The Steer My Son and I Fed Alone

At the grand drive, the parents line the gate and the whole fairgrounds comes to watch. I stood there in those boots with the other mothers and fathers and watched my son lead Moose around one more time.

When the judge made his pick, Cooper turned and shook the winner’s hand first, before anybody else got to him. Then he shook the reserve kid’s hand. Then he walked Moose out the gate with his chin up.

Rollie put his arm around my shoulders. “Brent,” he said, to nobody, “your boy can show cattle.”

We didn’t go back into that ring again that week. We didn’t need to.

It was late afternoon when Mike walked into the barn.

The cattle barn at Primghar is long and open on both sides. Fans hang from every other post and everything smells like shavings and spray adhesive and wet hair.

Cooper was in the stall rinsing Moose down. I was sitting on the tack box with my feet out in front of me, those boots full of sweat.

Mike stopped at the gate of the stall. Logan was right behind him, holding back a little, the way boys do when they don’t know how a thing is going to go.

“Cooper,” Mike said.

Cooper turned off the hose and came to the gate. He was a full head shorter than his uncle. He looked up at him and waited.

Mike stood there a long time. He had his cap in his hand again. He turned it around twice by the bill.

“I said something to you on the first of July that I had no business saying,” he said. “I said there was no man left to feed that steer. I was wrong. You fed him. You and your mom. Better than I would have.”

Cooper didn’t say anything. He just nodded.

“I found your dad,” Mike said, and his voice went rough. “You know that. I found him out there in that field. And since then I keep thinking if I just do everything he did, then he’s not really gone. I keep grabbing at his work like I can hold onto him by it.”

He stopped and pressed the back of his hand against his mouth for a second.

“I didn’t look at you,” he said. “I looked at the steer and I didn’t look at you. I’m sorry for that, Coop.”

I sat on that tack box and did not move, because this wasn’t mine. This was between a boy and the only uncle he had left.

Cooper looked at Mike for a long minute. Then he said, “Dad bought Moose’s blower off a guy in Rock Valley. It quits on you if you run it more than twenty minutes. You have to let it cool.”

Mike blinked. “Your dad bought a used blower?”

“He fixed it on the back step,” Cooper said. “Mom yelled about the grease.”

Mike laughed, a cracked sound, and wiped his eyes with his thumb. Logan laughed too, from behind him, and then everybody was laughing a little, even me.

Then Mike did the thing that I think about more than anything else from that whole summer.