Ordinary Love and Good Will by Jane Smiley

Author:Jane Smiley [Smiley, Jane]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-307-78748-4
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2011-01-05T05:00:00+00:00

2. October

I admit I like to be prepared for things. A life without money is predicated on anticipation (although, maybe, it is shaped by the unexpected). More that is unexpected happens when you are married, more still when you have a child. Mostly these unexpected things leave me confused and slow, which is what happens when the day rolls around for slaughtering the summer’s lambs. I feel less than no compunction about slaughtering the lambs, because in fact they are no longer cunning little lambs, they are now stupid, homely sheep. A sheepskin, a leg of mutton, these are things of beauty to me. A flock of sheep trampling each other in a panic is not. They often panic. They often trample. My ram and my six ewes, which I got from a number of different sources, are unrelated to one another and produce healthy, mixed-breed lambs. Inbred animals are subject to parasites, disease, and immune system problems that I might not be able to control with garlic wormers, nutritious feed, and sanitary pasturing practices, so my lambs have no future in my flock.

I get up feeling good on the day I am to slaughter the sheep. Liz is perky, too, because there will be a lot of work to do. We throw some logs into the range, savor the morning chill. I am standing on a chair, rummaging through upper cupboards for my .45, a World War II service revolver I found at an auction, and for the box of shells I bought last fall, when Tommy comes weeping into the kitchen.

Tommy is nearly eight; he has been present for eight sheep massacres, and cognizant for at least four, so it takes a while for me to understand that it is the death of the lambs that has upset him. When I do understand, I admit, I slam my fist down on the table, angered rather than gladdened that he has grown up enough in the past year to imagine the sheep’s point of view. He sniffles over his breakfast. I shout, “Well, you are going to help! That’s the lesson here. If you eat something, you have to help produce it. Do you want to be a vegetarian?”

He shakes his head. “Do you like lamb stew? Or trout? Or sausage?”

“Yes, Daddy.”

“Well?”

“I don’t want to.”

“Want to what?”

“Watch you kill them.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t want to.”

“Mr. John Doe, a guy who buys a steak at a grocery store. Don’t know where it came from, don’t know what it means to eat it. You want to be like that?”

“No, Daddy.”

“We took good care of those lambs. They ate good grass and had plenty of fresh water, and now they won’t know what hit them. This is a good life for a lamb, Tommy, all the way to the end and past it.”

“I don’t want to.”

I stand up from the table. “Come on outside.”

We shear the lambs first, getting a few pounds of lovely soft wool, and then I shoot them in the head and cut their throats to drain out the blood.

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