The Stand I Built by the Alley

The Boy Who Came to Help

It was a cold winter that year, for us. We had a norther come through the first week of January with sleet on the mesquite and the stock tanks skinned over in the mornings. I had to break the ice with a hammer.

I worked out there evenings and Saturdays. Square tubing from the steel yard in Stephenville. Two old oilfield pipes for skids. Mom would not sit on steel, so the seat, the deck and the rails got old oak boards Barry pulled off a torn-down pen, gray as the rest of the alley.

The first Saturday I was out there, a pickup came up the road and stopped at the cattle guard.

It was Homer. Ferris’s boy. He was fourteen, a freshman, in my second-period welding class. He got out of the truck and stood there with his hands in his jacket pockets.

“Dad doesn’t know I’m here,” he said. “Mom drove me.”

His mother, Kerry, waved at me from the cab. I waved back. She did not get out.

“What are you building, Mrs. Pruitt?” he asked. I told him. He looked at the steel on the sawhorses for a long time.

“I saw it,” he said. “At the pens. I was on the back gate.” His voice did a thing. “I didn’t say anything to anybody. I should have said something.”

“You were fourteen and that’s your daddy,” I said. “Nobody expects you to fix your daddy.”

“Can I help?” he said.

I handed him a grinder and a face shield. “Clean up those ends,” I said. “Square them. I’ll check them.”

He came every Saturday after that. He was good. He was slow and careful, which is the only way to be good at welding. He did not talk much. Neither did I.

What Homer Said About His Father

One Saturday in late January, with the wind blowing so hard the sparks went sideways, Homer set down the grinder and said, “Dad’s not sleeping.”

I kept tacking the rail. I did not look up.

“He sits out in the truck at night,” Homer said. “In the yard. With the engine running. Mom goes out there and brings him in.”

“Is it the cattle?” I asked.

“It’s money,” Homer said. “The bank. And Grandpa. He says Grandpa never had to borrow and he has to borrow every year.” He picked at a burr on the tubing. “He said Grandma Frances makes him look like he doesn’t know cattle.”

I set the welder down then.

“Your daddy knows cattle,” I said. “He sorted one wrong. Everybody sorts one wrong. Mom sorted one wrong in 1996 and Daddy put it in the tally book and wrote ‘Frances’ next to it with a little star.”

Homer almost smiled. “For real?”

“It’s in the book. I’ll show you.”

I did show him. The next week I brought out the book from 1996, and there it was in Daddy’s pencil, on the page for the spring working. One heifer in with the steers, and next to it, “Frances,” and a little star.

Homer looked at it a long time. Then he said, “Can I take a picture of that?” And I said yes.