The Lamb Check She Gave Away

He never stopped him to set his feet, because he did not need to. The name was doing the selling.

After Gerald walked off, Garth came over to the tie rail and patted Biscuit on the rump.

“Eighteen hundred,” he said to Juanita. “That’s a fine price for a lamb, kiddo. That’s better than your daddy ever did.”

Juanita said, “Thank you, Grandpa.” She said it because she had been raised to.

I stood up out of the sawdust and said, “Garth, can I talk to you a minute?” and walked him out behind the sheep barn, past the wash rack, to where the trailers were parked in the grass in a long crooked line.

It was hot and smelled like diesel and wet wool. A boy was hosing down a hog trailer two rows over.

I waited until we were past the last of the parents, because I did not want anybody hearing this and passing it around. Then I stopped and turned around.

“That was her lamb,” I said. “She raised him from a bottle. She walked him every night for five months. She’s been practicing setting his feet since school let out, and you took the halter out of her hand in front of the whole county.”

Garth rubbed the back of his neck. “She’d have froze up in there,” he said.

“Kids freeze up. I’ve seen it a hundred times. I got her eighteen hundred dollars, Jo. I’d think you’d be glad.”

“She did not freeze up,” I said. “She was four steps in and doing fine. You didn’t wait to see if she would.”

He looked at the trailers for a while. He did not say he was sorry.

What he said was, “The buyers know me,” and then he walked back toward the ring, because the hogs were starting and he had promised to help run the gate.

I stood out there by the trailers a long time. I was not crying.

I was doing the arithmetic you do when you love somebody’s son and you have to keep sitting at Thanksgiving with his father for the next thirty years.

Where Finn Was

I texted Finn back from the truck. I wrote, “She did fine. Lamb sold for 1,800. Your dad took the halter and walked it himself. Call me on break.”

Then I sat with the engine running for the air and watched Juanita in the side mirror, feeding Biscuit the last of his grain.

He called eleven minutes later from the break room. I could hear the line behind him, that steady hammer sound from the presses that never stops.

“He did what?” Finn said.

I told him all of it. The gate, the halter, the auctioneer saying the name. Juanita standing there with her show stick.

Thank you, Garth. Finn did not say anything until I was finished, and then he was quiet so long I thought the call had dropped.

“I’ll talk to him,” he said. “Not tonight, I get off at eleven. Tomorrow. I’ll talk to him tomorrow, Jo. Don’t you have to handle this one.”

I have been married to Finn for ten years. He is not a loud man.

He is the kind of man who fixes the neighbor’s fence without telling the neighbor, and his whole life he has never once raised his voice at his father. I knew what tomorrow was going to cost him.

“Okay,” I said. “Tomorrow.”