The Branding I Ran Myself

Sunup on the Calfground

The first pickup turned off the county road at ten minutes to six.

The headlights swung across the corral, and I stood at the gate with my heart going like a cornered rabbit.

I did not know yet whose truck it was.

Then a second set of lights came behind it. Then a third, pulling a stock trailer, the horses shifting their weight on the slats inside.

I had not asked these people to a branding in four years. I was afraid I had forgotten how to ask.

Gil had always done the asking. For twelve years he made the calls and set the day.

He told the neighbors what time and told me who was coming. That was part of what I paid him for, I thought.

Wayne was already out at the pickup, moving slow, one hand on the bed rail. He had a wool cap pulled down over his bald head.

His barn coat hung on him like it belonged to a bigger man, because last fall it had.

“Who’s that first one,” he asked me.

“I can’t tell yet,” I said.

The truck pulled up by the loading chute and the dome light came on inside. I saw Delbert Hoeffner’s big square face under his cap.

His wife Jo rode shotgun with a roaster pan on her lap. I had to turn and look at the fire so Wayne would not see me come apart.

Delbert had not been on our place since before Wayne got sick.

He and Gil had words one fall over a water gap, and after that Delbert quit coming. I never knew the half of why until this spring.

He stepped down out of the truck and looked at the sky. It was going from gray to the color of a peach.

He looked at the pens full of pairs we had gathered the evening before, and then he looked at me.

“Trisha,” he said. “Where you want my horse.” Three words and a question. I could have sat down in the dirt and cried.

But you do not do that at six in the morning with a day of calves ahead of you.

You point to the pen and you say thank you and you get to work.

By the time the sun cleared the hills there were nine horses tied along the fence. Nine saddles, and I knew every one by the wear of it.

My two girls were building the fire up under the irons. My husband was easing himself down onto the lowered tailgate with the tally book open on his knee.