The Stand I Built by the Alley

The Book

It was during that little break, waiting on the last heifer, that Ferris walked up the alley.

He had the tally book from the fall in his hand. Not the new one. The old one. The book Mom had dropped in the dust the day he shoved her. I had not thought about that book in months. I did not know who had picked it up.

He must have picked it up himself. He must have kept it all winter.

The whole crew went quiet. Ike stopped with his hand on the gate latch. My two high school boys stopped talking. Barry came up from the chute and stood behind me.

Ferris stopped at the bottom of the steps. He did not climb them. He stood there in the dust looking up at my mother, and he held the book out.

I saw his hand shake. I want to say that, because it is true and because it is the reason I can forgive him. His hand shook.

“I kept this,” he said. “From the fall. You dropped it.”

Mom looked at it. She did not take it yet.

“I’m sorry, Frances,” he said. He said it loud enough for Ike and Joe and Jerome and the boys and his own son to hear. “I pushed you. You didn’t trip. I pushed you because I was ashamed, and I was ashamed because you were right about that heifer. That’s all it was.”

Nobody moved.

“I paid your bill,” he said. “Barry told me what it was. I took the check to the hospital last week and they put it on your account. They’ll send you a refund. I know that doesn’t fix your arm.”

Mom still did not take the book.

“And I’d like you to keep calling the gate,” he said. “Every working. As long as you want it. I can’t count calves like you can. I never could. Daddy knew it. He used to tell me.”

His voice broke on the word Daddy. He looked down. He looked back up.

What She Said

My mother sat up on that stand with her cast in her lap and her white braid down her back, and she looked at Ferris Pruitt for what felt like a whole minute.

Then she reached down with her good hand and took the book.

“You were going to make a good cattleman someday,” she said. “Clarence said that too. He said you’d make a good one once you quit trying to be him.”

Ferris nodded. He did not say anything. He could not.

“Bring me the last heifer,” Mom said, to everybody and nobody. “And somebody hand Ferris a biscuit before he falls over.”

Kerry laughed out loud. Then Ike laughed. Then all of us did, even Ferris, with his cap pulled down low. Jerome came up the alley with the last heifer and her mama behind, and Mom called her, “Heifer,” and I swung the gate, and she went through.

Sixty-two. Mom wrote it in the new book and drew a line under it.