The Dog Who Brought the Cows Home

The branding dinner

The cook had set up tables in the machine shed, the way Dad always had them. Paper plates and folding chairs and a big roaster of beef that had been in the oven since four in the morning. There were scalloped potatoes and baked beans and three kinds of bars, and Arlene Lindquist had brought a rhubarb pie because she always does.

Kurt did not sit down. He stood at the end of the table with his paper plate in his hand, not eating. He had blood on his jeans and a bruise coming up on his cheekbone where a calf had caught him.

Then he set the plate down and cleared his throat, and everybody stopped eating.

“I want to say something,” Kurt said. “I’m not good at this, so bear with me.”

Nobody said anything. Lyle put his fork down.

“Yesterday I ran those cows up the hill with four-wheelers,” Kurt said. “I ran them hard. I got eleven pairs in, and I split up calves from their mothers, and I would have done it again this morning if my sister hadn’t shown up.”

He looked down at the table.

“In March, at the lawyer’s office, I laughed at her,” he said. “Dad left me the ranch and he left Jill the dog, and I laughed at her. I said, ‘You got the dog.’ I thought it was funny.”

His voice broke, just a little, and he stopped. He picked up a paper napkin and put it back down.

“It wasn’t funny,” he said. “It was the dumbest thing I ever said. I’ve got a hundred and eighty cows I don’t know, on land I don’t know how to run, and today I found out a nine-year-old dog knows more about this place than I do.”

“I can’t run it without her,” he said. “That’s the truth. I can’t do it. I’m saying it in front of all of you because I owe her that, and because I want witnesses so I can’t take it back.”

The shed was very quiet. Outside, a cow bawled once, then settled.

I stood up. My legs were shaky from all the wrestling and maybe from something else too.

“You don’t have to run it without me,” I said. “You never did, Kurt. You just had to ask.”

“I’m asking.”

“Then we’ll do it together,” I said. “Partners. You and me. Pete too, if he wants.”

Pete, who was sitting across the table with a mouthful of potatoes, nodded once, slowly, like he was agreeing to buy a used truck.

Kurt walked around the end of the table and held out his hand. I took it. Then he pulled me in and hugged me, and he smelled like dust and burned hair and sweat, and I realized I had not hugged my brother since the day he left for college.

The crew clapped. Gus said, “About time,” loud enough for everybody. Arlene told him to hush.