Island by Alistair Macleod

Author:Alistair Macleod [MacLeod, Alistair]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Contemporary, Classics
ISBN: 9780099422327
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 1989-01-02T05:00:00+00:00

SECOND SPRING

(1980)

It was the summer after the seventh grade that saw me truly smitten with the calf club wish. It was not, of course, a really dazzlingly new idea because, living on a farm, I had always been surrounded by numerous animals. Not a day went by without my touching them and the insistence of their presence affected the living of my life and the lives of the other members of my family in very real and tangible ways. Their closeness and the manner of their closeness varied with the time of seasons.

In the winter, when they were less plentiful, they crowded together in the shared and dense confinement of their stables; stamping their hooves on the manure-strong planking and tossing their impatient heads and uttering the sounds of their different species. If you ventured into the silent barn at night the wave of their communal warmth rolled out to meet you at the creaking, opened door and the sound of the different rhythms of their breathing rose and fell in the softened darkness. If the flashlight was flicked on, or the carried lantern raised, the luminous eyes of those who were awakened glowed from their stalls and across their mangers, and then various sounds seemed to respond to the presence of the light; the creak of the wooden stanchion posts rubbed by the necks of restless cattle, the murmured grunts of half-asleep pigs, the nickering snorts of horses, the zing of suddenly tightened rope or leather, the jangle of moving halter chains.

By March conditions were even more overcrowded as the females grew awkward and ponderous with the weight of their unborn young. When they lay down in their expanded heaviness the ripples of movement from deep within their wombs were visible against the drum-tight skin of their extended sides. The promise of the future lay warm and heavy within their deep, dark bodies.

Inside the winter house the dogs and cats lay like scattered rugs beneath the kitchen couches and under dining tables or stretched at length behind the wood-filled stoves. At night my dog Laddie lay across my feet; a warm and living comforter whose heartbeat could be felt through the fabric of the bedclothes. His wet, cold nose was covered by his paws.

By the end of March the birth cycle would begin and would extend sometimes deep into June. First the sheep, then some cattle and later the pigs and finally the wobbly foals with their long, ungainly legs. There would be chickens and kittens and puppies with at-first-unopened eyes. The number of animals would double or almost triple within the allotted weeks and there would be a flurry of activity surrounding the new arrivals and the rapidity of their growth. New pens would be constructed and, amidst squeals of protest, there would be separations, weanings and brandings and the pulling of teeth and the flashing of knives used for the cutting of testicles, the docking of tails and the notching of ears. They would spill out then,

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