The Cows I Brought Into the Marriage

The woman from high school

Amanda had dated Darwin all through high school. Everybody knew that.

She left for Des Moines after graduation, married a man who sold farm insurance, and came home in March after her own divorce, with two boys and a rental house by the elevator.

I had heard about the coffees. A woman who works the counter at the gas station on the highway mentioned it to me that spring, the way you mention weather.

Darwin and Amanda, the corner booth, most Tuesday mornings.

I asked him about it once, in May, standing by the bulk tank in the shop.

He said they were old friends and she was having a hard time. He said it like I was being small for asking.

I believed him, or I decided to. That is not the same thing, but it is close enough to live in for a while.

I had a kid in 4-H, a calving season behind me, and a clinic full of people who needed their bills straightened out.

I am not going to pretend our marriage was a good one that got knocked down in a day. It was a tired one. We had stopped talking about anything but weather and markets two winters before.

Darwin’s dad died that spring. His mother moved to town.

The farm was suddenly all on Darwin, the note at the bank and the rented ground and the planter that needed a new monitor, and he went quiet in a way I should have pushed on harder.

I think Amanda was somebody who knew him before any of it. Before the debt, before the dead father, before me.

I think he wanted to be eighteen for an hour. I understand that better now than I did that afternoon.

Understanding it did not make me stay.

The night at the barns

Winnie asked to stay the night at the fairgrounds. Her friend Jordan’s family had a camper parked behind the swine barn, and the girls had planned it for weeks. I said yes before Darwin could say anything.

Biscuit would stay in his stall until the sale on Tuesday. The kids take turns on night check, and Jordan’s dad had the late round.

I walked the aisle one last time, checked the water bucket, and scratched the steer under his chin.

“You were good, buddy,” I told him. He licked my wrist with a tongue like a rasp.

Winnie hugged me at the camper door. She smelled like hay and tenderloin. “Thank you for the stick,” she said. “I would have died.”

“You wouldn’t have died,” I said. “You’d have borrowed one.”

“I would have died,” she said, and went inside giggling.

Darwin and I drove home at ten with the empty trailer rattling behind the pickup. The radio was on low.

Neither of us touched it. The road home is twelve miles of blacktop and four of gravel, and the dust hung in the headlights.

At home I got out and stood on the porch steps. The yard light was humming. The moths were thick around it. Darwin came up behind me with his keys in his hand.

“Sleep wherever you want tonight,” I said.

That was all. I did not cry. I did not say her name.

He stood there for a while like he was going to answer, then he went inside and let the screen door close softly behind him.

I heard the couch creak. Then nothing.