Part 2
“I said Ben hadn’t warned me.”
The corner of the form lifted in the breeze. Ruth reached to hold it, but Elaine slid it onto the bench and wrote another restriction before signing: Otis was not to change pens again until the facility had been assessed.
“Dr. Keene has to know,” she said. “I’d rather he heard it from you.”
Ruth pressed the paper flat with both hands.
Ben had been twenty-eight. She had been at the controls when the gate pinned him against the curb. In the fragments she could bear to remember, his shirt had pulled tight across one shoulder and his palm was spread against the post. She had kept telling him to stay with her, as if those words gave him a choice.
Afterward, neighbors filled her refrigerator. People spoke of how little time there was to react around livestock. Ruth had let those accounts stand. When Elaine said her brother had reported the fault, Ruth told her grief had muddled her memory.
“I had no right to say what I said to you.”
Elaine looked up. “About which thing?”
Ink had transferred from the form to Ruth’s thumb. She rubbed it against her forefinger until the mark spread.
Her daughter gathered her bag.
“I’ll check him tomorrow. That’s all I’m agreeing to.”
Ruth moved out of her way. She did not ask Elaine to stay for a meal.
Warren answered the next morning while Ruth stood at the office window. She explained the responses they had observed and asked him to approve a visit from Dr. Martin Keene, a livestock veterinarian who also consulted for an agricultural college.
Elaine knew him professionally. He had never treated cattle at Ruth’s yard and knew nothing of the family beyond what she would have to tell him.
Warren let her finish.
“Suppose his hearing’s gone. Is there treatment?”
“We haven’t established that yet. An examination comes first.”
“I’ll pay for that. But I won’t have people saying we damaged him because nobody recognized it.”
“I’m asking how to keep the next person from getting hurt.”
“That’s what I’ve been asking.”
His tone made Ruth take the phone away from her ear for a moment. When she put it back, he was offering to forward the veterinary records he had.
The blue cloth came off its hook for a different purpose. Ruth folded it into a square and held it beside a feed tub, remaining behind the rails. She removed it once Otis approached. Sessions lasted only a few minutes; the cloth stayed quiet in her hands.
For several days, he gave all his attention to the feed. Then Ruth began seeing him look for the square before she brought the tub around.
She learned other things during the hours between feedings. He paused with his nose just above the water before drinking. After eating, he pressed his forehead against a polished length of upright timber. A wisp of hay could remain hooked over his horn through an entire afternoon.
Once, he stood close enough that she could have picked the hay away. She closed her hand more firmly around the folded cloth and kept it on her side of the fence.
Elaine came when her rounds allowed. One evening Ruth was fighting a roll of tape, trying to bind a ragged jacket cuff without using her aching wrist. The loose threads had caught twice on a latch.
Elaine took scissors from her bag. She snipped away the fraying cloth, turned Ruth’s arm toward the light, and wound the tape neatly around it.
“Where’s your usual piece of twine?”
“Needs two good hands to pull it tight.”
“You could’ve taken the jacket off.”
Ruth looked down at the sleeve. “That would’ve spoiled the challenge.”
Elaine’s mouth twitched. She smoothed the tape with her thumb.
“It should last until this goes through the wash.”
“Then we’ve got months.”
A brief laugh escaped Elaine before she bent to put the scissors away. Ruth kept the repaired cuff away from the dirty rail while they watched Otis finish his hay.
Cole’s call came Thursday. He asked first whether the bull was eating, then listened while Ruth described his appetite. When she asked to record his account for Keene, he made her wait while he found a quiet place.
“Don’t make it sound better than I tell it.”
“I’ll read it back.”
Otis had stopped in the collection alley. A powered gate was moving behind him. The bull surged sideways, and the displaced gate struck Cole’s arm.
For weeks before that, Cole had noticed Otis failing to respond until someone came into view. He had mentioned it to others. None of them had known what to make of it.
“I figured he was being stubborn,” he said. “I lost my temper with him sometimes.”
Ruth’s pen stopped above the page.
“That belongs in there,” Cole said. “Don’t leave me out of it.”
She wrote it down.
“I’m not climbing back in to prove I’m over it,” he continued. “They say the job’s there when I’m ready. I could work now. Just somewhere else.”
“You can tell them that.”
“I have.”
Ruth read every line aloud. Cole changed where she had placed the gate and objected to a word she had used to describe the bull’s movement. She crossed it out while he waited, then read that passage again.
“Okay,” he said. “That’s what happened.”
Keene arrived with mud dried around the soles of his boots. Before approaching the occupied pen, he walked the loading area and asked where people stood during transfers. Ruth showed him the records at the porch bench.
He watched Otis for a long time, comparing what he saw with their notes. Severe hearing impairment was a reasonable concern, he said. From then on, they should plan as though calls and spoken commands would not reach him.
He would not assign a cause on that evidence. A fuller examination required proper restraint somewhere Otis could reach without being forced through the abandoned facilities.
“He’s still a mature bull,” Keene said. “Keep your safeguards. Quit relying on your voice from behind him.”
At the chained alley, Ruth told him about Ben. She gave him the warning, her decision to continue, and what she had said afterward. When he asked whether the original report contained the warning, she answered directly.
“No.”
Keene looked at the chained gate rather than at her.
“This stays isolated. Before we plan any further movement, I want a qualified contractor to assess the approach.”
He gave her a name. Ruth wrote it on the back of the intake envelope.
After his truck left, Elaine gathered the cups from the bench and carried them into the office. Ruth followed. Her daughter had not crossed that doorway since coming to examine Otis.
Water ran into the sink. Ruth watched Elaine rinse the mug she had finally used.
“What if I made the repairs and kept him here?”
Elaine turned off the tap.
“Not just until the deadline?”
“The pasture tenant’s lease finishes in November. He’d have room.”
“And when you’re laid up? Who does the feeding then?”
“I’d arrange something.”
“What about treatment? What about moving him into restraint?”
Ruth pulled the spare towel from a drawer and set it beside the sink.
“You might be able to help now and then.”
Elaine did not pick up the towel immediately.
“I have patients, Mom. And I’d like a visit here to be a visit sometimes.”
The familiar answer rose in Ruth: this yard had bought school clothes, paid tuition, kept them all going. She pressed her lips together until she could leave it unsaid.
“If I put that offer to Warren, would you recommend it?”
Elaine dried between her fingers.
“I’d tell him to place Otis somewhere else…”
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