Five Cows and One Plate of Pie

The Phone Call

I want to say right here what I did first, because people have asked me since, and some of them asked it in a tone of voice I did not care for.

The check had my name on it. If anybody was going to be asked how five cows that were not mine got sold on my account, it was going to be me.

So before I called Cody, before I called the Brandviks, before I called my own sister, I called the state brand inspector.

I did not have to look him up. Dale Ostrander is the district brand inspector for our part of the Panhandle, and he lives at the end of my route, the last box before the road turns to two tracks. I bring him his seed catalogs and his blood pressure pills.

He picked up on the fourth ring. I could hear the radio behind him, the high school playoff game, and I could hear him turn it down when I told him who it was and why I was calling on a Friday night.

“Read me the stub,” he said.

I read it to him. Five head. The weight. The gross. The commission, the yardage, the insurance, the brand fee, the beef checkoff. The net. The account name. He did not say anything until I was done.

“I inspected those cows Wednesday,” he said finally. “Five old black cows, no brand on them. The consigner signed a statement of ownership for unbranded cattle, which is what you do when there’s no iron to read.”

“Who signed it, Dale?”

“Your ex-husband. On your account. The office prints the check to whatever name’s on the account card, Kendra. That’s you.”

I sat there with my hand flat on the table. I have known Cody Voight since the summer we were seventeen.

I knew he was careless with money and I knew he could talk himself into things. I had never once thought of him as a man who would take something.

“Those are Lyle Brandvik’s cows,” I said. “I’d bet my house on it.”

“I’d bet mine too, now that you say it,” Dale said. “Lyle’s got a handful of cows he bought open off that dispersal sale up by Hyannis, and his back went out that winter and he never did get them branded. I gave him grief about it.”

He told me what happens next. He would call Lyle in the morning and go look at what was left in the pasture.

If Lyle was short five head, he would write it up. The barn would void the check I was holding and cut a new one to the rightful owner once Dale signed off.

“What do I do with this?” I asked him.

“It isn’t yours,” he said. “Take it to whoever it belongs to. They can carry it to the barn office Monday morning and get it fixed.”

Then he was quiet a second, and he said, “You did right calling, Kendra. Most people would’ve called the husband first and given him a day’s head start.”

“Ex-husband,” I said, and he said, “Yes ma’am,” and we hung up.