Jon Katz Read online

  Rose understood this encounter was out of the routine. In blood and memory, she was much closer to a coyote than a sheep. But her time working on the farm had honed a powerful protective instinct. The coyotes threatened the sheep. In that sense, they were a danger. Linked though they were, their lives had taken them in very different directions.

  Like all dogs, she gloried in the familiar, was wary of the unusual. And she had always recognized Sam’s intense reaction to coyotes. Mostly, he was unaware of them, but when he did see or hear them he seemed angry and threatened, reaching for a gun, grabbing a flashlight, scanning the woods and the pastures.

  Sam reacted to the coyotes very differently than he reacted to Rose, yet she knew she could as easily have been with them as not, as easily have been outside the fence as in, looking into the house instead of sleeping and eating inside it, running from Sam instead of following him around.

  This difference seemed much larger to Sam than to her. Her path led to humans, and loyalty to them. The coyotes’ direction took them to one another, where their own powerful loyalties lay.

  So there was an understanding, and that was why she had come.

  There was already an inch of new snow on the ground and the winds were rising sharply. Rose met the coyote’s eyes. They were pale yellow, luminous even in the daylight. He was large for a coyote, with a rich coat, already dusted in snow and ice.

  Rose sat for a few minutes, held the coyote’s gaze, and then looked away; she sniffed the air, collecting the smells and sounds of the forest. Off in the woods, she heard other coyotes, deep in their dens, scratching, snuffling. She felt the power of the storm drawing closer.

  Strong instincts had brought her out into the woods. The coyote pup, the gathering in the far meadow, the presence of this coyote in the shadow of the farm. All of these things had entered her consciousness, defined in an elemental way what she was, and what she wasn’t.

  She had not come for human reasons: to warn or threaten, to feel good or bad or happy or sad. She came because it was in her blood to acknowledge that the storm would change her understanding with the coyote, their awareness of each other, the curious connection that defined their parallel existences.

  The storm brought into focus that he mattered. And she did not forget what was important, or let go of it easily. She would do her work. He would do his. Everything would be different.

  He looked away as well, then back to her. Then he stood and trotted off, his body fusing with the snow, before vanishing. Soon Rose could not hear him.

  A MOMENT LATER, Rose lifted herself from her haunches and began to head back through the wind and swirling white. The snow was starting to pile up now and small balls of ice were gathering on her legs.

  She felt excitement—the glorious arousal of work. She felt fear, the awful spectre of failure to accomplish a task, as embedded in her genes as life itself. She felt obligation to Sam, to protect him and to protect the farm. And she felt love. For Sam, for Katie, even for the sheep, the other animals, and the farm itself, under her care, within her boundaries.

  She came within sight of the farm and took in the world around her, through the snow. She called up her map, her inventory, her life—

  The sheep in the pole barn beginning to huddle. The fences, the gates.

  The cows in the back pasture gathering in the shed.

  The goats, loud and restless in their pen.

  The rooster and chickens back in the barn.

  Her responsibility, to all of them, to get them through, to help Sam, to grasp his meaning and be of service to him.

  SHE TURNED BACK for a moment and looked down the path, as ever alert for signs of Katie, who often walked there. She knew Katie was not in the woods that day, for she had just run through them.

  But she always looked.

  FOUR

  ABOUT HALFWAY BACK TO THE FARMHOUSE, ROSE DETOURED slightly to the big stump at the edge of a meadow a little more than halfway back on the path toward the farm. It was already covered in a thin layer of snow. Heavy flakes were blowing into Rose’s eyes, and the wind was building to a steady roar. But Rose turned and went over to it anyway, touching the stump with her nose, and listening.

  Katie used to wait for Rose here. She would be sitting on the old oak stump and would always have a piece of bread for her.

  But today there was no bread, and no Katie.

  Rose pointed her nose in several different directions, tilted her ears, raised her head, listened, then stopped, sat, sniffed. Perhaps Katie would appear. Rose had no way of measuring time, except as a sequence of darkness and light. She had no awareness of how long it had been since she had last seen Katie.

  * * *

  SAM WASN’T MUCH for nostalgia, but he loved to remember—and tell—the story about when Katie had first come to the farm. He had watched as Katie, tall and thin with long dark-brown hair, had come up to Rose and tried to pet her. Sam had warned her that Rose, then three years old and set in her ways, did not like to be touched, or even approached by people other than him. He was right—when Katie extended her hand to the dog, she growled and nipped, as he’d predicted. Startled, Katie pulled her hand away.

  But Sam was impressed by what happened next. Katie calmly stepped back, looking curiously at Rose, who lowered her ears and backed away, too.

  Sam reprimanded Rose sharply, then grabbed a boot lying on the floor and threw it at her. Dog training farmer-style, as his father had taught him.

  Rose had been surprised, abashed, as he rarely corrected her, or had reason to. But Sam believed there was a point in the life of any dog—of any animal, for that matter—where authority had to be clearly and forcefully established once and for all. Otherwise there would always be trouble.

  This was something he would not and could not abide. She had to learn that. Rose was a strong dog, and sometimes she needed strong direction. Sam never hesitated to provide it.

  “She’s a good dog, a great dog, but she’s a working dog.” Sam explained to Katie that working dogs are not really pets; they don’t always like or want to be cuddled or petted. “She stays focused. It’s her farm,” he said, adding that Rose had little use for things that didn’t involve work, not even treats or toys.

  Pushing sheep and cows around was not gentle or easy work, he said. The animals did not like to be pushed around by a dog.

  She was not, he said, cute.

  Rose was always looking for work, which was the key to her heart. She loved people who gave her work, or worked with her. “Every once in a while,” Sam explained, “she’ll hop up on the sofa next to me, and let me scratch her belly, but not very often. And she won’t do it for anyone else.”

  Sam had watched as Katie looked at Rose, meeting her gaze with a smile. “Well, we have a challenge here,” she said, and he could tell that Rose understood that Katie was not afraid of her. The dog seemed to look at her with renewed interest.

  ABOUT A YEAR LATER, and after many visits, Katie had come to live on the farm. Rose’s map as well as her life was thrown into chaos, her rhythms and routines upset and confused. This woman made her nervous. She didn’t go away, and she came with new things—furniture, clothes, new smells. She talked to Sam constantly, and spent too much time with him.

  Rose kept waiting for her to leave again, as all the other people did.

  Rose had been alone with Sam for most of her life in the farmhouse. Katie had nothing to do with work or sheep, at least not that Rose could see.

  But Katie was now in Sam’s bedroom at night, and so Rose no longer hopped up onto the bed to check on him as she sometimes used to do. Once in a while Katie fed her, but Rose would refuse to eat from the bowl she put down. Rose only ate when Sam fed her.

  Sometimes, she would look up to see Katie looking at her, watching her, smiling at her, and when Sam was not around, Rose would lower her ears, look away, even growl, trying to get her to go. But Katie did not leave, and her sounds and smells and voice began to be part of the farmhouse. T
hey were slowly added to Rose’s ever-evolving map, becoming part of the image of the place. If Katie was with Sam, then she was part of Rose’s work. That made her different from other humans.

  Katie did not touch Rose again, and Rose eventually stopped growling at her. She got used to her gradually, her soft and quiet voice. Rose loved routine, patterns, and even though it seemed like an annoying distraction, she was getting used to Katie’s presence.

  ROSE PAID close attention to shoes, and what kind Sam was wearing at any given moment told her if they were going to work. One day Sam left the farm, and Rose noticed that Katie was wearing the same kind of boots Sam wore when he went into the pasture or the barns. They had sheep manure on them. Rose looked at Katie eagerly, and her instincts were confirmed when Katie said, “Rose, let’s go to work.” Rose barked and rushed to the back door.

  She ran to the pasture gate and waited as Katie, a little uncertainly, opened it. Rose tore up the hill to the pole barn, and, as the sheep gathered themselves into a circle, she made an outrun behind them and started moving them back and forth, pushing them down to the hay feeders. She never let the sheep rush toward Sam, nor would she now with Katie.

  When the sheep were at the feeders, Rose sensed something was wrong. Katie was gone. She heard the sound of the back door of the barn opening, and then a grain bucket scraping along the ground. She heard the cows and steers moving quickly—too quickly—in the other pasture, on the other side of the barn. A picture came into her head of Katie hauling a grain bucket out to the cows. The image was wrong.

  Cows and steers could be excitable around grain. Sam always had Rose push the steers and cows into a holding pen and keep them there while he closed the heavy gate and put the grain out, then he came back and opened the gate to let them run to the troughs. It was a potentially dangerous situation, especially for someone who seemed anxious and confused—Rose understood the importance of appearing confident and decisive, no matter what. The animals believed she was in charge, so she was.

  Some of the steers weighed more than two thousand pounds and could easily crush or trample a person. Sam was never around these animals without Rose. When the dog saw that Katie was out in the pasture alone with them and a grain bucket, it was so different from the way Sam did it that it drew her attention and set off an alarm.

  She left the sheep and rushed around the corner and into the open door of the barn. She was running fast now, right past Winston, who clucked and huffed in surprise. Rose came rocketing out the other side. She saw that in the middle of the pasture, holding a grain bucket, trudging to the trough—seemingly unaware of two steers and five cows closing in on her from behind—was Katie.

  Cows should not be moving that fast, should never be that excited, never get so close to people. It was not yet a stampede, but it could become one at any moment.

  Rose barked and saw Katie’s head turn. Then she ran out in front of the steers and cows, who were starting to build up a head of steam. She darted close to Brownie, the largest steer, nipping him on the nose, surprising and distracting him. She circled around, and leapt up and bit his tail, causing him to bellow and turn, slowing the animals behind him.

  Surprised, Katie shouted in alarm. She reacted quickly, throwing the bucket away, the grain spilling to the ground, and then walking fast toward the open door of the barn.

  Brownie lowered his huge head to swing at Rose, but she was well back, circling and nipping. After a moment, she ran over to join Katie in the barn, and the door swung shut. The two of them stood there with Winston and the chickens in the dark corner of the barn, hay stacked all around them.

  Katie’s eyes were wide, and she was breathing heavily. She had a hand on her heart. Rose sat down, and Katie looked at her.

  “What are you thinking? That I’m foolish?”

  Rose tilted her head, so that her ears could more easily absorb this sound, and she puzzled over the tone of voice. It was not a command, or a reproach, but the tone made her curious.

  Katie sank down onto a bale of hay, and for once Rose did not back off or growl, but stayed close, meeting her gaze.

  “Thank you, Rose,” Katie said softly, a new tone of voice. Rose recognized it as affectionate, a tone of praise and appreciation she sometimes heard from Sam.

  She knew what Katie was trying to communicate, and for the first time, her tail wagged and she let Katie reach out to pet her, licking her hand two or three times. But she withdrew before Katie could touch her.

  “Well, well,” Katie said. “So Sam was right. Once somebody works with you, then they have a purpose in this world, huh?”

  * * *

  NOW, A POWERFUL GUST of wind blew snow and ice into Rose’s face, and she shook it off, brought sharply back into the present. She felt the wind, and a numbness in her paws, which was rare. There was a chill that ran down her spine and caused her to shake, as if it were summer and Sam had turned the hose on her.

  She turned from the stump and began to trot homeward.

  FIVE

  WHEN ROSE EMERGED FROM THE WOODS AND APPROACHED the road in front of the farm, she found it completely covered in snow. Since she had left the farm, a vicious squall had set in, and it was more obvious once she was outside the cover of trees. The snow was now falling more heavily than she had ever seen it. It was already deep enough that it was brushing the fur on her belly.

  She imagined the sheep and other animals beginning to panic, not because the snow was that deep, but because it was falling so thickly that it had become like a wall, surrounding everything. The farm animals had not seen such snow or wind before and Rose knew that nothing frightened animals more than what was new.

  As she neared the farmhouse, she heard Sam shouting before she saw him through the blowing snow, up on the hill behind the farmhouse. She quickened her pace. As she got closer, she could sense his worry.

  * * *

  SAM’S VOICE WAS sharp and rising. “Rose! Rose, where are you?” He followed the call with a piercing whistle, his other signal.

  Sam knew Rose made occasional forays off into the woods, and he had never thought much about it. But when he called her, he expected her to be there, and most often she was.

  He saw her as she approached and figured out right away what was wrong.

  The goats had indeed panicked as the snow thickened and the terrifying winds rose with a howl, like a great predator materializing out of the air itself, blowing one of the feeders right through part of their fencing. In their fear, they had crawled over it and through the gaping hole in the fence, then taken off up the hill.

  Sam pointed to the cow pasture. He often communicated to Rose through pointing, which he knew she understood. Rose followed his arm with her eyes, took in what he was pointing to.

  “Look,” he said. And she did.

  It was in these moments that his feeling for Rose mushroomed inside of him, sometimes nearly overwhelmed him. He thought Rose could probably sense what he didn’t say: We’ll figure this out together.

  The cows had panicked as well, but most of them ran toward the barn, which they could see. The sheep had all retreated into the pole barn, where they huddled together. A small group of beef cows, though, had separated from the rest of the herd by the snow, blinded by the sudden squall, and, alarmed by the shrieking wind, had run, breaking through one of the gates and heading up to the top of the hill to take shelter under a stand of trees.

  Even though the trees were now bare and the site exposed to the storm, this is where the cows always went during rain and thunderstorms if the gate was left open. It represented safety to them, shelter, a familiar place to go when they were confused. A place they knew was there, even though they couldn’t see very far in front of them.

  Sam had to shout through the rising wind.

  “Rose, we have to find the goats, get them in. Then we have to get the cows in,” he said, pointing up to the top of the hill. “Anybody left out in this will be in trouble.”

  Sam expected the p
aths and pastures to soon be impassable. The winds were so fierce, and the temperature plummeting so sharply, he doubted that any farm animal would survive long out in the open. He wondered if the hardier outdoor animals like deer and rabbits would make it. Although Sam and the other farmers usually paid little attention to the weather forecasters and their overheated predictions, he thought this time they might have greatly underestimated the storm.

  He saw Rose focus. She paused, then tore through the snow, under the gate and up the hill. She was used to unexpected crises.

  Few of the farmers in the county had working dogs; as Sam had, they assumed they’d take too much time and trouble to train. And they cost money. So as Rose’s reputation had spread, Sam often got calls in the middle of the night from other farmers asking for Rose—cows in the road, stray dogs, sheep scattered in pastures, rioting goats.

  “Rose, we’ve got a farm emergency,” Sam would say, smiling, and the two of them would roar off in Sam’s pickup to clear things up. Sam loved these journeys, when he got to show off Rose and help a pal out.

  When Sam called for her in the night, opening the door of the truck, she’d bark and spin for joy, leaping onto the front seat across from Sam. She was always ready to go. And she always delivered, getting cows back in the barns, rounding up stray or lost sheep.

  Sam didn’t like to take money from the grateful farmers, but he didn’t want to insult them either. They had great pride, most of them. So he charged ten dollars per visit. He put the money in a basket in the living room, and whenever Rose’s “emergency pot” hit thirty dollars he would go to the basement, pull out a frozen steak, and grill a big chunk for Rose’s dinner.

  Sam and the other farmers always marveled at Rose’s gift for problem solving, her ability to gauge a situation and respond to it. Her routine never varied. She’d get out of the truck, look around, adjust her map, then get to work. She was like a Texas Ranger, he used to tell the other farmers. One riot, one dog.