Eleven Heifers on the West Eighty

“I figured I’d earned that rent,” he said. “I told myself it was back wages. I told myself that for six years.”

Nobody spoke for a little while.

Then I said the thing I should have said seven years ago at the cemetery.

“You did stay. I didn’t. I came out on Sundays and called that helping. You carried him that last year, and I let you, because it was easier to let you. I’ve never thanked you for that, and I’m thanking you now.”

Russ looked at me like he was not sure he had heard right.

“I never once thought you didn’t earn something,” I said. “But you didn’t earn mine.”

Mom reached over and put her hand on Russ’s wrist.

“Your father knew exactly what you did,” she said. “You think that man didn’t count? He counted everything. That’s why you got every cow he owned and every piece of machinery on this place, and Jim got a saddle and a pocket watch. He paid you for staying, Russell. He paid you in cows and iron.”

Her voice shook a little, and she let it.

“But the grass, he split. I was standing right beside him at the courthouse counter. The clerk asked him was he sure he wanted it even, and do you know what he said? He said, I’ve got two sons. I’m not going to my grave having told one of them he was half of one.”

Russ put his elbows on the table and covered his face with both hands.

I had not seen my brother do that since we were boys. I looked at the oilcloth and gave him the time.

When he took his hands down, his eyes were red, and he spoke to the table.

“I shouldn’t have said that about suing. I knew what you wouldn’t do, on account of Mom, and I leaned my whole weight on it. That was a low thing.” He swallowed. “And I don’t have fourteen thousand dollars, Jim. I don’t have four. I bought that baler on a note the year before the drought. I sold thirty cows to feed the rest. That rent has been making my bank payment every spring for six years. That’s where it went. It didn’t go anywhere good.”

I could have had the deed on the table. I had not even brought it. It was at home in the drawer, in Dad’s envelope.

“I don’t want it in cash,” I said.

He looked up.

“I’ve got eleven heifers and no idea what I’m doing. You’ve got a cow herd and no money. A weaned heifer calf is bringing about sixteen hundred dollars. Nine calves is fourteen thousand four hundred. Three a fall for three years. Heifer calves, out of your cows, my pick.”

“Markets move,” he said. “Calves could be twelve hundred next year. Or two thousand.”

“Then we shake on the count and not the dollars. Nine calves. Whatever they’re worth the day we sort them is what they’re worth.”

“That could come out short for you.”

“It could come out long for me too. I’ll take it either way.”

He studied me for a long moment.

“Your pick,” he said.

“My pick.”

“You don’t know how to pick a heifer.”

“No,” I said. “I expect somebody will have to show me.”