William B. Naylor

The Dutchman’s Barn

Daddy’s lugging a burlap sack into the kitchen. He’s soaked. The bag’s wet too, and there’s dirt and hay smeared on it. Whatever’s inside is snuffling and making mewling sounds as he lays it on the bare wood floor.

It wiggles.

“I was over to the Dutchman’s barn,” he says, looking at the bag.

It’s late, about ten o’clock. The kids are in bed but him coming in woke me up. I had to come down to see. I’m the oldest.

He looks cold and tired.

Mom says, “Here, you better dry off,” and hands him a towel.

He’s mumble-talking while he rubs his face and hair. “Maybe three of them,” he says. “The Dutchman said if we save them we can take our pick. Told me to bring the rest back once they can eat on their own.”

“What are they?” Mom asks.

“German Shepherds,” my Dad says, still drying himself. “Newborns.”

He stands up and takes his wet coat and tall boots off. The boots are shiny black rubber, with brick-colored soles. Most of the mud is already off.

“Says the mother got run over by a milk truck this morning. Bit of a mess -- they’ve been in that bag all day.”

“What do we feed them?” my city-born mother asks.

Wisps of steam rise off his coat. It’s slung across the back of the blue wooden chair and the chair is turned away from the stove, but pushed up close to it so his things can dry. The fire reaches out, touching us with its heat.

“Milk,” my father says. “Pour some in a soda bottle and put a nipple on the end. They’re too young to drink on their own -- at most they’re only a week old.”

My mother’s working the big knot that’s kept the bag closed. She wrestles it open. Smells like barnyard and sour milk, hot, sweet smells I remember from the pens in the Dutchman’s huge, red barn. I love going there but whenever I do I’m afraid to take my eyes off the ground. It’s always the same: wanting to look up at the animals, but afraid of what I might step in or what might reach out and grab me around the ankle.

Later, in Grade 8, Patrick Chambers would convince me that you can always tell the farm boys by their walk, a certain distance to each step, always with their heads down so they won’t miss any, because they’re used to walking in ploughed fields, furrow to furrow. “Sure,” he would say, “Just watch. You’ll see them walk exactly like that.”

Mom’s holding the bag like it’s another dirty diaper -- careful like, not afraid, but not letting it get too close -- besides, it does smell a bit like one. She peeks in. I move over beside her so I can see, too. Inside, it’s dark, mostly black, with a few patches of white and yellow fur, stuck down with dried milk and straw and I think I can see tiny, shiny-wet squinty eyes. Little feet are slipping and sliding over bodies and the lot of them are mewling like a bunch of tiny kittens.

“They’re starving,” my mother says. “The poor things are looking for their mother’s milk.”

“They been in there all day,” my Dad says.

“Why did they put them in there?” I ask.

“Probably going to drown them,” my father says as a matter of fact.

“Why would anybody want to drown them?”

“Well,” he says, “It’s a big farm. There’s lots of animals and not much time for little ones like these. Not this time a year, anyway.”

My mother’s holding them up in the air, one at a time, looking at their lower bellies. “Boy,” she says. “Girl, girl.”

“So he gave them to us?” I ask.

“No, he said take ‘em home and see if your missus can save ‘em. If she can, take your pick of the litter.”

This is the first time I have had heard that word. Then another new word comes right along.

“I don’t think this one’s going to make it, Bill,” my Mom says, looking into the bag.

One of them is less than half the size of the other three. It’s not moving much, and it’s not making a sound.

“Yeah, three good ones and a runt.”

A runt.

“What’s a runt?” I ask, as I watch Mom fussing with them, assuming new duties. “Eww, look at --”

“Never you mind”, my Dad says. “Isn’t it past your bedtime?”

My Mom looks up at my Dad with one of those adult-to-adult looks, and somehow I know it’s about the runt. I can tell from her eyes and her chin that it’s too late for that one, and that she’s sorry.

She’s sorry for having her own family to look after and now this. She is sorry she hadn’t been able to be there earlier and mother this tiny runty baby. And she is sorry that God had not seen fit to give it a little more strength, a little more time with its own mother, and that it had been brought here, into her poor but warm farmhouse kitchen to die on her floor, almost in her hands.

She looks back into the bag and then looks over at me. “Didn’t your father tell you it was time for bed?”

Climbing up the cold stairs I can hear my Father saying, “So, what do you think, Georgette?”

Will’s Impudent Answer to the Question: Tell us About Yourself? (a 55er) -- He’s another aspiring scribe hailing from the Island Kingdom of Cape Breton. His father the trucker coined the Zen koan ‘can’t get blood from a stone’ while riding his steel horses. His beautiful mother is Quebecois. A brother reported handling a photo of great-Grandfather with Winston Churchill, both smoking cigars, both making ‘V’ signs. -- Email Will at wbnaylor@rocketmail.com.