Part 3
“Because of Luke?” Janice asked.
“Because you’d be alone with him. The nearest proper restraint is at somebody else’s farm.”
Janice pulled out a chair, but Mara remained by the sink. She had not raised her voice, which made it harder to wait for the anger to pass and call the matter settled.
“You’re good with cattle,” Mara said. “You taught me most of what I knew before school. That doesn’t give this place everything he needs.”
Janice sat down. Outside, the late light reached Amos’s pen, and he shifted out of the shade to keep them in view through the office window.
“Would you ask Voss about the college?” she said.
“You can ask him.”
Janice took out her phone. Mara waited while she made the call, and afterward they drank the coffee that remained in the pot, although neither of them wanted it by then.
Westridge already kept mature bulls, and Voss thought its advanced livestock students could learn from the way Amos responded to handling. Janice sent the farm manager the records, including Danny’s account with his permission, and told Graham where she’d sent them.
The answer took more than a week. Janice kept her phone in her breast pocket while she fed Amos and worked with the blue square. He learned to come a short distance toward it along the fence; sometimes he stopped to inspect something and she had to wait, the square growing heavy in her hand.
Graham visited near the end of the second week. He stood well back from the barrier while Amos approached the cloth, then asked Janice to put it away. They watched the bull turn back toward his feeder.
“Danny says you read his account back to him,” Graham said.
“He corrected some things.”
“He sent me a copy. Asked for work in the feed office while his hand heals.”
Janice waited. Graham picked a burr from the cuff of his trousers and rolled it between his fingers.
“I should’ve asked what he could do before telling him his old job was waiting.”
“Have you told him that?”
“We’re talking.” He dropped the burr outside the walkway. “If the college takes Amos, I’ll cover the transfer and the initial care arrangement. I won’t keep an interest in him.”
“You’d give him up.”
“I’d know where he was. That would be worth something.”
On Saturday morning, the farm manager called. He and Voss had reviewed the records; Amos could stay in an isolated paddock near the farm’s restraint facilities while they completed his assessment.
“Our staff would handle him,” he said. “Students could watch from outside.”
“And if he doesn’t settle?”
“Then Voss and I decide what we can safely provide. I can’t promise you more than that.”
Through the office window, Janice watched Amos rub his forehead against the smooth post. She asked the manager to call Graham. That afternoon Graham approved the transfer and forwarded the farm’s intake and transport requirements to her.
Mick Harlan, the hauler the college used for difficult cattle, arrived the next morning. He walked the approach with the contractor Voss had recommended, and neither man liked the turn from the receiving pen to Janice’s old dock. Mick’s lower trailer would give Amos a gentler ramp, but making a broad approach to it required space occupied by the abandoned alley.
“How much of it?” Janice asked.
The contractor pointed with his boot. “That curb. Those two posts. Swing gate comes out with them.”
She looked at the red gate. Luke had painted it one summer after work, using the last of a gallon meant for the barn doors. A red thumbprint remained beneath the hinge, where he had checked the paint before it was dry.
“We could bring the panels around the other way.”
Mick walked the route she suggested. At the corner, he stopped and held his arms out to show the space Amos would have to turn through.
“You can build that,” he said. “I won’t load him through it.”
He gave her the trailer’s dimensions and the days he was available. There was another job after hers; if they needed him to keep the truck there longer, he would have to move that booking. She thanked him for coming, though her voice sounded as though he had done something to her.
That evening, Janice took the accident folder from the cabinet. Her statement was three pages beneath a rusted clip. Halfway down the second page she found the answer about prior warnings; on a clean sheet, she wrote what Luke had told her and how she had answered him.
The next morning she took both versions to a local attorney. She asked him to send her correction to the office that had handled the accident and to the insurer involved. He explained that there might be questions she could no longer answer and consequences he could not predict before reviewing the file.
“I don’t remember everything,” she said.
“Then don’t fill in what you don’t remember.”
He left her alone to read the statement once more. Janice crossed out a sentence about how much Luke had wanted to finish that day’s work. When the attorney came back, she signed the page without putting it back in.
From the attorney’s parking lot, she called the contractor and accepted his estimate. The removal and temporary loading lane would take more than the boarding payment; rebuilding the commercial approach would have to wait. She canceled her remaining fall reservations and drew on the money set aside for winter.
When Mara learned what she had done, she came to the office after work. Janice showed her the estimate and the canceled bookings before she could ask.
“You should’ve called me.”
“For what?”
Mara looked down at the figures. Her hair had come loose from its tie, and there was a pale line across her nose where safety glasses had rested.
“I don’t know,” she said finally. “To tell me.”
“I’m telling you now. I’m not asking you to pay for it.”
They sat with the estimate between them. Janice asked whether she had eaten, and when Mara said no, they divided the sandwich left in the office refrigerator.
On Tuesday, the contractor photographed and measured the old assembly before removing it. Janice watched from outside the work area as the gate was supported, disconnected, and lowered onto the equipment trailer. The curb came out in heavy broken sections, exposing pale earth that had not seen daylight since her children were small.
She had expected to want the hinge with Luke’s thumbprint. When the contractor asked whether she wanted anything set aside, she almost pointed to it. Then she remembered Luke coming in for supper with paint on his ear because he had tried to scratch an itch with the back of his wrist.
“No,” she said. “Take the whole thing.”
Mara was beside her when the trailer pulled away.
Neither woman touched the other, but neither went back to her own vehicle until the contractor reached the road.
They spent the next two days preparing the broad lane Mick had requested. Bull-rated panels were secured to sound fixed supports, footing was improved, and every human position stayed behind a barrier. The route left Amos room to return to his pen if they stopped the attempt.
Janice and Mara walked it with Mick before the trailer was due. At one turn, Mara asked for the canvas to be moved so Amos would keep the person holding the square in view. Janice changed it, then walked the route again without arguing about the extra work.
That afternoon, they let Amos explore the first section of the lane and return to his pen. They stopped there, leaving the full approach for when the trailer and its handlers were in place.
By Friday morning, three days before Graham’s deadline, the trailer was positioned and its engine shut down. Graham waited outside the work area while Amos remained in his pen. Mara went to her marked position, looked across the stretch where the red gate had stood, and came back.
She held the folded blue cloth against her coat. “I thought I could work from there,” she told Janice. “I can’t…”
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