The Excellent Lombards(50)

Although I was interested in the theater, at the end of eighth grade, in that summer, it was against my will that I went to drama camp. My mother forced me to do so, my mother starting The Four Rivers Camp Warfare.

The battle started in the spring, a few months before camp, on the day the yearlings went to slaughter. I was fourteen, William fifteen. The lambs had just been shorn, their sturdy musculature plain to see, and without the wool on their faces their watchful brown eyes were nakedly soulful, philosophers, you might think, all of them. Or anyway they were filled with life even though we knew they were terrifically brainless. William and I got up early on that April morning to help with the loading. When my father appeared in the lower yard with the grain bucket some of them did their twisting and popping jumps, joy—you could not call their feeling anything less than joy. It was still dark, which made the whole scene even worse. For as many times as we’d been through this exercise, as hardened as our hearts should have been, we were downcast. In the upper yard The Old Sheep came to the fence to pay her respects, her wool ragged over her sharp hips, her knees bald, her baaing guttural, a useless warning. There was always one in her position, a ewe in her last spring.

My father carefully spread some grain in the feeder, making sure to leave spaces between the portions so the lambs wouldn’t crowd as much as usual, so they could be peaceful during their final meal. When they were finished he walked backward, tapping the bucket, toward the pen we’d made for them, a hemmed-in space that went right up to the back of the truck. We hoped we could get them up the ramp, get them loaded without any of them spooking, the whole mob then stampeding over each other, trampling the weaker stock to death. That’s how dim-witted they were.

Because they trusted my father and because William and I were at their heels they followed him, thinking, More of our favorite and most delicious Sheep Formula? And so early in the morning? Honestly? You’re going to give us more? When the last was inside the vault of the truck I brought down the door. The clang, and another bell tolling with the latch. No childish plea for mercy, no spider weaving words into a web, no last-minute stay of execution. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “So long, Dandelion,” I said, the runt I’d bottle-fed. At the slaughterhouse no one would care anything for them, already pieces of meat while still living. They would wait jammed together in a low tight room and be yanked one by one to the death slab.

My father crawled from the back through a small opening into the cab. It was cold but even so he unrolled the window. He raised one hand, the farewell. We waited by the gate while he adjusted the mirror. When he was ready he turned the key in the ignition and with the beeping that signaled “reverse,” those solemn notes, the truck moved slowly out of the yard.



We were still thinking of the lambs, still downcast after dinner. It was my mother who suggested we play Euchre, the ideal game for us, four persons, a game that requires some concentration and strategy but allows for sociability. This would cheer us up, she’d decided.

At the table William and I as usual insisted on being partners. There was no other way to match ourselves up even though we, as a team, made the game laughably uneven. The truth was my father became spacey over cards. We played Euchre several times a year and he couldn’t ever remember the rules. Each time we had to explain all the details again, what trump meant, what the left bower was, the right bower, who started when, how you kept track of points. My mother, however, in her own way was worse. She more or less remembered the basics but she was like an idiot savant, not knowing what was going on at a fundamental level, and yet sometimes not only managing to do the correct thing, but blowing us out of the water. William and I, therefore, could not have either one of them as partners, neither the oldster nor the wild card.

We sat diagonally from our partners at the kitchen table, William dealing in his suave high school style, a flicking of the wrist, throwing out the cards two and three at a time.

“Wait,” my father said, “how many should I have?”

“You have five,” William explained.

“Is that the right number?”

“Yes. Yes it is.”

“Five? It doesn’t seem like enough.”

“Papa!” I cried. “We each get five cards.”

“Five,” he repeated.

“Good Christ,” William muttered.

My mother didn’t even scold him. It went to me to make the pronouncement, to order up the suit. I said, “Trump is diamonds.” William reiterated, “So, diamonds is trump.”

Exactly half a second later my father said, “What’s trump again?”

“Diamonds,” my mother said. She laid down the first card, an audacious play.

“Whoa, tiger,” William said. “Good move.”

“Thank you.”

“What’d you just do?” my father said.

“Papa!” I cried again. William blazed at me. I telegraphed to him, He’s deranged! And Mama is, too. She is even more. You wait.

When she put her card down two tricks later William said, “You know that’s trump, right?”

“Oh!” she giggled. “I forgot.”

I snorted and did the glance at William, See? To forget that the left bower is still trump after playing for decades really is mental retardation.

“I always forget that,” my father said.