Part 4
“Then no,” Walter said.
Dana did not argue. She gathered her papers and asked Hal to call if the answer changed before seven the next morning. Her crew could bring a bull-rated trailer after that; otherwise Hal’s driver would return Gideon to Tennessee.
Carrie carried her overnight bag into Maggie’s old sewing room. Hal went to a motel near the interstate. May fed Walter’s cows while he sat on an overturned bucket outside Gideon’s double fence and watched daylight drain out of the lot.
He had imagined keeping the bull before he knew the cost, then kept imagining it after the facts changed. In those pictures, Gideon grazed under the sycamores while Walter repaired fence nearby. Carrie visited and admitted she had been wrong. Neighbors stopped at the road to marvel at the dangerous animal who trusted only him.
None of the pictures contained a roof bill, a second handler, or Gideon turning toward a sound he could not see.
The bull came to the inner fence. Walter remained beyond the empty buffer lane, too far away for the contact the original story in his head required. Gideon did not press his face to the rails or ask to be touched. He positioned his right eye toward Walter, listened to Mabel shift in the straw, and began to chew.
Walter stayed until the cold entered his knees. When he returned to the house, Carrie sat at the kitchen table with Maggie’s old ledger open in front of her. The last page held three months of feed figures in Maggie’s slanting hand and one grocery list written sideways in the margin.
“I should have called you that night,” Walter said.
Carrie did not look up. “Yes.”
“I knew she asked me to. I waited anyway.”
Her thumb moved once over the edge of the page. Walter wanted to explain the rain, the hospice nurse’s uncertainty, Maggie’s uneven breathing. He let the reasons remain where they belonged.
“I can’t fix that,” he said. “I can stop doing it again.”
Carrie raised her eyes. They were Maggie’s eyes only in color. The caution in them belonged entirely to her.
Walter put his bankbook on the table. “I was going to spend six thousand buying Gideon. That’s mine, after taxes. If I use it toward Rowan Ridge, what does it do to the farm?”
It took Carrie a moment to answer. “The roof still has to be financed. You’d have less cushion if milk prices drop. But it wouldn’t put the land at risk.”
“Will you call Hal with me and ask whether he’ll cover the other two?”
“You want my permission?”
“I want your answer before I make the choice.”
She looked down at the bankbook, then at the ledger. “I’ll call him.”
Hal answered on the first ring. He was silent after Carrie explained, and when he spoke, some of the polish had gone out of his voice.
“I can pay two thousand,” he said. “I’d spend nearly that moving him home and then to a sale, and I should have pushed harder on that eye exam. I’ll transfer him for nothing. But the surrender is final.”
“That’s the point,” Walter said, and heard how much it cost him to mean it.
At seven thirty, Rowan Ridge’s trailer turned through the gate. Dana brought one handler, a quiet woman named Inez who inspected every latch before unloading a single panel. Ellen checked Gideon’s eye and hoof from outside the rail, then approved the two-hour trip south. Hal stood at the far end of the barn, where Gideon could see his whole body.
They built a curved route from the maternity lot to the trailer. Feed sacks covered the open places. Fresh bedding dulled the shine of the ramp. Mabel would walk the parallel lane with Carrie, visible but separated. Walter’s job was to stand outside the route and speak only if Gideon stalled.
“You do not enter the alley,” Dana said.
“I heard you.”
“Say it back.”
The demand irritated him. That was why she made it.
“I do not enter the alley.”
Carrie clipped a lead to Mabel’s halter. The old Jersey knew her, or at least remembered that Carrie once carried pockets full of apple peel. She followed without resistance.
Gideon moved after her on the other side of the solid panel, keeping his right eye toward the opening. He passed the place where the chain had struck the chute. He passed the bowed hinge. At the trailer ramp, he lowered his head and stopped.
No one moved him.
A gust lifted the corner of one feed sack. The metal grommet tapped twice against the rail on Gideon’s left. He spun, struck the side panel with his shoulder, and backed hard enough to make the chained posts shudder.
Inez lowered the loose sack and stepped out of sight. Hal’s driver reached toward the cab where the red prod lay on the floor.
“Leave it,” Hal said.
The driver froze. Hal took the prod himself, removed the battery, and set both pieces in the toolbox.
Gideon stood at the bend in the alley, breathing through his open mouth. Mabel had reached the end of her lane and was calling for the herd. Carrie looked at Walter over the solid panel.
He knew how to end the scene the old way. Six feet separated him from the service gate. If he stepped inside with a feed bucket and let Gideon fix on his voice, he might draw the bull forward. He might also put every person there in the position of saving him.
Walter put his hand on the latch…
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