Читать книгу The Barn at the End of the World - Mary Rose O'Reilley - Страница 21

On Call

I GOT TO THE BARN at eight-fifteen this morning, but Ben’s new wife, Marge, had already done chores. She was waiting for me, the big sheep specialist, to inoculate #5004 with cortisone and penicillin. So I did. As we were herding the rams back into their pens, Marge picked up a revolting object. “What’s this?”

“Whoops. That’s #5004’s butt plug.” Obviously, he had coughed out the syringe casing.

“Ben will have to fix it on Sunday,” Marge said.

A dangerous possibility loomed, however, which Ben had warned me about: that the ram could shuck his casing without getting rid of the elastrator band. The band would then strangulate the rectum and allow no egress for fecal material. “I’m afraid we’ll have to fix it now, otherwise he’ll be impacted by Sunday,” I bravely told her.

Before he left, Ben had given me a lecture on retrieving the green rubber band by snicking it on the prongs of the elastrator and cutting it with a bandage scissors. (A blunt crochet hook would be the ideal instrument for this, and from now on, I’ll never leave home without one.) I had listened to Ben’s instructions with the attention one gives to stewardesses on transcontinental flights who drone about the remote possibility of a loss of cabin pressure: surely I will not be called upon to deal with this.

Ram #5004 is so vexed with us that he has thrown himself full tilt at the slats of the feeding bunk and wedged his head. This turns out to be a fine position for us to work on his bum. Marge bends down to look at the black fringe of necrotic tissue and says hopefully, “I think the band has slipped off.”

“Marge, you are in denial.” The laws of physics dictate, I believe, that the band—wound tight around the rectum—will have been sucked up inside the ram.

I slip my sensitive violinist’s fingers into the sheep’s anus (naturally we are out of surgical gloves), whisper a charm against anthrax, and feel for a tight rubber band. It’s there, and it’s easy to catch with the elastrator, easy to snip. I have, in effect, reversed Ben’s earlier procedure but assured #5004 a comfortable weekend. We squirt the anus with bright yellow Furazolidone and leave behind a happy sheep.

Then we go into the kitchen and wash up. “I could never do what you just did,” Marge tells me. Then the farm bravado kicks in. “I could if I had to.”

“Sure you could.” I wash in the kitchen sink for five minutes, then wash in the bathroom for five more. Then I go home and scrub my hands with bleach.

I have heard Ben say he fantasizes the stink of necrotic tissue all day. I believe it is not an hallucination but some mechanism of the biology of smell: pheromones or something remain on your body. All the bleach of Araby will not sweeten these little hands.

But at least these hands have been useful, for a change.