Dyeing Wishes (2 page)

“Can’t you call them?” Thea asked. “Whistle for them or something?”

“Not at this distance,” Debbie said. “I’m not loud enough. And that’s not really how sheep work, anyway.”

“See, Bonny?” Thea said. “I told you that’s what Bill is for.”

“I know what a sheepdog is for,” Bonny said. She brushed at something on her black pants legs, maybe imaginary dog hair. “But dogs in general don’t like me, except to bite, so I don’t like them back. And I make it a point to never give them the chance to bite in the first place. No offense intended—I hope you know that, Debbie—but I am much obliged to you for putting what’s his name in the house.”

Debbie, still looking at the distant flock, waved off Bonny’s tepid thanks.

I was pretty sure I heard a muttered “wuss” from Thea, but Bonny, farther down the fence and engrossed by her phone, didn’t catch it. When Bill, Debbie’s border collie, had bounced out of the house with her after she’d phoned for the spare keys, Bonny had taken one look, jumped back in her car, and slammed the door. She’d refused to come out, even though Bill appeared to be a perfect gentleman, until Debbie graciously put him back in the house.

Bonny pocketed her phone as she made a disgusted noise. “The morning’s turning out to be a complete bust, though,” she said. Ernestine tried to shush her, but Bonny continued grousing. “Driving the whole blessed way out here and trying to find this place was bad enough, but now we’re standing around in wet grass and accomplishing absolutely nothing.”

“But isn’t it a beautiful morning for getting nothing done?” Ernestine asked.

No one could argue with that. It was the kind of
gorgeous spring day in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains that looked like the inspiration for an Easter card. The world smelled of fresh breezes. Also of the wild onions I was standing on. I stepped back from the fence and took a picture of the grassy lane we were in and another where the lane disappeared around the next hill. Then I snapped a few candids of the other women.

Thea, sitting on the top fence rail, was a tempting target. Her orange Windbreaker was stretched across her broad back, making her look like a giant pumpkin perched on the fence, her brown head making the stem. I skipped that picture, though. Thea was our town librarian and defied all stereotypes associated with that position except two—she was single and she had more than two cats. But she was far from being hushed and, in fact, called herself the Loud Librarian. I knew she’d be loudly unappreciative of a picture taken of the particular view I had in my lens.

Ernestine and Bonny stood farther along the fence, Ernestine distracting Bonny from her grumbles by asking about her winter in Florida. Ernestine’s white hair became a dandelion nimbus as she turned her wrinkles to the sun, eyes closed behind her glasses. She was retired from a number of jobs, most recently as receptionist for my late grandmother’s lawyer. She had a dry sense of humor and although her eyesight was failing, she easily saw the good in people and frequently apologized for their shortcomings.

I’d met Bonny for the first time that morning. The only things I knew about her were what I’d just heard—she’d returned from Florida the week before, she was a gung ho spring, summer, and fall member of TGIF, and she didn’t like dogs. She also seemed to be expecting a phone call or expecting someone to answer a call she was trying to put through. And she wasn’t patient.

At a passing glance, she looked to be on the good side of fifty. But after studying her face and hair in my viewfinder, I suspected she was closer to the upper end of sixty and had a hairdresser and possibly a plastic surgeon under orders to fight for every year they could gain. She was solid without being overweight and there didn’t appear to be anything soft about her, except the pretty sage green hand-knit sweater she’d pulled on before we set out to see the lambs. Even her hair was under control, no wisps flying astray. My own dark red curls danced with every wandering breeze.

Debbie stood at the fence, a hand shading her eyes, staring across the field toward her sheep. With her blond braid down her back she could have been a Norse maiden scanning the horizon for sails. My grandmother had liked to say Debbie looked as though she’d stepped out of one of Carl Larsson’s watercolors. She had that bright, decorative look of the young women in his nineteenth-century domestic scenes. Debbie worked part-time at the Weaver’s Cat, the yarn shop in Blue Plum that had been Granny’s pride and passion up until her death a little more than two months earlier. The shop was mine now, which made Debbie my employee, but truthfully, she and the shop’s longtime manager were still teaching me the stitches of owning and running the business.

At the shop Debbie tended toward long skirts and embroidered tops, hence Granny’s Carl Larsson comment, but that morning she was wearing farm-sensible jeans, a navy blue hoodie that brought out the blue of her eyes, and a great pair of red tartan rubber boots that I coveted. She had four or five inches on me, though, and I’d heard she was strong enough to toss a bale of hay or hold a sheep between her knees for shearing, so I didn’t plan to try wrestling the boots off her feet. Part of her
strength, mental as well as physical, came from successfully running her farm alone since the death of her husband three or four years earlier.

Framing each face in my camera, I realized we were a nice range of ages. Debbie was in her early thirties, I’d turned thirty-nine two months before, Thea was an honest mid-forties, Bonny could cover both fifties and sixties for us, and Ernestine capped us out with her nearly eighty. I snapped another picture of Ernestine smiling at Bonny, who was showing her the size of something by holding her hands out and looking from one hand to the other, maybe telling Ernestine a Florida fish story. Thea turned and I was able to get a picture of her face in profile.

“I know what the sheep are doing,” Thea said. “It’s Monday-morning book group. They’re reading
Three Bags Full
and making plans.”

Debbie gave a quick smile but didn’t look as though she’d really heard Thea. “Hey, Kath, have you got a zoom on that camera?”

“Good idea.” The camera was new to me, one of several I’d inherited from Granny, and I hadn’t played around with all the features yet. I fiddled with the adjustments, held the camera up, and fiddled some more before finding the beech tree and the sheep in the lens. “Okay, got them.”

“What do you see?” Debbie asked.

“Sheep. And…something? Nope, they shifted for a second but now they’re not budging. They’re standing with their backs to us.”

“Well, I think I want to go out there and see what’s going on with those girls,” Debbie said, still staring across the field. “That’s so unlike them. Anyone want to come with me?”

“Sure.” I looked at the others. They might have come
prepared for playing with pots of dye, but Debbie, Thea, and I were the only ones wearing anything on our feet suitable for crossing a wet pasture.

“Come on, Thea, we’ll go with her,” I said.

“Sorry, no.” Thea shook her head. “Mud, maybe, but these shoes don’t do ewe poo.”

“You two go on and round them up,” Bonny said. “We’ll stay here holding up the fence and cheering you on.”

The others laughed and Debbie and I climbed over and started across the meadow. The sun felt as yellow as the patches of buttercups and warmed every delicate shade of green in the fields and woods around us. A flock of clouds meandered high above in the soft blue sky. The mud and the ewe poo were mostly avoidable. But through the camera’s zoom I’d caught a glimpse of something under the beech tree that wasn’t right. From the behavior of the sheep, Debbie knew something was up, too, but from her own behavior I didn’t think she had any idea what. She was a fast walker and I skipped to catch her.

“Debbie, I need to tell you—”

“Look at them, would you?” she said. “It’s like they’re standing in a prayer circle. They don’t look scared, though. I hope one of them isn’t hurt.” She walked faster.

“It isn’t a sheep.”

“Sorry, what?” She didn’t slow down.

I grabbed at her arm. “It looked like a person.”

Debbie turned her head, nose wrinkled. “What?”

“Well, I’m probably wrong. I only got a quick look when a couple of the sheep moved, and it was hard to tell. Wow.” We’d gone about three-quarters of the distance from the fence to where the sheep stood under the tree, and not only was the size of the tree more amazing the closer we got, but the sheep—my goodness. I’d pictured a flock of Mary’s little lambs—petite things
prancing and nibbling grass—or at least not what I was seeing, which was more along the lines of a herd of Saint Bernards. “Wow. You know, I thought sheep were shorter than that.”

“They’re Cotswolds.”

“That makes them big?”

“Yup, Cotswolds are big,” Debbie said. “The older ewes weigh a hundred seventy, a hundred eighty pounds. If your boots don’t have steel toes, try not to get stepped on.”

I wondered how I’d avoid that if the whole flock turned and suddenly came at me. Did sheep do that?

A couple of the lambs heard us and finally decided we were more interesting than whatever the herd mentality was still engrossed in. They frisked toward us, very cute with their spindly legs and wagging tails even if they were taller than I’d expected. Debbie stopped and greeted them by name.

I was brave and went closer to see what was capturing their mamas’ attention. And immediately wished I hadn’t.

“Debbie?”

She was down on one knee making goo-goo noises to her babies.

“Debbie? Hey, Deb. Debbie! These sheep over here need you.” That brought her head up. “And we need the sheriff.” It was probably too late for an ambulance.

I
hadn’t known how sad sheep’s eyes could look. Debbie’s flock stood like woolly mourners around two bodies at the base of the beech tree. Debbie, good shepherdess that she was, checked first to see if any of the animals were hurt. Then, when she was sure they were uninjured, she reacted.

“Oh my God oh my God oh my God oh my God.” She stared at the dead man who’d been cradling the dead woman in his arms. “Oh my God, what’s he
doing
here?”

“You know him?”

She nodded, couldn’t speak, started to shoo the sheep out of the way.

I stopped her. “Leave them if they’ll stay. They make a good screen so the others back at the fence can’t see.”

She looked back toward the road, wide-eyed. “Oh my God.”

“Do you have your phone? Can you call 911? Debbie!”

She whimpered but pulled her phone out. Then stopped and stared again. “Are you sure they’re dead?”

How could they not be? The woman, young and pretty and fallen sideways from the man’s arms, had two wet red blossoms in the middle of her chest. The man, not much older, his head fallen forward, had drying strands of blood from the corner of his mouth and his
nose and a terrible hole in his right temple. A gun lay on the ground near his right hand.

“Make the call, Debbie, and stay here. I’ll see if there’s anything, any—”

I pushed between two of the sheep and knelt beside the bodies in the hope of finding a pulse. I reached toward the woman, stopped, then made myself touch her wrist and push aside the blond hair to feel the side of her neck. Cold. Cold. She was gone. He was gone, too.

But when my hand fell away from him, it brushed against his sweater and an immediate twist of love and unbearable sorrow jolted me. I looked at my hand as though it should somehow be glowing. Of course it wasn’t. Tentatively, I laid the tips of my fingers on his sleeve again. How could they feel what they were feeling? I moved my fingertips to the woman’s pullover and a rush of terror knocked me back on my heels.

I worked hard to swallow a scream, control my breathing. Worked to explain away the transferred emotions. It was delayed shock. It was my overactive imagination. It was the incongruence of finding violent death in this field of buttercups and new lambs. It was not, could not, be what my beloved and possibly delusional grandmother wrote in the letter she left for me to read after her death. It wasn’t any kind of special talent or ability or anything to do with hidden secrets. It wasn’t.

“They’re coming.”

I looked up. Debbie pointed at her phone. I stood up, rubbed both hands on my jeans, scrubbing all sensation from my fingertips. Pushing the memories of love, sorrow, and fear into what I hoped was an unreachable corner of my mind. “What did they say we should do?”

Debbie stood staring, arms hanging at her sides. She’d
let her phone slip from her hand. I picked it up. “Are we supposed to stay here? Debbie?” I looked at the phone. She’d shut it off. I looked at her. She was shutting off, too. “Okay, come on. Let’s go back to the road.” I started to take her by the elbow but pulled my hand back before I touched her. “Come on.”

She started walking with me but turned to look back at the tree and stumbled.

That time I did grab her elbow and was relieved when I didn’t feel anything more than her trembling arm. We stood for a moment and I continued holding on to her, but I was afraid I was losing her.

“Debbie, did you warn the dispatcher about the sheep?”

“What?”

“About how big they are and about how the sheriff’s people need to be careful and not let them step on their toes?”

Debbie shook her head as though she didn’t quite believe how foolish the words coming out of a city girl’s mouth could be. She didn’t answer me, though, and looked back toward the tree again.

“Or what if the sheep are startled by the uniforms or the shiny badges and charge at the cops? Because, you know, those sheep really are big.” I didn’t need to see Debbie’s face that time to know I did sound idiotic, but at least I’d prodded her mind in another direction.

“They’ll be fine.”

“The sheep, too?”

She made an impatient noise.

“Well, good, so come on, we can go back to the road and the sheep will be okay and the police will be okay. But are
you
going to be okay? The guy—was he a friend? Who is he?”

She turned and started across the field toward the
road again. The sheep, their vigil disturbed, followed us in single file.