Scapegoat (Scapegoats and Misfits Book 1) by Sam Hall

Author:Sam Hall [Hall, Sam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-09-08T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 35

“So you’re gonna try your hand at being a rouseabout?” Vicki asked as I walked over to the sorting table.

“Ah yeah?” I shrugged. “I don’t really know what I’m doing so—”

“I’ll show you the ropes.” She nodded for me to follow her. “In here are all the sheep in their pens.”

I’d smelled the stink of sheep shit, of fear, or a prey animal backed into a corner, but the scent wasn’t that much different to the usual ones on the farm, so I admit I was surprised when I saw all the sheep packed tight in pens. There was something so… alien about it all. A wolf would never allow itself to be herded so, and if it was, it’d be up and over those pens in seconds, streaking away. It made it hard for me to look at the sheep, their placidity irritating me.

“The boys will let one through when they’re ready.”

Jayden winked as he did just that, hauling the animal closer by its legs, then grabbing the cruel looking shears.

“What you’ll be doing is sorting through what he shears off,” she said. “If we had enough people, we would be doing it as he shears, sorting the wool that’s stained with piss and shit into that pile.” She pointed to a dark clump of dirty fibres next to each man. “That can’t contaminate any of the fibres we want to sell. The shank wool has to go as well.”

She bent over and spread a fleece that had already been shorn, out on the wooden floor. “These bits here.” Her hand hovered over the long trailing ends that would’ve run down the sheep’s legs. “Those fibres can’t contaminate the good wool.” She yanked off each offending part of the fleece and then held it up to me. “See those white bits there. They don’t take dye, and will wreck any batch that has them in it…”

She walked me through how to separate the undesirable elements from the good wool and where to deposit them, then how to pick up a fleece (something I would’ve thought was more straightforward than it was) and how to toss it onto the table so it could be sorted. I don’t think she expected me to do it right the first time, but I did.

Vicki couldn’t have known, though.

That I’d learned to do things right the first time or cop a stinging slap, so that ‘training’ was what made me pay greater attention, catch the way her fingers moved as she gathered the fleece, as well as process her instructions, so that when I gave it a go, she stood back with a slight frown.

“Well… you’re a natural at this.”

She sounded pleased and slightly confused as to how I could pick the process up so quickly, but Vicki didn’t get to dwell on that. I could see why she and her husband thought all their Christmases had come at once when the three brothers rocked up. They moved like lightning, shearing one sheep,

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