The Spring Branding Nine Neighbors Ran

What Kyle Did

Kyle set down his plate. Then he folded the tally book closed on his finger, and he looked up at the county road for a long time.

“Walt,” he said. “Can you drive me up there?”

Everybody went quiet. Walt looked at Kyle, and then at me. I did not know what to say.

I did not know what Kyle wanted, and I was afraid of it, and I was afraid of him getting out of that pickup in his condition and falling.

“Kyle,” I said.

“I’m just going to talk to him,” Kyle said. “I’ve known him longer than you have, Rach. He stood up with me. I’m just going to talk to him.”

So Walt helped him into the cab of his truck, blanket and all, and drove him up the lane and out the cattle guard and up the long slope to the county road.

I stood in the corral with my hand over my mouth and watched the dust trail behind them.

Walt pulled up alongside Earl’s pickup, driver’s window to driver’s window. Earl rolled his down. Kyle leaned across Walt so he could see Earl’s face.

Earl had not shaved. His eyes were red. He looked, Walt said, like a man who had not slept in a week.

“Kyle,” Earl said. That was all he got out.

Kyle held up the tally book. “We’re at a hundred and ninety-four,” he said. “Ought to finish about three. I figured you’d want to know the count. You always kept it.”

Earl did not say anything. He looked down at the steering wheel. Walt said his hands were shaking on it.

“Norma’s going to need you home,” Kyle said. “You can’t fix any of this sitting up here. Go home to Norma, Earl.”

And then Kyle sat back, and Walt put his truck in gear and turned around in the road and drove back down to the corral.

Kyle did not look back. Walt did. He said Earl sat there another minute, then started his pickup and drove away toward the highway.

When Kyle got back to the tailgate, he was gray in the face and shaking, and I wrapped the blanket tighter around him and put my coffee in his hands. He held the cup and did not drink it.

“Why did you do that?” I asked him quietly.

“Because he’s going to answer for it,” Kyle said. “Kathy’s going to see to that, and so is everybody in this county. He doesn’t need me to stand on him too. He needed to see the work got done without him. That’s all. Now he’s seen it.”

Two Hundred Eighty-Seven

We went back to work after dinner, and the afternoon went faster than the morning. Mike got a new shoe on his horse. Walt kept heeling, slower now, but steady. The girls never quit.

At ten minutes to three, Bill Ochsner turned the last calf loose. It was a little red heifer, born late and small for her age.

Brynn held her alone, and Steve Pruitt put the iron to her, and she bawled and jumped up and went looking for her mother.

Kyle made his last mark and added up the columns twice, his pencil moving slow down the page. Then he looked up.

“Two hundred eighty-seven,” he said. “A hundred and forty-two heifers, a hundred and forty-five steers.”

The men loaded their horses. One by one they came by the tailgate to shake Kyle’s hand. Some of them said a word or two.

Most of them did not say anything at all. Steve Pruitt shook his hand and then just stood there a minute and patted his shoulder twice, and walked off to his truck.

Walt was last. He shook Kyle’s hand and held on to it.

“Your dad would have been proud of those girls,” he said. “I’ll tell you something else. I haven’t heeled sixty calves in one day since Carter was president.”

“I owe you, Walt,” I said.

“You’ll be at mine the first Saturday in June,” he said. “That’s what you owe me. Bring those girls.”

The Week After

On the following Saturday, about four in the afternoon, a car I knew pulled up by the house.

A little silver sedan, the kind of car you buy when you are trying to save on gas. I watched from the window as Norma Tolliver got out.

She was carrying a pie. She stood by the car a long minute holding it, like she could not decide whether to come up or not. Then she came up and knocked on the screen door.