The Calf That Cost One Dollar

The Pen

We started a little after noon. I laid it out at twenty by thirty feet, with one corner tucked against the old tin lean-to that the man before me had used for his lawn mower.

I dug the post holes with my hand auger, two feet deep, and Addie held each post plumb with the level while I poured the concrete and tamped around it.

She was serious about the bubble. She would not let me move on until it sat dead center.

“You’re picky,” I told her.

“You’re the one who said a crooked post is a crooked fence,” she said. It was the first thing close to a smile I had seen on her all day.

In the afternoon we nailed four two by six boards up each section, one above the next, then stretched the woven wire along the inside and stapled it tight.

Addie handed me staples one at a time, out of her sweatshirt pocket.

Around four she asked me the question I had been waiting for all day.

“Is it because I’m here?” she said. “Did he do it because I was at your house and couldn’t see?”

I put down the hammer. “I think he did it then because it was easier,” I said. “I don’t think it had anything to do with you being here. I think it had to do with him.”

“He said Biscuit ate too much.”

“Steers on feed eat a lot,” I said. “That’s their whole job, honey. He was eating exactly what he was supposed to eat. You didn’t do anything wrong. Not one thing.”

She nodded and handed me another staple. Her hand was shaking a little, and she held it out anyway.

I should say I had been paying half of Biscuit’s feed every month since he came home, seventy-five dollars, the same day my child support went out. Jenna paid the other half. Rodney had not bought one sack.