The Heifer She Showed Half Clipped

We walked her back to her pen. The beef barn at our fairgrounds is an old open-sided pole barn with a gravel alley down the middle, and the north wind came right through it.

Geneva put a sheet on Pepper so the bare side would not chill, and then she sat down in the straw by her head.

“I’m staying out here tonight,” she said. “Lots of kids do.”

That was true. Half the 4-H kids in the county sleep on cots in the barn alley the night before the show.

I said I would bring her sleeping bag from the truck, and I went and got it, and when I came back she had her show box open and was laying out her combs.

It was full dark by then. I was sitting on an upturned bucket outside the end of the barn when I saw Jethro come walking across the gravel from the campers by himself, with something held behind his back.

He stopped about ten feet from me like he was not sure he was allowed any closer.

He is a skinny kid, all elbows, with Kent’s ears and his mother’s big brown eyes.

He held out what he had. It was a scotch comb, an old one, with half the teeth worn down.

“It was Grandpa’s,” he said. “He gave it to me. It’s the best one for brushing up the hair on the legs. I thought maybe Geneva could use it on the good side.”

I could not say anything for a second. I nodded at the pen, and he went over and stood at the rail.

Geneva looked up at him, and then she looked at the comb, and then she scooted over in the straw.

“I’m sorry,” Jethro said. “I didn’t know he was going to do that. I swear I didn’t. He said he was just going to touch up her topline. I thought he was helping.”

“I know,” Geneva said. “It’s not your fault.”

He climbed through the rail. The two of them sat in the straw on either side of that heifer and brushed her good side in the light from the one bulb over the alley until almost eleven, not talking much, passing that old comb back and forth.

I sat on my bucket and watched them and cried a little, quietly, because I could.

Then I texted Hugh one more line: Jethro came over. They are brushing her together. And he wrote back one word: Good.

Hugh pulled in at a quarter to six with the stock trailer still muddy from the bull. He had not slept.

He came down the barn alley in his barn coat with his cap pulled low, and he stopped at the rail and looked at Pepper for a long time.

Geneva was already up. She had rinsed the good side and blown it dry and had it standing up like a brush.

She had not touched the bare side except to wipe it clean. She looked at her dad and lifted her chin a little, the way she does.

“I’m showing her like this,” she said. “Don’t try to talk me out of it.”

“Wasn’t going to,” Hugh said. His voice cracked a little on it.