The Steer My Son and I Fed Alone

Cooper came out of the barn in his white show shirt with his number pinned on the back.

He was holding Brent’s old show stick, the one with the black tape on the handle, worn smooth from twenty years of Brent’s hand.

He looked at my feet. He didn’t laugh this time either.

“Ready?” he said.

“Are you?”

“Moose is,” he said. That was the most Kastner answer I had ever heard.

Here’s something you need to know about a 4-H beef show. Parents do not go into the ring.

It is the kid’s class and the kid’s animal. Mom and Dad stand at the rail and chew their fingernails like everybody else.

I knew that. I had stood at that rail for Cooper’s heifers for two summers. I had every intention of standing there again.

But before the market steer classes started, Lon Bremer, the beef superintendent, picked up the microphone at the announcer’s stand.

Lon has run the beef show for twenty-two years. He and Brent used to argue about Angus versus Hereford every single July.

“Folks, before we start,” Lon said, and the whole ring went quiet. “We lost one of our leaders this spring. Brent Kastner showed cattle in this ring as a boy and helped half the kids in this county get their calves halter broke. His son Cooper is showing a steer they raised together. I’d ask you to take a moment for Brent.”

Everybody took off their caps. The men along the rail. The kids holding halters. Even the judge, a young cattleman from down by Atlantic, took off his cap and held it at his side.

When the moment was done, Lon put down the mic and walked to the gate where we were waiting with Moose. He looked at me and he looked at the boots.

“One lap, Jamie,” he said quietly. “Walk him in with your boy. Then you go to the rail. I’ll answer for it.”

So I walked into the show ring in my husband’s boots.

The shavings were dry and soft and crunched under the boots at every step.

The pipe rail went by on my left, hot enough to burn if you touched it, and the white metal cattle barn sat behind it with its doors shut against the sun.

Cooper walked at Moose’s head with the lead in his right hand and Brent’s show stick in his left.

Moose stepped out like he had a train to catch. His red-and-white hair stood up and shone in that hard light, every hair brushed the right way.

The boots flopped and dragged. I didn’t care. I walked beside my son with my head up and my shoulders back, the way Brent used to walk into the co-op on a good day.

Halfway around, I looked at the rail. Mike was leaning on it with both forearms, a seed cap pulled low and a tan work shirt dark with sweat at the collar.

He wasn’t smiling. He wasn’t frowning. He was just watching his brother’s son lead his brother’s steer, very calm and very still, like a man watching weather come in.

At the gate I touched Cooper’s shoulder once. Then I stepped out and went to the rail, about thirty feet down from Mike. Rollie was there already. He handed me a bottle of water without a word.