Six Belgians Shod by Noon

And then she hugged me around the middle, right over the leather apron, and I put my hand on her head and couldn’t say anything at all.

That was when the gravel crunched in the lane.

I knew that engine before I saw the truck. I had ridden next to it for nine years.

It came up the hill slow, and it pulled into the barnyard and stopped about thirty feet from mine.

Dustin had heard about Lavern’s arm too. Of course he had. Everybody had.

He had waited until he figured I’d given up and gone home, or until Menno was desperate enough to take anybody. He’d come to offer the job.

He climbed out smiling. He had his order book in his hand, the same one he’d carried for years, with the rubber band around it.

He was wearing his good work shirt, the one I’d bought him for his birthday.

“Menno,” he called across the barnyard. “I hear you’re in a bind. I can have all six done by Wednesday if you want. I’ll cut you a deal since it’s short notice.”

Then he saw the horses.

The oldest boy had led the sixth horse back to the rail and tied him up beside the others the boys had brought back out.

Six chestnut Belgians in a row, standing square, every foot shod, the new shoes flashing in the noon sun.

Then Dustin saw me. I was standing by my truck with my daughter’s arms around me and two nails in my fist.

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t move. I’d been taught that, too.

His smile went somewhere. It didn’t go away all at once. It sort of slid, like snow off a barn roof.

He looked at the horses again. Then at the fence, where nine men in straw hats had turned to look at him.

Menno set his tin cup on top of a fence post. He wiped his hands on his trousers.

Then he walked out across the barnyard toward Dustin, slow, the way you’d walk toward a horse you didn’t want to spook.

Every straw hat on that fence turned with him.

Menno stopped about six feet from Dustin. He didn’t offer his hand. He didn’t raise his voice. He just said it plain. “They are done,” he said. “All six. Since sunup.”

Dustin opened his mouth. Nothing came out. He looked at me again, and then he looked at Paisley, and something happened in his face that I hadn’t seen in a long time. He looked ashamed.

“You told my neighbors a woman could not hold a Belgian’s hind foot,” Menno said.

“You told it at the sale barn. My son heard you. I have watched her hold twenty-four feet this morning. I counted.”

The fence didn’t make a sound. A chicken walked across the barnyard. The forge hissed behind me as it cooled. Dustin stood there with his order book in his hand.

“I needed the work, Menno,” he said finally. His voice was rough. “I’m behind on the shop. I’m behind on everything.”

He said it to Menno, but he was looking at the ground, and I think he was saying it to me.

Menno nodded slowly. “A man can need work,” he said. “A man cannot take it by lying about his own child’s mother. That is not a need. That is a sin.”

He said it the way you’d say the weather. No heat in it at all.

Then Menno did something I didn’t expect. He stepped aside. He turned a little, so Dustin had a clear line to me across the barnyard, and to the fence, and to every man on it. And he waited.