Four Hundred Feet of Line to Grandma’s Barn

The horses heard it. They came up from the barn at a trot, which I had not seen them do in years. Bess, then Penny, then Smoke last, because Smoke always lets the girls go first.

Grandma held the hose over the tank and talked to them. Not to us. To them.

“There now, Bess,” she said. “There you go, honey. That’s fresh. That’s all yours.”

Penny pushed in and Grandma laughed. “You, miss. You wait your turn. You always want to be first, don’t you. Just like your mama.”

And then Smoke came up last, slow, the old gray that had been my grandpa’s horse, and put his nose down in the new water. Grandma put her free hand flat on his neck.

“Your cowboy would have liked this,” she told him. “Wouldn’t he, Smoke. Wouldn’t he have liked this.”

She was crying, a little, the way old women cry, without any fuss about it. Idella was crying too. Royce found something to look at in the hydrant. I had to walk around the far side of the tank and look at the mountains for a while.

Gus shut the tractor down. It got very quiet. Just the water running into the tank, and the horses drinking, and a meadowlark somewhere out in the pasture.

That was when Corbin came down the hill.

He came slow, across his own ten acres and through the gate into Grandma’s yard. Everybody saw him. Nobody said anything. Gus climbed down off his tractor and stood by the front tire, not doing anything, just standing there in his overalls.

Corbin stopped about twenty feet from the tank. He looked at the trench, and the hydrant, and the tank, and the horses drinking out of it. He looked at Gus and Royce and Idella. He looked at Grandma with the hose in her hands.

He had the brass key in his hand now. He had taken it out of his pocket coming down the hill. I could see it shining in his fingers.

“You didn’t have to do all this,” he said finally.

“Yes, I did,” I said. “She was carrying it in a kitchen pail, Corbin.”

He did not have an answer to that. He looked at the key in his hand like he did not know what to do with it.

What does a man do with a padlock nobody needs anymore?

Grandma shut the hose off. She handed it to Idella and walked over to him. Slowly, on her bad hip, in her red barn coat, with her braid hanging down her back. She stopped close enough to touch him.

“Corbin,” she said. “Rowdy tells me you’re three payments behind.”

His face went red. He glared at me. I did not look away.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Grandma said.

“Because it’s not your problem.”

“You made it my problem,” she said, “when you turned my water off.” She did not raise her voice. My grandmother has never raised her voice in my hearing in thirty-nine years. “I’d have helped you, honey. Your daddy, Rowdy’s daddy, he’d have helped you. You know that. You didn’t have to make my horses thirsty to get my attention.”

He did not say anything. His jaw was working.