“No lambs until spring,” I said. “Will you be here in the spring?”

He turned his eyes away, looking at his hands on the quilt. He no longer looked at me. He could be dead by spring. We both knew it.

Picking the book back up, I clasped it to my chest.

“Hey, Ezra,” I said. “You’ll get your first sheep-farming lesson tomorrow.”

Ezra stared at the curtained window.

“You’ll see. One day you’ll be as good a sheep farmer as me and Gran.”

“That an order?” Ezra whispered.

“Ayuh.”

“Don’t have to take orders—from you,” Ezra said.

“You will if you know what’s good for you.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah,” I said.

I walked over and switched the lamp off.

Ezra would be alive come spring. He had to be.

Eleven

I helped Gran turn and wipe the wheels of sheep’s cheese in the ripening cellar beside the house. As I breathed in the faint ammonia smell, my mouth watered.

I liked the slow rhythm of turning milk to cheese.

Gran broke the easy silence. “I got through to Aunt May on the telephone this morning.” Aunt May was my father’s sister. Gran never held it against her, though, my father leaving my mother and me the way he did. We never talked about him. Aunt May was shamed by what he’d done to us. I guess if I’d wanted to know about him, I could’ve asked. I didn’t want to know.

“How’s Bethany?” I said.

Gran looked at me. “A little better. That milk I sent over with Lemmy last week is staying down pretty well. I thought we’d bring a pair of early ewes to them before Christmas. Give the radiation time to settle down at his place a little more. I don’t want him coming back here. Must be radiation on his tires still. The readings on the meter rose after he drove up here. I had to wash the road down and sand it.”

“Shouldn’t we keep the ewes here then?” I asked. “What if they get radioactive over there, the way Uncle Lemmy’s cows did, and he has to destroy them, too?”

“Another month, things should be better. Besides, if he keeps the sheep inside his barn and feeds them clean grain and hay, they should do all right. And that’ll give ’em fresh milk for Bethany coming in as early as February.”

It hurt thinking of Bethany, with her dark eyes and downy hair, so sick.

“Fact is, I’d like to have the whole family come stay here,” Gran went on. “Uncle Lemmy won’t leave the farm. He says it’s all he has. And Aunt May and the cousins won’t leave without him. At least having sheep will give him something to do,” Gran said.

“What about us? What are we going to do?” I asked.

Gran shrugged. “We’ll just keep going. What else? Don’t know where we’re going to sell all this cheese now Boston’s out of the picture. We had our best customers in those fancy shops down there.”