Part 3
Nora pushed the kitchen saltcellar aside and turned a yellow pad so both of them could see.
Twenty-two thousand dollars stood at the top.
Raymond reached for his glasses.
Below the figure she had sketched a perimeter strong enough for Amos, an entrance with two gates and a holding space between them, and an alley without tight turns or abrupt changes in light. The restraint equipment would operate from outside the animal’s path.
“That’s the work I could approve,” she said. “Not the cheapest arrangement somebody might agree to build.”
It left out the roof leaking onto Raymond’s hay. Insurance would cost more. Whenever Amos moved, a second trained person would have to be there.
Denise opened the farm accounts on her laptop. During June’s last winter, she had transferred the handwritten books into the program. Raymond had never changed the password.
The previous year’s profit was nine hundred and fifty dollars. No wage for his labor appeared anywhere. The roof replacement had been deferred.
“The old tractor would bring money,” he said.
Denise looked through the window toward the machine shed. June used to drive the restored green tractor in the winter parade, evergreen branches wired around its seat.
“Eleven thousand, maybe. Half the construction.”
“There’s my savings.”
“Twelve-five. Six thousand of that is reserved for taxes.”
“I know what’s in my account.”
“Then don’t ask me to pretend it’s all available.”
Raymond slid the pad away. “I haven’t handed you the whole farm.”
“No. Just enough of it that I can’t walk away from what happens here.”
A vehicle door shut outside. Grant Sutter appeared a moment later with a worn leather folder under his arm. He had driven from north Georgia before daylight. At sixty, he was lean and deeply tanned, with one finger that wouldn’t straighten when he shook Nora’s hand.
He waited at the kitchen doorway until Raymond offered him a chair.
“I had a look from outside,” Grant said. “Haven’t seen him settle like that in a while.”
He placed the folder beside the laptop. A calf registration lay on top of years of breeding records and the more recent reports.
Grant’s father was in his last calving season when Amos arrived, too weak to nurse. For two days, Grant kept him warm in the ranch office and fed him by bottle. The folder recorded what followed: Osvane’s most valuable breeding bull at four; an infection and a scarred eye at five.
“We had it treated,” Grant said. “Afterward he passed the distance check. We thought he had more vision than this. By the time we questioned it, nobody could get close enough for a proper look.”
Nora tapped the incident folder. “What changed in the handling facilities?”
“We screened some open rails. Rehung two gates. Hired a stockmanship consultant.” Grant rested his crooked finger against the table. “We had good stretches. Then we’d have another wreck. There are fifty-eight breeding cows and seven people on that place. I couldn’t rearrange every day around Amos.”
Denise had opened the injury report.
“Travis was twenty-three?”
“Worked for us eleven months. Another bull was coming up the alley. He shut Amos’s gate early, and Amos turned into his blind side. Travis couldn’t get clear.” Grant looked at Nora. “I gave him that setup. I don’t put it all on the kid.”
Raymond leaned back. “So you sent the problem to a dealer.”
Grant’s jaw tightened before he answered.
“I made a choice I could pay for. I’m not asking you to admire it.”
The intended buyer had now withdrawn. The forty-eight-hour trial would have been used to judge whether Amos could be safely resold. Between the delivery mistake and Nora’s findings, they had canceled without taking ownership.
“He’s still mine,” Grant said. “I can haul him home today. We can hold him in isolation through Sunday. Monday, I have to decide.”
“Which sale?” Raymond asked.
Grant put both hands flat on the table.
“You want me to say the ugly part so you don’t have to consider the rest. Travis has to go back to work. So do six other people. Your good intentions don’t stand between a man and two thousand pounds when the hardware breaks.”
Denise lowered the laptop lid.
Ruth came through the back door smelling of liniment, her phone still in her hand.
“Sylvia Trent will come this evening. She wants Nora’s report before she promises anything.”
“Tavren?” Grant asked. “Outside Beltren?”
Ruth nodded.
“I called in January. They were full.”
“Well, she’s coming to look. Let her look.”
Raymond stood. “He’s already got a place.”
He went onto the porch before anyone answered.
The afternoon had warmed the boards. Beyond the yard, Amos stood near Bess’s partition with hay hanging from his mouth. Raymond had known the animal little more than a day. Already, when he looked toward that corner, he expected the gray back to be there.
Denise came outside and closed the screen door quietly.
“Do you need this farm, Dad, or do you need to be needed?” she asked.
“Nobody’s running me off.”
“I asked to help you stay. You quit talking to me.”
“You brought a selling estimate right after your mother’s funeral.”
“With repair bids. And a plan for hiring help. Three options, Dad. You saw the page on top and wouldn’t turn it over.”
Raymond picked at a blister in the porch paint.
Denise waited, then said, “Mom asked you to call me that last night.”
His fingernail stopped.
“She did, didn’t she?”
June had asked at nine. Rain was blowing against the bedroom window, and Raymond had said there was no use getting Denise onto the road yet. At midnight June could no longer speak. Denise reached the house at two and sat beside the bed, searching her mother’s face for some sign that she knew.
“I thought we had longer.”
Denise shook her head. “You knew what the nurse had said.”
He looked past her at the yard. He had wanted one more hour in which June was not dying. Calling Denise would have brought somebody into the room who would know what needed doing. He had stayed beside the bed and left the phone untouched.
“You keep choosing what I’m allowed to know,” Denise said. “By the time you tell me, there’s no choice left.”
Raymond turned toward her. “And you’d put Amos on a truck.”
“If a safe place exists, yes. Keeping him because you can’t bear an empty pen doesn’t help him.”
A car passed on the road. Denise went back inside; Raymond stayed with his hand over the damaged paint.
Sylvia arrived at six in a flatbed with a small Tavren emblem on the door. She was in her early sixties, with a brace showing when her left trouser cuff lifted. She read Nora’s report twice and watched Amos through binoculars from outside the buffer passage.
She asked what he did when Raymond approached his blind side, which noises disturbed him, and whether he guarded Bess from people. Grant supplied every incident report, including the near misses.
Only after that did Sylvia describe the refuge’s quarantine paddock. Built for mature bulls, it had been occupied in January. Its previous resident had joined the permanent herd two weeks ago. Two steers lived beyond a solid dividing fence; three trained staff members would handle Amos on a fixed route and schedule.
“Nora must clear him for travel,” Sylvia said. “And Osvane has to surrender him.”
Raymond stepped closer. “What’s the fee?”
“Seventy-five hundred in intake sponsorship. Six months of feed, hoof work, and adapting the setup to his vision. We assume his lifetime care after that.”
“And I could come see him.”
“By appointment. Outside the enclosure.”
She laid the report on the feed-bin lid and kept one hand on it.
“He wouldn’t be yours. No breeding, no instructions to our staff, no taking him home later. We don’t provide boarding.”
Raymond looked from her hand to Amos.
Sylvia waited until he faced her again.
“Can you save him without keeping him?”
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