Part 4
“No,” Raymond said.
Sylvia picked up the report. She didn’t offer another arrangement or ask him to explain. If the answer changed, Grant could call her before seven in the morning. Her crew could bring a bull-rated trailer; otherwise Grant’s transport would take Amos back to Georgia.
Denise carried her overnight bag into June’s sewing room. Grant left for a motel near the interstate. Ruth took over the evening milking while Raymond sat on an upturned bucket outside the second fence.
The farm lights came on behind him. He could hear the milk pump and Ruth moving a hose across concrete.
In his mind, he had already kept Amos through a dozen seasons. The bull grazed beyond the barn while Raymond repaired a fence nearby. Denise arrived without a clipboard. People stopped at the roadside, astonished by the animal everyone else had given up on.
Whenever he tried to put Nora’s second handler into that pasture, the picture became awkward. He couldn’t find a place for the loan payment, either.
Amos approached the inner fence. There was an empty passage between them. He turned to keep Raymond in his clear eye, then moved an ear when Bess rearranged herself in the straw.
Raymond’s hands lay idle on his knees. The bull began chewing.
Somewhere down the road a dog barked twice and gave up. Raymond listened to the slow grinding of the bull’s jaw, the creak of the panel when Amos shifted his weight, and the small, ordinary sounds of the barn settling for the night. None of them told him what to do.
By the time Raymond went inside, the cold had stiffened his legs. Denise sat beneath the kitchen light with June’s ledger open. At the bottom of the final page, a grocery list ran sideways beside the feed totals.
He stood across the table from her.
“I kept you from your mother when she asked for you.”
Denise’s thumb stopped at the corner of the paper.
“I should have called. I chose not to.”
He could have mentioned the rain. Instead he pulled out the chair and sat.
“I can’t give you that night back,” he said. “I won’t keep making your decisions.”
She looked up but didn’t reach for him.
Raymond put his bankbook beside the ledger.
“Tell me what happens if I give Tavren the fifty-five hundred I meant to spend buying him. After the tax money stays where it belongs.”
Denise studied him before opening the book.
“We’d still need financing for the roof. You’d have a thousand left beyond the tax reserve. A drop in milk prices would hurt. But that amount wouldn’t endanger the land.”
“Would you help me ask Grant for the other two thousand?”
“Have you already decided?”
“I’m asking you first.”
Denise drew the bankbook closer. After a while, she picked up her phone.
Grant answered immediately. She explained the figures, then put him on speaker.
“I can do two,” he said. “Nearly that would go on hauling him home and then to auction anyway.” He cleared his throat. “I should have insisted on getting that eye properly examined. I’ll surrender him without a sale payment. You both understand there’s no undoing it?”
Raymond looked at Denise before answering.
“Yes. Call Sylvia.”
The refuge trailer came through the gate at seven-thirty. Sylvia brought Celia, a quiet handler who tested every latch before setting out panels. Nora watched Amos move, checked his eye and hoof as far as she safely could, and approved the two-hour trip south.
Grant stood beyond the barn where the bull could see him from head to foot.
The route curved gently from the lot to the trailer. They covered the openings, secured the loose material, and bedded the ramp. Denise would walk Bess along the parallel lane. Raymond would remain outside and use his voice only if needed.
Sylvia stopped beside him before they began.
“Where do you stay?”
“Out here.”
“Even if he stops.”
Raymond felt his temper rise. Sylvia waited through it.
“I stay outside the lane.”
Denise buckled Bess’s halter. The cow sniffed her sleeve, found no treat, and followed anyway.
Amos moved with her on the opposite side of the partition. He went past the place where the chain had fallen, past the reinforced corner, and around the curve toward the trailer. Raymond stayed where the bull’s right eye could find him.
At the ramp, Amos stopped and lowered his head.
Celia stood still. So did everyone else.
A gust caught the lower corner of a covering sack. Its metal eyelet ticked against a rail on Amos’s left.
The bull spun. His shoulder drove into a panel, and the chains snapped taut as he backed toward the bend. Celia caught the loose corner and withdrew from his sight.
Grant’s waiting driver took a step toward his cab. A stock prod was visible on the floor.
“Not that,” Grant said.
The man stopped. Grant lifted the prod out himself, detached its battery pack, and put both in the toolbox.
Amos stood with his mouth open, drawing hard breaths. At the far end of the neighboring lane, Bess called toward the herd. Denise looked over the partition at her father.
The service gate was close. Raymond could take a bucket in, let Amos hear him at nearer range, draw that clear eye forward. He could also leave everyone scrambling to get him out.
He stepped toward the gate and closed his hand around the latch…
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