The Cows I Brought Into the Marriage

The second load

The second trip went faster because I didn’t let myself think. Eighteen miles back. Gravel, blacktop, the river bridge, the church. Our lane. The yard light still humming. The couch window dark.

The last eleven cows and their calves went up the alley as the sky in the east started to gray along the tree line. The air was cool.

The dew on the lane grass was so heavy it looked white in the headlights, almost like frost, though it was the middle of July. The dead ash trees along our lane, killed by the borer two summers before and never cut, stood bare against the light.

I swung the rear gate of the stock trailer closed on eleven black backs. The latch dropped into place. The pickup headlights were still on, throwing my shadow long down the lane.

I stood there in my brown chore coat with my ponytail stuck to my neck and felt very calm.

I don’t know how else to say it. I had done something with my own two hands, and it was done, and it was right.

Then I walked over to Darwin’s pickup, parked by the shop, and opened the driver’s door.

In the glove box of my truck I kept a folder. In it were the registration papers for my registered cows, every one transferred to my name, and the brand certificate from the state with my name on the line.

I laid the papers on his seat, with the brand certificate on top.

Then I wrote one line on the back of a feed store receipt and set it on top of everything.

I took mine. Winnie is fine. She’s at the barns.

I closed the truck door quietly. I don’t know why I bothered to close it quietly. Fifteen years of habit, I suppose, of not waking a man who worked hard.

I pulled out of our lane before the sun was up. In the mirror I could see the house, the yard light, and nothing moving.

At Dad’s gate

Dad had the coffee on when I pulled in. He had set two cups on a fence post by the gate, the way he did during calving season when nobody had time to go inside.

We unloaded the second bunch together. He opened the gate and I backed in and dropped the rear gate, and the cows stepped down and went looking for the first bunch.

Within ten minutes they had found each other and were grazing in a line along his fence.

“They look good,” Dad said. “Number 14 is getting old.”

“She’s sixteen.”

“She looks it.” He handed me a cup. “So do you, a little.”

I laughed, which surprised both of us. We stood at the fence and drank the coffee and watched the sun come up over the bean field behind his barn.

“Do you want to tell me?” he said.

“Not yet.”

“All right.”

That was all he said about it for a long time. My dad is not a talker.

He has buried a wife and two brothers and a whole way of farming, and he learned somewhere along the line that most things a person needs are just someone standing next to them.

At seven, Darwin’s pickup came down Dad’s lane.

I heard it before I saw it, the gravel popping under the tires. Dad set his cup down on the fence post very carefully, like it might break.

Darwin pulled up and turned off the engine and sat there for a moment. Then he got out. He was wearing the same shirt as the day before.

His hair was standing up on one side. He had the papers in his hand, all of them, the brand certificate on top.

He walked toward us and stopped at the cattle gate. He didn’t come through it.