Part 5
Walter left the latch closed.
He took his hand away and moved three steps back so Gideon could see all of him with the clear eye. Then he asked Carrie to bring Mabel halfway down the parallel lane again.
“You sure?” she called.
“No,” Walter said. “Do it slow.”
Carrie turned the cow without rushing her. Mabel complained, swung her broad tan head, and walked back toward the barn. Gideon’s breathing eased as he tracked her. When she reversed once more, he followed the familiar body past the loose sack and reached the ramp.
He lowered his nose to the bedding. One hoof touched aluminum beneath it. Dana waited. Inez waited. Walter said the bull’s name once and did not turn it into a command.
Gideon stepped into the trailer.
The rear gate closed quietly behind him. Inez secured it, checked the side doors, and gave Dana a nod. Only then did Walter realize Carrie had come around the outside of the panels and was standing beside him.
“You stayed out,” she said.
“I said I would.”
It was a small sentence. Seven months earlier, she would not have believed it.
Hal signed the surrender on the hood of Dana’s truck. He kept the pen in his hand afterward and looked through the trailer slats. Gideon had positioned himself with his right eye toward the open side and Mabel’s last call fading behind him.
“My father thought that bull would put our name on the map,” Hal said. “Maybe this is the first decent thing our name gets to do for him.”
Walter wrote his check to Rowan Ridge. The six thousand dollars looked unremarkable in blue ink. No line on the check recorded that it bought no ownership, no breeding rights, and no promise that Gideon would ever choose to stand near him again.
Dana put the check in a canvas folder. “We’ll call when he’s unloaded. Give him a month before you visit.”
Walter nodded. He had agreed to the rule before hearing how long a month could be.
The trailer rolled down the gravel drive and paused at the road. For a moment, Gideon’s gray shoulder showed between the slats. Then the truck turned south and the sycamores hid it.
Walter went to the maternity lot. The hay Gideon had left was still warm in the middle where his muzzle had pushed it aside. Walter lifted the feed tub, swept the bedding into a pile, and found himself reaching for work because work was what remained when an animal left.
Carrie picked up the other broom.
They cleaned without talking until May came for Mabel. The old cow stopped at the barn door and looked toward the empty lot, then followed May back to the herd. No one told Walter what the gesture meant.
That afternoon, he and Carrie sat at the kitchen table with the roof estimates between them. She had not unpacked the bag in Maggie’s sewing room, but she had not put it in the car either.
“I’m not ready to tell you that night is all right,” she said.
“It isn’t.”
“And I won’t own this farm on paper while you make every decision and call me only when you need a signature.”
Walter turned one of the estimates so they could both read it. “What are you asking for?”
“A call before you say yes. The real numbers, even when they’re bad. If you fall, I hear it from you, not May. And if I disagree, you don’t punish me by disappearing.”
Walter nearly told her she would never have to hear bad news from May again. He stopped before the claim left his mouth.
“All right,” he said. “The roof first. Then we decide together how many cows I can keep without pretending I’m still forty.”
“You said we.”
“Don’t make me repeat it.”
The corner of Carrie’s mouth moved. She pulled the roof estimate closer and wrote Saturday, 9:00 a.m. in the margin. Walter did not change it.
Five months later, Walter and Carrie drove to Rowan Ridge on a cold March morning. The refuge occupied two hundred hilly acres bordered by double fence and bare walnut trees. Dana met them at the quarantine barn, though Gideon had left quarantine weeks earlier and now shared a divided pasture with two elderly steers.
His hoof bruise had grown out clean. His left eye had not improved. The staff approached from his right, announced themselves before entering an adjacent lane, and moved him only along routes he had learned at his own pace.
“He isn’t easy,” Dana said. “He probably never will be. But he’s predictable when we are.”
Walter stood outside the fence as promised. Gideon was fifty yards away at the hay ring. When Walter spoke his name, the bull lifted his head and turned until the clear eye found him.
For several seconds, neither moved.
Then Gideon came to the fence at a walk. He stopped beyond arm’s reach, breathed in Walter’s direction, and lowered his head. Walter kept his hands on the top rail. He told him Mabel was still stealing feed, that the barn had a new roof, and that the maternity lot was empty again.
Carrie waited beside him without lifting her phone to take a picture.
After a while, one of the steers called from the hay ring. Gideon’s ear turned. He looked once more at Walter, then went back to the animals whose breathing he knew.
On the drive home, Carrie took the driver’s seat. Walter settled into the passenger side, set both hands loose on his knees, and watched the fence lines pass without telling her where to turn.