The Heifer She Showed Half Clipped

I watched him go. I thought about what he had said to Hugh outside the camper, about Kermit driving to every one of Hugh’s shows and none of his.

I had known Kent for fifteen years, and I had never once thought about what it was like to be the other boy.

That fall, Kermit did something I did not expect. He told me about it himself, sitting on the tailgate of his pickup out by the bale yard while we waited for Hugh to bring a load of round bales up from the river field.

“I went out to Kent’s place,” he said. “Sat in his pickup with him an hour. Told him he was right. I did drive to every one of Hugh’s shows and not his. Told him it wasn’t because I loved one more than the other.”

“Why was it?” I asked.

Kermit looked out at the river field for a long time. “Hugh won,” he said finally.

“And I liked watching him win. That’s the truth of it, and it’s a poor one. I was a young man and a proud one, and I went where I could be proud, and I left my other boy sitting in the stands.”

He was quiet. “Took a twelve-year-old girl to show me what that did to him. Took her walking into that ring with half a heifer and not one excuse.”

He shook his head. “I should have been there for Kent’s shows. Every one.”

He did not say anything else about it, and I did not ask.

But that winter, Kermit started going over to Kent’s on Saturday mornings to help him with his cows, and he had not done that in twenty years.

In March, on a Sunday afternoon, Kent’s pickup came down our lane again.

It was cold and bright, the kind of March day when the ground is still half frozen in the morning and mud by noon.

Geneva was out in the lot walking Pepper, who had been bred that fall and was starting to show it.

Kent got out and walked to the fence. Jethro was with him this time, standing a little behind his dad, with his hands jammed in his coat pockets.

“Geneva,” Kent said. “I need to ask you something, and you can say no. I’d understand it if you did.”

Geneva led Pepper over to the fence and stood there with the halter rope in her hand.

“Jethro’s got a new heifer this year,” Kent said. “A good one. Better than last year’s. And he’s going to show her, and I want him to do well. But I can’t teach him. I never could do it myself, I never learned the handling, and I don’t want him learning it from me.”

He stopped and took a breath. “I was wondering if you’d teach him. Showmanship. The way you do it. I’d pay you for your time. I’d bring him out here, or you could come over, whatever’s easier on your mom.”

Geneva looked at Jethro. Jethro looked at the ground and then back up at her.

“You don’t have to pay me,” Geneva said. “Bring him Tuesday after school. And bring your heifer, Jethro. And a show stick. Not that bent one you had last year.”

Jethro grinned for the first time since they had gotten out of the pickup. Kent looked like he wanted to say something else.