With (33 page)

“Thank you, Sugrue,” she said. “Merry Christmas.”

Chapter twenty-seven

T
oo bad the dinner was so meager. Robert got one drumstick and she got the other one, and Robin ate most of the rest. It hadn’t been a very large bird to begin with. She had eaten all of the doggy nuggets that had been in her Christmas stocking, understanding full well that the supply of that particular kind of food was running out, and that the time would come when Robin might no longer be able to feed her.

But remembering the huge bird they’d had at Thanksgiving, she had looked forward to a similar feast for Christmas, and was disappointed and restless and famished. She wasn’t simply eating for two now. She was eating for perhaps four or five or even six. For several days now, her appetite had been doubled, at least. There was no way she could tell Robin to please put twice as much Purina chow in her bowl. She could only whine and linger expectantly over the bowl, but Robin didn’t get the hint.

There were times when she seriously considered eating Robert. It would not only furnish her with much-needed calories and proteins and all that but it would also rid the premises of a nuisance. The bigger Robert had grown, the friskier he had become, and he was constantly in motion, practically bouncing off the walls, and it got on her nerves, especially when she was trying to rest. She didn’t care whether or not Robert or Robin understood that she was pregnant, but she had to get them to understand that she needed more rest and peace and quiet than usual. She liked to curl up beside the stove and sleep for hours, but Robert had other ideas: he wanted to play, he wanted to chew on her, he wanted to chase her tail (alas, he had none of his own to chase), he wanted to climb up to the back of the davenport, pretending it was a tree limb and he a mountain lion, and then leap upon his prey,
her,
and knock the wind out of her. She honestly could not understand the reason for the affection she felt for him, which kept her from eating him. Or maybe it was simply that she understood he wouldn’t be very tasty.

Fortunately, but embarrassingly, ever since the man had ceased existing and thus had ceased eating many eggs, there was a great surplus of eggs, more than Robin could ever possibly use and more than the hens themselves wanted to sit upon and hatch, and thus, in the interests of self-preservation and to keep her stomach from growling at her (often she had awakened from sleep at full alert, thinking another dog was in the room), she had gone to the henhouse and sucked an egg or two. She was now regrettably a dyed-in-the-wool chronic egg-sucking dog, but she was almost tired of eggs. You really couldn’t sink your teeth into their contents, so while they might be nourishing they weren’t much fun to eat.

Shortly after Christmas the weather turned so terribly cold that none of them wanted to go outside, and the poor poultry were in danger of freezing. On one of the warmer days before Christmas, Robin had gone out to the woodpile and laboriously brought in all the wood she could carry and stacked it right in the living room. Then when the weather got so cold, she closed the kitchen door, letting the kitchen stove go cold, and did what little cooking she had to do on the living room stove. Eventually she had to close off the other two rooms, putting the feather mattress on the living room floor, so they lived entirely in that one room, going out only when they had to do their business, and making their business as speedy as possible. Although Robert had been what Robin called “housebroken” for some time now, meaning he didn’t want to get scolded for doing his business in the house, there were a few days that winter when it was so hideously freezing outside that he stubbornly refused to go out for his business and did it under the davenport. Robin not only screamed at him but rubbed his nose in it, and Hreapha said “HREAPHA!” meaning, “Just say the word, and I’ll gladly eat him.”

One day, when Robin opened the door to the storeroom to get some food, Hreapha dashed into the room and with her nose nudged one of the empty cardboard boxes toward the door.

Robin got the hint. “You want a box, Hreapha?” she asked, and picked up the empty box and set it in the living room. Hreapha nudged it closer to the stove, but not too close. Then she leaped up and pulled a pair of the man’s trousers from a peg on the wall, and deposited them in the box. Then she likewise pulled the man’s overalls off their wall-peg and put them in the box.

“Golly gee, Hreapha,” Robin said. “Are you trying to pack up his things to send away or just get them out of sight? Maybe that’s a good idea. I’m tired of seeing them.”

Hreapha also got some of the man’s underthings and stockings into the box, and then, when she had the “nest” thoroughly padded, she climbed into the box and curled up into a comfortable position, cushioned by the man’s clothing. She hoped Robin would understand that she had built herself a nest.

And possibly Robin did. “Oh,” she said, looking down at Hreapha. “Is this where you’re going to have your babies?”

“Hreapha,” said Hreapha.

But when the time came, she found that she couldn’t remain in the box. Staying curled up in the box made her think too much and worry too much. She fully understood that what she was about to do was natural and part of her job. She did not worry a lot about whether she would be a good mother or not. But she couldn’t help worrying about how all those babies were going to get out of her, and whether it would hurt her a lot. She got up. She sat down. She got up. She sat down. She couldn’t decide which was better.

She paced the room. There wasn’t really enough room to pace properly, but she had to pace and she walked constantly from wall to wall. “You don’t want to go out, do you?” Robin asked, and held the door open for just a moment, but the wintry blast that blew into the room made her quickly close it.

What Hreapha really wanted to do was dig, yes. She wanted to get out into the snow and dig and dig and dig down into the earth. She didn’t know why. Was she expecting the babies to be stillborn and wanted to have holes to bury them in? It scared her. She paced, and couldn’t stop.

She began to shiver, but not because she was cold. Maybe she was shivering from dread. Maybe the living things inside her were doing the shivering and it was making her shiver too. She decided that what she really needed was some grass to eat, but all the grass was covered with snow.

She began to pant, as if she’d already been running for miles, but all the pacing she had been doing, wall to wall, had not tired her that much. She was not panting because of her pacing. But she kept on pacing, and shivering, and panting.

And then she stopped suddenly and helplessly threw up.

“Oh no!” Robin said. Robin put her hand on the back of Hreapha’s neck, and that helped, but Hreapha went on heaving.

Leave her be,
said the in-habit.
They allus do that, they allus puke right before birthing, just so’s they’ll have a empty stomach during the work. She’ll be okay.

Hreapha was so happy to know that the
in-habit
was going to be in attendance at the event that her fears left her for a while, long enough for her to climb into her box-nest and lie down. And then she felt the urge to strain, thinking at first that she needed to do her business, but then she was amused by that thought. It is my business, she said to herself, but not the business of pooping. The business of birthing. She liked the word the
in-habit
had used. Birthing.

Might be a good idee to build up the fire a bit,
the
in-habit
told Robin.
Also have a towel or two handy.

So Hreapha strained. And she strained. And she grunted and growled and strained. She really had a reason to be panting now, and between straining she did a lot of panting. Robin brought her a dish of water but she didn’t want it. Not yet.

You jist might be a bit too young to watch,
the in-habit said to Robin.
Why don’t ye go sit on the davenport and I’ll keep ye posted.

“I want to watch,” Robin said. Hreapha didn’t want her to watch, and now even Robert had propped his paws on the edge of the box and was trying to peer into it. Hreapha didn’t want anybody, not even the
in-habit
, watching. She snarled. “HREAPHA!” she said; go away.

But then she didn’t care any more. She took a deep breath, bore down, grunted and kept it up for as long as she could.

Here she comes,
said the
in-habit
, and sure enough she glanced at her flank and there was a pup, covered with slime and a double membrane which, she knew, she had to remove. She licked the membrane and seized it in her teeth and peeled it off her pup. The pup was a female and looked, Hreapha was pleased to note, more like Yowrfrowr than like herself. She was going to have a shaggy coat someday.

“He’s beautiful!” Robin said.

She,
said the
in-habit. It’s a she-puppy. But jist hold your horses, they’ll be more of ’em.

To make room for another one, Hreapha had to tidy things up a bit: she ate the membrane, the placenta and the afterbirth, not that she was hungry at all at the moment and they certainly weren’t especially tasty but they were edible.

And then she had to bear down and strain again for a long time before another one appeared. This one was male. She was getting tired, and wished it were all over, but there were hours and hours yet to go. The third pup seemed to be the hardest of all in terms of the time and effort before she could get it out. It was another female, who seemed to look more like herself than Yowrfrowr. Hreapha was too tired to eat the placenta and decided to wait and do it along with the next one. The fourth pup came fairly easy, another male, but Hreapha was exhausted and had to rest for a long time before she could even try to strain again to see if there might be a fifth one. She was so tired that she actually drifted off to sleep, aware that the four puppies were already nuzzling up to her teats and starting to nurse. That was the only pleasure she’d had for many hours and maybe that was what put her to sleep.

She woke because the fifth puppy wanted out. She didn’t know how long she’d been asleep but perhaps it was long enough to give her the strength to strain again. She strained. Minutes passed. Did hours pass? It was dark outside. Night had come. She kept on straining. She strained so hard it made her dizzy. She felt herself drifting off again, not into sleep but into something dark and black and deep, but she fought her way back from there. She kept ahold of this world long enough to sigh and push out one more puppy. But she had no strength at all to lick the membrane from it. Even with the double membrane covering it she could see that this puppy, a male, did not look like his brothers and sisters. And also that he seemed to be stillborn. All the puppies had their eyes tightly shut but this one’s eyes were not only closed but lifeless.

She heard the
in-habit
’s urgent voice,
Wrap it in a towel! Wrap it and rub it! Rub it hard!

That was all she could remember. When she came back into this world again, it was broad daylight; not only had the night gone but the morning too. She felt very sick, and needed to relieve herself, not to do any business but just to make much water. She tried to get up but there were five puppies clinging to her. There was blood all over the man’s clothes lining her nest.

“She’s awake!” Robin said. “She’s alive and awake.”

Them pups has started in to nursing again,
the
in-habit
’s voice said,
so ye ort to know they couldn’t git no milk from a dead momma.

“I think she needs to go,” Robin said.

Go
? Said the
in-habit. Aw, ye mean to take a leak?

Robin pulled the puppies away from her, then helped Hreapha lift herself out of the box.

“I won’t open the door for you,” Robin said. “It must be below zero out there, and you’d freeze to death. Just use that corner.” She pointed to a corner of the room behind the woodpile. There were wood chips there, so Hreapha wasn’t too abashed to make her lengthy markings on them. But then she saw that some green stuff was oozing out of her afterplace, and then she had black diarrhea, and the sight of all that mess caused her to faint.

When she came to, it was night again. She was in her nest, which Robin had cleaned up, and Robin had also cleaned her afterplace. Her five puppies were not nursing, but just sleeping deeply, snuggled up in a pile with one another. It was very clear that the fifth one did not have Yowrfrowr as its father. But she loved it all the same, and gave its face a lick.

“She’s awake!” Robin said. “But she’s burning up.” Robin’s very cold hand was resting on her neck.

They’re allus kinder hot for a few days afterwards,
the
in-habit
said.
I reckon she’ll be okay. But she’s had a bad time

“You know so much,” Robin said. “Did you have a dog when you lived here?”

The
in-habit
laughed.
Yep, they was allus dogs on the place. But they was jist one of them, Hector, was my own mutt.

“Hector’s an odd name for a dog.”

Old Heck used to want to go to school with me, but the trail was just too steep for him. So he’d just sit the livelong day waiting for me to come home after school.

The
in-habit
and Robin went on talking, and Hreapha drifted off to sleep again and even had dreams in which she led the whole pack of her five grown-up offspring as they chased a raccoon through the woods.

Hreapha woke to find the puppies nursing again, and she sighed and just lay there enjoying it, although she still felt very sick.

Finally she really had to go out. She was not going to do her business beside the woodpile and mess up the floor again. She scratched at the door and whined, and Robin said, “Are you sure you want to go out?”

“Hreapha,” she said, and Robin opened the door and let her out. The first thing she did was dig down into the snow until she found grass, and got a mouthful of grass and chewed it and swallowed it. Then she did her business, and climbed the porch and scratched at the door. While she was waiting for Robin to open it, she glanced at the outhouse, where the white skeleton, the same whiteness as the snow, was just sitting there watching her. “Hreapha!” she said to him.