bought from the seed and feed store for a nickel a piece. The chronically famished creatures would climb over and under each other in a battle to be the first to latch onto the nipple. They never seemed to have enough milk even though their huge bellies bulged to the brink.

I discovered one year that it was not wise to have pets of them. I had a lamb that followed me wherever I went, like the nursery rhyme except I wasn’t a girl, and my name was not Mary. I loved her and she loved ice cream. I shared mine with her every day. Then August came. I had always thought of August as a time mad with myrtles, where earthy incenses rose in lazy frenzy above dandelions and hitchhiked on wind-borne seeds inhaled by my wayward nose. August was a season of golden rod and yellow daisies trumpeting life. We would lay in the middle of the buttery fields, my little lamb and I, safe and happy in our Wordsworth world. My father came and found me. He was wearing brown trousers and black boots. To me he had no face, but he had arms and hands; hands so large they could carry anything. He scooped me up out of the golden fleece of that August morning and grabbed my lamb on the scruff.

“I told you, boy.” These were the only words they came from his invisible mouth.

Freight cars were lined up on the spur leading out of the valley. Ewes were being herded into the slat boarded cars, one upon another; lamb and ewe with no room to move, no air, and no food. The panic-stricken eyes were desperate. Hooves dug into backs as one after another were forced over onto the others. As they went into the boxes, some of them made sounds like crying babies. August was the first time I saw the herds off to slaughter; the first time I realized that my father was a killer.

"Get on to the house." He clutched my lovely companion and turned a heavy heel on dandelions looking at the sun.

The next day, two men who oversaw purchasing the herd showed up at the front door. My father extended his hand and shook each of theirs while guiding them into the farm kitchen where the rough wood table was set for company. The Chinese cook, who had lived with us since I could remember, had been frantically working since early that morning. I was dressed in my best poplin shirt, trousers like my father, and Sunday suspenders.

We sat down, and the meal was delivered to the table with all the bows and smiles it deserved. He was proud. My father had more pride than a lion.

“Son, you did a good job with that lamb. Sure did! We got a fat one on the table tonight.” He grinned at the men who laughed heaving the paunch of their bellys. The burley one with the gold tooth, slapped me on the back and said, “Got the makins of a sheep man yet.”

The partial arm and large hand of my faceless father lifted the lid off the platter and declared, “Best damn lamb in the whole kit and kaboodle!”.

That was the first time I died. The fattened lamb. “I was like a lamb or an ox that is brought to the slaughter; and I knew not….” (Jeremiah 11:19). I knew not, I knew not, I knew not.

I never eat ice cream.