Murderer
Editor’s note: Almost 20 years ago, Crash Barry lived and worked on Matinicus, Maine’s most remote island. This is another of his true stories.
I knelt on one knee and grabbed the sheep’s head with both hands and pushed down, intent on drowning her in the rising tide. For a moment or two, nothing happened. Then the fight began. She bucked and flailed and kicked, frantically trying to free herself from my grip. I stood and tried to drag the thrashing beast to deeper water to hasten the execution, to end her suffering. But my boots were heavy with ocean and I staggered and slipped and fell.
The sheep had been attacked by a pack of Matinicus dogs that crossed the Gut at low water to invade Wheaton’s Island, uninhabited except for five sheep pursuing a mellow existence among the handful of spruce, abandoned fish houses, and scrub grass. I was living by the Gut in a room above Captain Edwin’s shop, a stone’s throw from the tiny herd. Much of my time, when not lobstering, was spent smoking herb and watching the wandering animals.
One summer afternoon, after a long day hauling traps, Edwin and I were coming ashore from the mooring and heard a bleating wail of distress from Wheaton’s. I dropped Edwin off at the ladder, then rowed across and landed on the island’s stony beach. The tide was halfway to high, the wind was whispering from the southeast, and a sheep was screaming.
I followed the cries toward the island’s southern tip, where there’s a series of rock shelves and crevices. There I found her, jammed in a crack between two ledges. Her face mauled. Her wool blackened with blood from a gaping chest wound. Her front legs dangled at an impossible angle.
I bent and wedged my hands behind the bleating sheep’s shoulders. I tugged and pulled, but the ledge wouldn’t let go. I shifted my grip lower and tugged again. Suddenly, she broke free and the two of us tumbled to the ground. I got up. She continued to squirm and weep.
She needed to be put out of her misery. What could I do? Row back to Matinicus and find a gun to borrow? Or grab a sharp knife from my shack? Then what? Slash her throat?
I bent and picked her up and slung her over my shoulder. She was lighter than I expected. I walked to the shore and into the sea, right up to my boot tops. I dropped the animal into the water, on her back. She barely moved, other than her mouth, which was opening and closing below the waterline. Chewing, almost.
Then I tried to drown her. She struggled. I stumbled. The sheep, suddenly free of her enemy, bobbed to the surface, wheezing and gasping for air. I was soaked, chest to toe. I grabbed and dragged her closer to shore. Standing above her, in a couple feet of water, I lifted my right boot and placed it on her skull. She bared her teeth as I shifted all my weight onto her head. Then I placed my left boot on her neck.
There I stood as the tide climbed above my knees. And the poor sheep, now exhausted, barely struggled. Don’t know how long it took, but she finally died. I stepped backwards and her head surfaced.
Couldn’t leave the carcass floating in the surf to rot or be eaten by gulls. And now that the dogs knew cornered prey lived on Wheaton’s, they’d be back for more. A burial at sea was necessary.
I found a crushed and twisted lobster trap on the beach with 10 fathoms of rope attached. I half-filled the trap with rocks for extra ballast, put it in the bow of the skiff, and lashed the sheep to the trap. I launched the boat and rowed out through the Gut and into Old Cove. Rowing wasn’t easy, against the tide and with the extra load of rocks and sheep, but I pulled and pulled until I was several hundred yards off the shore.
I half-stood and, without ceremony, wrestled the corpse over the side, followed by the rock-filled trap. For a couple seconds, the dead sheep floated on the surface, a lone eye staring at me. Then the rocks took over. I cried as the trap sunk, pulling the sheep down to the deep.
The next day I was on the wharf, watching the remaining sheep graze. Three men and a young island boy who suffered from a serious respiratory illness gathered about 50 feet away from me. One guy handed the boy a rifle with a scope. He aimed and fired. A sheep dropped to the ground. Her colleagues continued to graze, oblivious to the danger. More bullets flew.
“Mutton,” one of the fellas yelled to me when the shooting was over and all the sheep were dead.
