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“They’re mine. You know which ones are going to fight the chute before they’re in the alley. You’ve done my work since February and you won’t say why. I quit asking. You still won’t say.”
“You never asked me to come.”
“No. I didn’t.”
“You didn’t call. I turned up because somebody had to, and you took it, because there wasn’t a version of this where you didn’t take it. Forty-some head to calve and your mama on a cane and a sign at the gate. What was I supposed to do, drive by?”
“Yes.”
“Liv.”
“Yes. Drive by. Let me do it wrong. Let me lose some.” She was close now, a stick’s length off. “I’d have lost some. I’d have made a mess of it, and it’d have been my mess, and I’d have known what I had.”
“You’d have known what you lost.”
“Mine to lose. Instead you’re out here taking Daddy’s herd apart one cow at a time, and you’re kind about it. You’re so kind about it. You look at a cow he named and you say cull like you’re sorry, and you are sorry, and it’s the worst thing anybody’s ever done to me.”
“That’s—”
“The kindness. I can’t fight it. There’s nothing in it to fight. You keep coming, and you keep being right, and you keep not saying one word about why.”
“You’d have lost more than some.”
“Then I’d have lost them.”
“Half. You’d have lost half that calf crop and the heifer both, and you’d have stood in your barn at three in the morning with your arm in her and nobody to call.”
“I called.”
“You called me.”
“I called you, and you came, and you told me you didn’t feel anything, and you were back in my alley Tuesday with a list.” She wasn’t shouting. She’d gone past it. “That’s what I mean. You do the thing. Every time. You do it and you don’t say, and I stand there.”
He’d meant to keep his. He’d had it in his mouth since Saturday, and it came out anyway.
“And you’ve been riding around in Brody’s truck for a week.”
Her face went still.
“Lamesa. Harvey’s Saturday, his coat on your chair, him buying. I heard it at Earl’s Thursday before I’d paid for the mineral. I heard it from Remi Friday. Saturday I stood at my own rail and watched him walk you in with his hand on your back in front of the whole county, and you laughing, and I stood there.”
“You don’t get to say one word about Brody.”
“I know it.”
“Not one. You gave that up. You stood in my barn—”
“I know what I did.”
“Then why are you…”
“Because I can’t help it.”
She looked at him. Something went across her face, fast, and she put it away.
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the one I’ve got.”
