Love for a Deaf Rebel, Derrick King [funny books to read .txt] 📗

inspection, which needs an electric permit, which needs a building permit, which needs water and septic permits.”

“I just hope when the house is finished, we won’t have to tear it down. Meanwhile, there’s my neighbor’s extension cord and water.”

Pearl could see that our house problems were trivial compared to Stanley’s illegal house.

A man leaned over from the next booth in the Snuggler. “You guys rented out your barn?”

Pearl and I looked up from our meal.

“We received two calls: one from a guy who wanted to live in it and the other from a guy who wants it for sheep.”

“That’s because you’re offering half board. Most owners have a stable before they buy a horse. Donna and me, we got a horse but no stable. I’m not gonna go up and down your driveway twice a day to feed him, especially in winter. But full board? I’d be interested.”

“What’s the going rate for full board?”

“One hundred and fifty. Hay and grain will cost you half of that.”

“Where can we get hay and grain?”

The man laughed. “Hay from Vanderveen’s, in Surrey. They deliver. Or haul fifteen or twenty bales in your truck. The Bowen Garden Shop sells grain. It costs a little more than on the mainland, but you should support local business.”

“I know how to feed horses,” signed Pearl.

“I’m Gus.”

“Good to meet you. I suppose you already know who we are.”

“Of course!”

I smiled. “Pearl and I need to discuss this,” I said. “What do you think?” I signed.

“This is our chance to start a business. It is hard to get the first customer.” Pearl signed.

“He says Mouse won’t escape, but we will need a fence by winter, for Alan. If it costs $2,000, it will take two years of boarding to pay for it.”

“That’s for one horse, but we will get more horses.”

“All right, Gus. When do you want to start?” “I’ll give you a month to get set up. Make sure to get Buckerfield’s Complete Horse grain and fresh timothy hay, and make a door to lock up the grain to keep Mouse out of it. Don’t feed him that old hay in your barn.” Gus pressed his cigarette into the ashtray and stood up. “Then you feed him twice a day, rain or shine. Whenever you need a hand, I’ll help you.”

“Here’s the fence plan, bill of materials, and the letter of agreement,” said Alan. “We can repair the posts and wire along the trunk road. We need new posts only around the other sides. About 270 meters of fencing surrounding a third of a hectare will cost us $1,000, for which you give us two years of summer pasture plus winter barn use.”

Pearl and I agreed and signed his letter. We all put on work clothes and drove to the lower field. Rose and Pearl cleared brush and stones. Alan and I repaired the old fence along the road and then cleared saplings by pulling them out with the truck.

We marked out the new fence line with orange twine. We drove to the Bowen Building Centre, where Alan bought eighty-two pressure-treated fenceposts. We trucked them to the property in several loads and laid them out at two-meter intervals. Our arms were aching.

A few days later, Alan and I greeted Eddie, the island’s busiest backhoe man. We held each post while Eddie’s backhoe pushed it into the soil. By late afternoon, all the posts were set.

On Saturday, Alan delivered the fence materials, and now the hard work began. I supplied the tools, and Alan and I worked on the fence in the summer heat. It took all day to build four corner braces and two gatepost braces. Pearl alternated between weeding the garden and helping Alan and me. Weeding the garden had become a chore because the manure we had spread had not yet composted; in our ignorance, we had sown our garden with weed seeds.

On Sunday, Alan, Pearl, and I started laying sheep fencing. The three of us unrolled, dragged, pulled, and hammered the heavy mesh in the heat.

Alan returned the next Saturday. “Can you give me a hand with this urinal?” he said, opening the Volvo’s tailgate.

“Don’t sheep pee on the ground?” I signed and said.

Pearl laughed.

“It’s a perfect water trough,” said Alan. “The sheep can’t knock it over. And it was free.”

Alan, Pearl, and I continued dragging, pulling, and hammering sheep fencing. Then, over two more exhausting days, we went around and around the field unrolling, stretching, and hammering barbed wire. We used the come-along to pull the wires so tight they hummed when struck. The pitch was so low that Alan and I couldn’t hear it, so all three of us enjoyed it equally, by feeling it, before we hammered the wires down tight. The barbs snagged our clothes and lacerated our skin.

When the fence was done, Alan and I built a metal aqueduct over the driveway to carry water to the urinal through a valve on a fencepost next to the driveway. For years, twice a day, Pearl or I would pause in the truck on the way to the ferry, open the valve, and wait a minute while water flushed and refilled the urinal for the sheep.

Whisky barked as the yellow Volvo chugged up the driveway on a Saturday morning. Pearl and I joined Alan and Rose in the barn. They had nailed plywood over two of the three barn door openings. They backed the Volvo into the third door, opened the tailgate, and, aided by their three children, released four sheep into the barn.

Pearl’s smile reached from ear to ear. “They’re beautiful!”

“Dorsets,” said Rose. “They are a lovely white, aren’t they?”

Pearl tried to pet them. “They walk away.”

“When you feed them, they won’t.”

“Why did you put them in the barn, not the field?” I signed and said.

“To trim their hooves and sheep-dip them,” said Alan.

“How do you dip a sheep?”

“With a watering-can. We’ll do their pedicure first. You have to trim their hooves if they are penned because they don’t wear naturally.”

The sheep were clipped, dipped, and left to dry. In the afternoon, Rose and Alan stuffed the sheep back into the Volvo. He backed it into the lower field, and the sheep jumped to freedom in the sunshine. They ran to the other end of the field and started grazing.

“This is a wonderful sight,” Pearl signed.

“Are you interested in goats?” said Rose. “The woman who sold us the sheep, Patty, has two goats to give away, but they must be milked twice daily.”

I looked at Pearl. “What do you think?”

She smiled. “Do you know how to milk a goat?”

“No. Do you?”

“No.”

“You can keep them with our sheep for a while,” said Rose. “Goats don’t like grass, so they’ll first eat the weeds. But when the weeds are gone, they’ll compete with the sheep for grass, so you’ll need to move the goats to the upper field. First, you’ll need to fence it.”

“We need to fence it soon for Gus’s horse,” I signed and said.

“Lovely,” said Alan. “Until you can keep your goats near the barn, you’ll be milking them in the rain on your way to work.”

Pearl and I drove to Patty’s hobby farm in Richmond. She was a retiree living her passion for life beyond the sidewalks. She led us past fruit trees wrapped in wire mesh and into her barn. Inside it stood two white goats with horns.

“The doe is seven. The yearling is her daughter. Aren’t they adorable?” she said, with an Irish lilt. “Saanens—the Holsteins of the caprine world. Sahne means cream in German.”

Pearl petted them, and the goats clamored for more petting.

“What do you feed them?”

“Hay and Buckerfield’s Complete Goat. You’ll need a manger. Goats won’t eat hay off the ground.”

“When they have kids, what do you do with them?”

“Sell them at auction. I try not to think about what happens to them afterward. Have you ever milked?”

We shook our heads. Patty put some grain in a milking stand. The older doe hopped up onto the stand and began to nibble.

“Wash and dry her teats. Give her a pint of grain; that’s her reward for standing still. Milk with both hands in a wave motion.” A stream of milk squirted onto the ground. “But use a pail to collect it! I can spare three bags of grain; that’ll do for a month. When you go to Buckerfield’s, buy a salt block. You try it.”

Pearl milked perfectly. I struggled to learn the technique.

“It’s easier for her because her hands are smaller. Are you prepared to do this at seven in the morning and evening?”

Pearl nodded. “We’ll soon have a horse to feed twice a day, too.”

“And when snow is blowing? And when you have the flu?”

We nodded.

“Grand. Come to my house.”

Patty poured us milk from the refrigerator.

“It tastes like normal milk,” signed Pearl.

“It’s three percent fat, naturally homogenized. Healthier than cow’s milk.”

Patty lined the bed of our truck with straw. We lifted each animal into the truck and tied it so it could stand up or lie down. Pearl climbed up and sat with the goats.

An hour later, as we crawled along Denman Street in a Vancouver traffic jam, Pearl tapped on the window. “Everyone is waving at me!”

We released the goats into our lower field. They trotted to a cluster of bushes and began to eat. “Shall we name them Mothergoat and Daughtergoat?” Pearl signed.

After dinner, we filled a pail with grain, took a wet cloth and a clean pail, walked to the field, and climbed over the stile. A sheep walked slowly toward Pearl, then broke into a canter. In a moment, all four sheep bellowed and stampeded to Pearl.

“Oh. Oh. OH!” said Pearl, holding the grain pail over her head as the sheep crowded around her legs, bleating and shoving.

The goats stood back and watched. It was hilarious. I took the grain bucket from Pearl and walked to the goats. They let me approach, but the sheep wouldn’t leave us alone. I held Mothergoat’s collar, kicked a sheep, and cursed it. The sheep backed off. Pearl threw pebbles at the sheep and chased them away.

Pearl put the clean pail on the ground under Mothergoat’s udder and squatted to milk her. I held the goat’s collar with one hand and offered her the grain bucket with the other. While she ate the grain, her body walked sideways away from Pearl to evade the hands of this unfamiliar milker. She pivoted around me like a ship pivoting around its anchor. Pearl, still squatting, crept after her udder, walking like a Cossack dancer.

Daughtergoat walked up to me, stood on her hind legs, and leaned against my chest with her forelegs. As Mothergoat’s collar pulled one hand sideways, and her head in the grain bucket pushed my other hand down, Daughtergoat butted Mothergoat and shoved her own head into the grain bucket. Both of us could hardly stop laughing, but the goats still needed to be milked.

Pearl stood up. “I give up! She won’t stand still!”

My hands were full, so I couldn’t sign. I held the grain bucket over my head, walked Mothergoat to the fence, and tied her collar to the fence so she couldn’t turn sideways. Pearl wiped her teats again and began to milk her. Although the goat could no longer move sideways, the grain had all been eaten, so she was no longer interested in standing still. She stepped forward—into the milk pail.

Pearl was spitting mad. I was laughing hysterically.

“Just squirt her milk on the ground.”

When Mothergoat’s udder was empty, we tied Daughtergoat to the fence and milked her onto the ground as well. We walked home carrying the grain and milk pails. Both were empty, yet both of us were smiling.

Milking soon became quick, efficient, and fun as the goats came to trust us, and after we learned to tie one goat to the fence while the other was being milked. The sheep realized we had no food for them and left us alone.

I made a pail carrier that doubled as a stool. Bowen Islanders waved as they drove past on the trunk road, and a few stopped to take photographs. We weighed and recorded the milk and filtered it into milk bottles. We drank a lot of milk.

My father came over on a Saturday morning ferry for a day of handiwork. We built barn doors and a milking stand. We marked the upper field fence line and bought 110 fenceposts at the Bowen Building Centre, making several trips in the truck to deliver them. Then