The Excellent Lombards(34)



Although by then William and I knew well enough that we couldn’t marry each other, in those days we were even more determined to live together in our house and sleep in our bunk beds forever. I know this because the night of the incident I said, “I’m always living here.” William’s soft bristly hair first appeared over the side of the top bunk, his forehead next, his eyes, and his skinny arm, which he extended to me. I reached for his hand. He was not only saying he was sorry about the pinch, he was making his promise.





Middle





12.


The New Hero




The first time I saw Philip Lombard it was spring vacation, Amanda, William, my father, and I in the back shed, the four of us concerned with the lambing. This took place in the time of the four–five split. Philip’s father was May Hill’s older brother. He’d been in college when his parents died, via the silo accident and then the mother hanging herself. An older boy, therefore no need to be adopted by Sherwood’s family. That man and his son were visiting, something that we’d learned from Dolly was going to take place. Philip, ah ha, May Hill’s nephew, the boy in the photograph. The pair, father and son, were going to sleep in one or two of the closed-up rooms in May Hill’s house, May Hill receiving visitors, an event we couldn’t remember ever happening before. Philip himself was now in college, we’d been told, in Portland, Oregon, and had grown up in Seattle. That was the extent of our knowledge about the poster boy, the living person among May Hill’s historical pantheon.

Out in the sheep shed, the three of us underaged veterinarians were used to examining the ewes’ long pink vulvas, watching for a bloody drip, the first sign of impending birth, without suffering any embarrassment. We also didn’t bat an eye at the new mothers lying in the maternity stall leisurely chewing their cuds, their lambs sleeping nearby, the pink balloons of bag and fleshy tit sometimes promiscuously exposed. On that day Old Speckle Face, the problem ewe, as usual had done her yearly prolapsing stunt, the enormous blister, the veiny globe that was her birth canal dangling from her behind. We did not allow my father to ship her even though she was a liability, and anyway we knew he loved her, too, and wouldn’t have done such a thing. William straddled her and I held her head. Amanda’s job was to hand my father the tools while he tackled the back end. It took him a while to tenderly tuck the gigantic bubble in, and quickly he then inserted a beer bottle up into that delicate place—a technique that often worked and kept the real vet out of the picture. My father was concluding the procedure when a person wearing a red stocking cap, green Wellingtons, and a red-and-white-checked flannel shirt appeared in the doorway. First of all, his clothes seemed like a costume, attire you’d imagine you should wear for The Farm. The gigantic Christmas elf blocked out the sun. “Hey there,” he said.

My father was still adjusting the beer bottle. “Philip,” he cried, glancing up, “hello!”

“How’s it going?” The intruder stepped closer. He squinted at the swollen parts of Old Speckle Face and in a girlish way his hand went to his mouth. “Looks kind of intense in here,” he managed. Next he noticed us. “Hey, cousins.”

“Hey.” William had never said hey before in his life.

Amanda and I said nothing. Philip was a second or third cousin, a relation that was so dilute it hardly counted.

“We’re hoping to keep this lady from delivering prematurely,” my father explained. He took a large darning needle from Amanda, a thin shoestring looped through the eye, and proceeded to stitch a crisscrossing hold for the bottle across the thick walls of the naked pink slit. The poor mother opened her mouth, her square teeth like ours, grade-school-size, and made an otherworldly groan, her eyeballs flipped back into her head. William and I had to keep a firm hold on her.

“Whoa,” Philip said.

“There.” My father removed his rubber gloves but even so he said, “Consider your hand shaken.”

Philip laughed, a sputtery noise. He did not look like May Hill. His nose was without bumps and a modest size. Blond curls peeked from under his hat, and his thick golden lashes plus the particular blue of his eyes were not features he’d inherited from the Lombard side. He was stockier than his aunt, his shoulders were broad, his legs sturdy, his hands meaty, a person clearly graced with strength.

“This is Amanda, Sherwood’s daughter, and William here, and Mary Frances,” my father said.

“Cousins,” Philip reaffirmed. “Great to meet you.” Old Speckle Face was released from our hold but didn’t know what to do now that she had a bottle up there. She stood looking at the stranger. He said, “She going to be all right?”

“She does this every year,” my father replied.

Philip nodded. He started to talk about his hopes and dreams. “I’ve wanted to come to the farm for basically my whole life. My father’s told me stories about you people and this place and I’ve always been like, Why can’t we go visit Wisconsin? What’s so important in Seattle that we can’t take a trip to the family homestead?”

“It’s great you’re here,” my father said.

William and I looked at each other. In a matter of two minutes we already knew enough to think, No, it isn’t.

“Thanks!” Philip said to my father. “So, I wanted to let you know I’d love to help out—whatever assistance you need this week. My dad’s going off to a meeting in Chicago but I’ll be here. May Hill has some projects for me, too, which I’m psyched about, but honestly? If anything needs doing? I’m at your service.”

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