The Day Daddy Sat at the Rail

Some of them have been sitting in the same spot for thirty years. Some of them knew my grandfather.

They watch the ring like they are reading a newspaper, and a lot of buying goes on with a nod or a finger lift you would never catch if you were not looking.

Daddy did not go up in the bleachers. He went down to the front, to the wooden rail right along the ring, where the sellers sit when they want to watch their own cattle come through. He took a seat there and put his hand on the rail.

I came down beside him and put my arms on that same rail. I had on my maroon quilted vest over a flannel shirt, and I had run my hand through my short blonde curls because the barn was warm with all those bodies in it.

Then I looked up at the bleachers, and Kyle was there.

He was about six rows up on the far side, by himself, in a canvas coat. He had hauled a load in that morning for the Peterson brothers, I found out later.

He saw us. I watched him see us. He looked at Daddy at the rail in that good felt hat and then he looked down at his own boots.

I did not wave. I did not do anything. I would like to tell you I felt something generous right then, but mostly I felt my heart pounding in my ears.

The sale went on. Steers, heifers, a few pairs, a set of yearlings. The auctioneer was Ron Bauer, who has called that sale for longer than I have been driving. His voice goes up and down like a song you can almost follow.

About eleven o’clock the yard men opened the gate, and Daddy’s heifers came in.

They came in at a trot and then slowed and bunched up in the middle of the ring, fourteen black heifers, and they turned their heads and looked up at all those men the way calves do.

Their coats were thick and clean. They looked like Daddy’s cattle. You could tell.

Daddy sat up straighter at the rail. That was all he did. His hand stayed right there on the wood.

Ron did not start the bid right away. He leaned forward in the booth and looked down at the ring, and then at the rail, and then he took his hand off the button and leaned into the microphone.

“Folks,” he said over the speaker. “These next heifers belong to Lloyd Ahlquist, from down south of Blue Hill. Lloyd’s been bringing calves into this barn since nineteen sixty-six. And he’s sitting at the rail today with his daughter. Good to see you, Lloyd.”

The barn went quiet. In a sale barn on sale day, that almost never happens.

And then, up and down those steep bleachers, the old men reached up and took hold of their cap brims and tipped them. Not all at once.

One and then three and then a dozen, row after row, in feed store caps and seed caps and a few good felt hats like Daddy’s.