A Year on Ladybug Farm - Donna Ball [81]
“Well, don’t just stand there,” she said. “Come help me get the stuff to build it a pen.”
As it turned out, the pen wasn’t necessary. Although they kept the deer inside the enclosure at night “for his own safety,” the yearling had clearly settled into his new home, and never wandered farther from the house than the blackberry hedge on the hill. Even the border collie—currently called Fly because Bridget had read somewhere that was a popular name for sheepdogs—grew tired of barking at the deer and learned to ignore it. The women told themselves that as soon as hunting season was over they would contact wildlife officials about the proper way to rehabilitate a tame deer to the wild, but in the meantime the population of Ladybug Farm was increased by one.
As far as Lindsay was concerned, the drama of the whole affair was almost worth it for the transformation she had seen in Noah. He arrived early every morning to let the deer out of its enclosure, his pockets stuffed with dried berries and fallen apples he had picked up on the way. He led the animal back to its pen before he left at night, lingering to hand-feed it carrots from the bucket Bridget left by the back door. Although he was his usual taciturn self when others were around, she often watched him from the kitchen window, grinning as he fed the deer, stroking it and talking to it as he might a dog or a horse.
It was awhile before Noah’s loquacity transferred to humans, however. On a cool bright October afternoon, Lindsay was raking out the flower beds while Noah piled kindling wood into the wheelbarrow, and the fawn stepped delicately around the edge of the lawn, nibbling on the remnants of green grass that poked through the layer of orange and yellow leaves.
“Whatcha gonna do with it when it freezes?”
Noah’s voice was so unexpected that it took Lindsay a moment to realize he was speaking to her. She paused in the raking and turned around. “What?”
His scowl reflected impatience. “Deer huddle down together to keep warm in the cold. That’n’s gonna freeze out in that pen at night.”
Lindsay blinked. “Well . . . I guess we’ll put him in the barn then.”
He jerked his head toward the barn. “Roof’s got a hole in it. Deckin’s prob’ly rotted through.”
“Oh.” Lindsay was aware of the enormous significance of this moment. It was the first time Noah had ever initiated a conversation with her. But she didn’t know what to say.
Noah scooped up another double handful of poplar chips and tossed them into the wheelbarrow. “How come you don’t set him up in that dairy barn?”
“What?” She had never felt so inarticulate in her life.
“It’s warm. Fixed the hole in the wall from the snake. What you gonna use it for, anyway?”
She relaxed a little. “It’s going to be my studio.”
He looked at her. “Studio for what?”
“An art studio.” She smiled. “I’m an artist.”
He gave a little snort. “You ain’t no artist.” He dumped another armload of chips into the wheelbarrow.
She was immediately defensive. “What makes you say that?”
“An artist draws,” he answered simply. He picked up the handles of the wheelbarrow and pushed it toward the shed.
Half an hour later, Lindsay set up a lawn chair and a camp table for her pencil kit in the middle of the back lawn, a dozen or so feet away from where the deer grazed, and directly along the path that Noah had to take to empty the wheelbarrow at the woodshed. When he passed behind her, she could hear the wheels slow, and sense his eyes on her, watching her sketch. She did not look up, but made herself concentrate on the drawing. After a while, it was not so much of an effort as she lost herself in her work and the scene began to emerge from the nubby sketch paper: the blades of grass, bent just so, the shape and flutter of autumn leaves, the velvety nose, the luminous eye, the graceful arch of a neck. As amazing as it seemed, Lindsay had actually forgotten how much she loved this.
She was not certain how long Noah had been standing over her, watching. When he spoke, she was