Chapter One

Daybreak and the Sheep

Dawn.

The coldness outdoors this morning woke up Renato's brain.

September. Yes, here was a good time of day, a good time of year. In fact, it was Renato Tizzoni's favorite time of year. Autumn was a season of brisk transition.

Renato's work boots clomped down the stone steps in front of his house. The sky was brightening from deep blue to the start of sunlight, pushing stars away. But the air was still dark and chilly inside the courtyard. Renato crossed the courtyard and stopped at the well.

The bucket he lowered into the well disappeared quickly in the blackness. He heard the splash, low and far away. When he hoisted the bucket back up, the metal of the pulley squeaked.

Inside their stall across the courtyard, the sheep heard Renato and responded with impatient movements. One of the sheep had a bell tied around her neck. The bell clank-te-clanked. One sheep went be-e-eh.

“A little patience, please!” Renato told the sheep, talking to the closed wooden door of their stall.

He set the dripping bucket on the ledge of the well and, leaning forward, washed his face with cold handfuls of water.

Renato was the waterworks man for the township of Sant'Angelo D'Asso. It was up to him to make sure that every home always had water. All the same, each morning he splashed himself awake not with the town's water that came through his house's pipes but with the earth's own water, pulleyed up from the courtyard well. Every morning, every season. If you asked him why his first touch of water every day should come from the well, he wouldn't have known how to answer. Who needs to explain? Well water was part of his every dawn. One of the little things that gave life its taste.

An orange cat lived in the courtyard and in the sheep stalls and in the cellar under the house. The cat policed the mice around the place. He and Renato liked each other. The cat rubbed himself against Renato's ankles now while Renato rinsed his face with well water another time. Renato said, “Micio,” for no one had ever thought to give the cat a name other than the word “kitten.” He bent over and stroked the cat above the nose, just between the eyes. The cat closed his eyes and purred. “Micio,” Renato said.

He walked across the courtyard to open the door for the sheep.

The four sheep pushed one another out of the stall like passengers getting off a hot bus in summer. Four were enough to give Renato the satisfaction of keeping sheep: He made pecorino cheese from their milk. The cheese was at its best, according to his tastebuds, when it was neither too mature nor too fresh. He liked it semi-stagionato, halfway aged, solid yet not hard, salty and tangy in the mouth. Four was the right number for sheep because once you had too many you became a shepherd whether you meant to or not. Renato's little flock was manageable.

Rushing out of their stall this morning, the four stirred up commotion. They bleated. They bumped into one another. Under them, udders bobbed. Hooves tapped on the stones of the courtyard.

Renato went into the stall, the air in there warm with sheep body smells, and made the milking corner ready. He righted the stool and put the metal milking pot on the ground. From a hook on the wall he took down the plastic feed pail. In the adjacent storeroom he filled the feed pail from a sack of grain. Beside the sack were some branches that he had cut from his olive trees. For the sheep, nibbling on olive leaves was a treat.

It was dark in the feed room, but Renato didn't need light to help him fill the feed pail. His hands knew what to do in the same way that his hands didn't need light to touch his wife's body in the dark. The hands knew what was where.

In the stall, Renato settled himself on the milking stool. The feed pail to his left, the milking pot in front of his work boots, Renato scratched his beard. “Ready!” he said.

The first sheep trotted back inside the stall, her bell clanking. She was a character, the first sheep. She was braver than the others, though bravery never amounted to very much in sheep. Renato didn't exactly have a name for the first sheep, or for any of them. He called them by their numbers -- la Prima, la Seconda, la Terza, la Quarta -- because that was the order they had chosen for themselves. Every morning and evening the spirited Prima was always the first to come into the stall to be milked. The four sheep knew their order as if they knew their own natures.

Prima was a character, all right. Wide-eyed curiosity set her apart from the others. If Renato ever had to be a sheep, he would probably be this one.She put her mouth straight in the feed pail and started to chew, her flank leaning against Renato's knees. He took her udder with his right hand and squeezed with an undulating upward coax. Milk squirted into the pail. The sheep chewed.

When Renato finished, he slapped Prima on her rump. She ran out into the courtyard through the open door.

“Seconda!” Renato called, and, when he had finished with her, “Terza!” The second and the third were creatures of the flock. They gave birth, gave milk, gave wool, chewed grass, and stayed with the others. They never distinguished themselves in life. When they died someday, Renato wouldn't revisit either of them with a nostalgic thought.

The fourth set herself apart, but not with the courage of the first. To the contrary. She was delicate in build. And...

Excerpted from Renato's Luck © Copyright 2012 by Jeff Shapiro. Reprinted with permission by HarperCollins. All rights reserved.