Part 3
“I can’t promise that,” Lydia said. “But he gets fed and looked after while I find him a good place. Even if he never makes us a dollar.”
She pulled the feed sheet toward her and checked the winter allowance for Knight. Sadie found the calculator beneath the receipts, and they worked through the expense with no income from selling him to cancel it out. The figure stayed in the budget when they finished.
The next morning, Nell refused to go through the gate. Lydia held the sorting board while Sadie worked the outside latch, and the cow stood broadside in the opening, considering a mouthful of grass growing beneath the post.
“She knows,” Sadie said.
“She knows that if she stands there long enough, I’ll go get the bucket.”
They waited her out. When Nell finally ambled into the breeding pasture, Knight lifted his head and came across the slope at an easy walk. Lydia watched his feet until the two animals had moved beyond the rise.
Ruth had reminded her that a bull who accepted a familiar feeding routine was still a bull. Lydia had strengthened the gates before turnout and stopped Sadie from taking shortcuts through occupied pens. It was an adjustment she made willingly, though part of her missed being able to see Knight’s whole day from the kitchen window.
By fall, fifteen of Knight’s sixteen cows were in calf, including Nell. Sadie entered the open cow along with the pregnant ones and printed a copy for the barn. Lydia kept watching Knight walk whenever she went out to check the group, even after his old limp had become difficult to remember.
That fall, Lydia took Sadie to a chess tournament and stayed through the last round. In the corridor outside the playing room, she checked the cattle camera on her phone, saw that everything was quiet, and put it away. Sadie lost on time and came out angry enough that Lydia knew better than to suggest stopping for ice cream.
They stopped for sandwiches instead. Halfway through hers, Sadie began explaining the move she should have made. Lydia listened until she could picture it.
Knight’s first calf arrived the following March. Nell had separated from the other close-up cows, and Lydia found her at dawn licking a wet black heifer in the straw. The calf was trying to stand with her hind legs much farther apart than the task required.
Lydia called Sadie from the barn. “Bring the scale sling. And your coat.”
The girl arrived in her coat over pajama pants, carrying the sling and the clipboard. They gave Nell time before moving her behind the handling gate, then weighed and checked the calf with the cow close enough to see her. Seventy-two pounds, a clean navel, a vigorous objection to being held.
“Female,” Lydia said.
“I got that part.”
They released her back to Nell. The calf found the udder, lost it, and found it again, while Sadie wrote with the clipboard braced against her stomach.
Lydia stayed after there was nothing left to do. Nell’s ear tag had been yellow when Lydia bought her and was almost white now. Beside it, the calf’s new tag looked unnaturally bright.
“You can go eat,” Sadie said. “I’ll watch them a minute.”
Lydia went as far as the door, then came back and leaned on the rail beside her.
Most of the remaining births were uncomplicated. One calf came backward, and Lydia called Ruth for help as soon as she recognized the problem. They delivered him alive, worked quietly until he was breathing well, and left Sadie to note the time while they checked the cow.
That evening, Lydia found the birth recorded under ASSISTED. She started to explain that the trouble had been position, then stopped. Sadie had written that in the next column already.
Fifteen calves survived. By June, Nell’s heifer had a way of standing with her hind feet braced that made Lydia recognize her across the pasture. She caught herself watching the other calves for the same stance and made herself look at their dams, too.
Calvin came that month and watched the calves walk. He asked for their records at weaning, then gave Lydia the number for Prairie Bend, a collection business Hawthorn Creek had used.
“We kept three bulls there one winter,” he said. “Still owned them. Paid the board, sold the semen. Ask what it costs now. My figures won’t do you any good.”
While Lydia saved the number, Sadie picked up the long-handled brush hanging beside the gate. Knight had come to the fence, and she worked it over the thick hair of his forehead from her side of the rail. When she paused, he rubbed his head against the post hard enough to rattle the latch.
“All right. One more.”
He lowered his head for the brush. Lydia remembered how little effort he had once been able to spare for a fly; now Sadie had to lean back on the handle when he pressed into it.
The dry summer cost Lydia more feed than she’d budgeted for. By weaning, the bank had sent a renewal questionnaire and asked how much she expected the calf sale to pay off the operating line. She left that box empty until the calves were weighed.
Calvin came to help with the rented scale. Nell’s heifer stood squarely inside it when the display jumped, and Sadie held up her hand before Lydia could open the exit gate.
“She hasn’t moved.”
Calvin bent to the cable, cleaned the connection, and tightened it. “Run her back through.”
They weighed her twice more. Lydia crossed out the first figure and waited for Sadie to read the stable number back to her; the heifer shook her bright tag and objected to the delay.
She was still a good calf at the lower weight. With age and sex accounted for, the figures showed strong growth and an unusually even group, though one crop on one farm could only tell them so much. Sadie attached the birth records before making copies for two neighbors interested in buying sons.
Calvin passed a copy to a former customer with a commercial herd. When the man asked about semen, Lydia called Prairie Bend. The fees went into her feed-order notebook; the manager’s warning that a bull could breed cows and still fail to produce semen that froze well went in the margin. She hadn’t found a way to pay for the attempt when Warren arrived the next afternoon.
He had asked to see the calves and came without a trailer, which Lydia appreciated until he took a purchase agreement from his truck.
“Twenty-four thousand,” he said. “The bull, with all collection rights. Subject to the health work. You keep every calf you’ve already got.”
She thought she’d misunderstood him. He rested the agreement on the hood and kept one hand over it against the wind.
“That’s a serious offer,” he added.
“I can see that.”
“Hawthorn Creek wouldn’t sell me the bulls I wanted,” Warren said. “I know that cow family. I’ve got young cows coming on, and I can afford to wait for another crop.”
“You said he’d cost me six farm calls.”
“Was I wrong about that?”
Lydia looked toward the lot. Knight had come to the feeder, though it wasn’t feeding time. Twenty-four thousand dollars would make a difference she could feel in her jaw, where she’d been holding tension so long she sometimes woke with a headache.
“I’m not selling him.”
Warren slid the agreement toward her. “Take it inside. Look at it tonight.”
“There’s no point.”
Sadie came around the barn with the new weight sheet in a plastic sleeve. She was sixteen now and nearly Lydia’s height. Seeing the agreement, she slowed but kept coming.
“Did you show him these?” she asked.
“We were just talking.”
“I was making your mother an offer,” Warren said. “She’s turned it down.”
Lydia wished he’d leave. She also wished, with a sudden uncomfortable force, that Sadie had taken another minute printing the sheet.
“I’m keeping it open through the end of November,” Warren said. He handed Lydia the agreement and went to his truck. He didn’t smile at Sadie or offer her a separate argument.
Once he was gone, Sadie read the amount. Her mouth parted slightly, then closed.
“And you said no.”
“He wants to own everything Knight produces from now on.”
“I can read.”
Lydia reached for the plastic sleeve, but Sadie held on to it. The breeze kept lifting the corner of the page inside.
“We don’t have to take the first offer,” Lydia said.
“You didn’t say we’d think about it.”
“The responsibility is mine, Sadie.”
“Then don’t tell people we decided.”
The girl took the weight sheet back to the barn. Lydia followed her as far as the doorway, but Sadie was already fastening it above the desk, smoothing the sleeve until it lay flat. She asked which cows needed moving before dark, in the voice she used with people she was being paid to help.
For the next two weeks, the records remained accurate. The small notes disappeared. There was no reminder about Nell pushing beneath the loose board, no complaint about the printer, no smiley face beside the first weaning weight that had made them both look twice.
Lydia tried to praise the work. Sadie said, “Okay,” and returned to her homework.
The bank’s answer came in mid-November. Lydia would have to pay down twelve thousand dollars of the operating line by the end of December to renew it on the terms she needed. On the questionnaire she’d finally returned, her own estimate had fallen short of that amount. The loan officer had circled it during their last meeting.
At the kitchen table, she calculated the calf-sale proceeds, winter feed, and bills already committed. The same shortage returned each time. Keeping four of Knight’s heifers meant giving up the money they would have brought, but selling all of them would leave little of the breeding plan she’d begun.
She opened Warren’s agreement again, then called Prairie Bend and arranged a visit for Saturday. Beside the phone lay Sadie’s calendar, with an entry that began at nine. Lydia hadn’t looked at it before making the call.
She called back and asked the manager to hold the afternoon provisionally. Then she set out the papers where Sadie could read them.
When her daughter came in, Lydia didn’t begin with an explanation. She showed her the balance, the bank’s requirement, Warren’s offer, and the collection costs. Beside those she placed a list of cows that might bring enough money to meet the deadline.
Sadie sat down without taking off her coat. She read slowly, using one finger to keep her place, then moved the cow list closer.
Nell’s number was halfway down the page. “You’d have to sell her,” she said…
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