Six Belgians Shod by Noon

“I heard about Saturday,” he said. “Menno’s boy said she held the big gelding a half minute while he leaned. I’d like you to do my team, if you’ll still have us.”

I told him I’d have them. He looked like he wanted to say more, and then he just said thank you.

By Friday, my book was full. Not the second book in the glove box yet, but the first one. Every line of it, through the end of May.

Eleven of the fourteen farms that crossed me off called to put themselves back on. Some of them new ones besides.

Paisley sat at the kitchen table Friday night with the book open again, counting.

She didn’t count the crossed-out lines this time. She counted the new names. “Twenty-six,” she said. “Mama, that’s more than before.”

“It is,” I said. “We’ll have to buy you some new shoes too.”

She laughed, because shoes was a joke at our house now, and she put the pencil behind her ear the way my dad used to.

Dustin didn’t call. I didn’t expect him to. But the following Thursday, there was an envelope in my mailbox with no stamp.

It was the two months of child support, in cash, and a note on a feed store receipt.

“I’m sorry,” it said. “I told the sale barn the truth Tuesday. Tell Paisley I’m proud of her.” That was all. It was more than I’d gotten from him in a year.

I heard later that he’d done it, too. Stood up at the Tuesday sale, in front of the same men, and said he’d been wrong about me.

Jettie told me. She said it took more out of him than shoeing a Belgian would have.

He lost the shop that summer anyway. He moved back to his own county and works for a big farrier outfit now, on salary.

He sees Paisley every other weekend. He’s good with her. Better than he was before, I think.

I don’t hate him. I want to say that plain, too. I hated what he did. I hated every line through every name.

But I’ve had enough winter in my life. I don’t want to carry one around inside me.

I went back to the Yoder farm two weeks after that Saturday, in the middle of plowing season, to check the shoes and reset one the mare had thrown in a wet spot.

It was another bright morning. The horses were out in the field in a line, four abreast, turning the dark ground over.

Menno was on the plow behind them. He saw my truck and lifted one hand off the lines. I lifted mine back.

I stood at the end of the field a while and watched my shoes carry those horses down the long rows and back.

I reset the mare’s shoe at the edge of the field while Paisley handed me nails.

When I straightened up, Menno had tied off the team and gone up to the house, and he was coming back down the lane toward us, slow, with something in his hands.

It was a pie, still warm, rhubarb, in a glass dish with a dish towel over it. Ivah’s.

He didn’t say anything about Saturday, and he didn’t say anything about Dustin. He just nodded to Paisley, and then to me.

Then Menno Yoder set the pie down on my tailgate, right next to my father’s anvil, and went back to his plow.