The Girl Who Rode the Sheep

Rollin brought the buckle out on a little square of black velvet.

It was a real one, silver with gold trim, with a sheep running across the face and the fair’s year engraved underneath. It was bigger than Emmy’s whole hand.

He knelt down in the dirt, boots creaking again, and held it out to her. Emmy just looked at it. I do not think she believed it was hers.

“Go on,” Rollin told her. “You earned it. Nobody gave you one thing today, young lady. You took it.”

She took it with both hands. Then she held it up over her head, and those bleachers stomped so hard you could feel it come up through the pipe fence into your hands.

The fair board lady with the camera waved for a picture. They always take one of the winner with the buckle, and it runs in the county paper the next Thursday.

She waved me and Dane in, and I ducked through the gate, and Dane came in behind me.

“Get the whole family in,” the camera lady called. “Come on, everybody, squeeze in close.”

I did not know what she meant by the whole family. I do not think she knew either.

But Emmy turned around and looked back at the fence, where Ashlyn was standing with Bentley, and she waved at both of them to come.

Bentley came running. Ashlyn did not move.

“Ashlyn,” Emmy called across the dirt. “You too. Come on. You have to be in it too.”

Ashlyn looked at me. I nodded. I did not know I was going to, but I did.

And she came through the gate slowly, wiping her face with the heel of her hand, and walked across that arena in front of the whole bleachers.

When she got to us, she knelt down in front of Emmy, right in the dirt in her good jeans. Her hands were shaking. She held them together in her lap to make them stop.

“Emmy,” she said. Her voice was shaking too. “I told you you’d be too scared. I was wrong. I was wrong about you, and I’m sorry I ever said it. You were the bravest one out here today.”

Emmy looked at her for a long time. Six-year-olds do not forgive the way grown-ups do. They do it faster, and they mean it more, and they do not keep a list.

“I was a little scared,” Emmy said. “In my stomach. Rollin says that’s good. He says everybody worth anything is.”

Ashlyn laughed, and it came out half a sob. “Rollin’s right,” she said. “Rollin’s exactly right, honey.”

Then Emmy did a thing I will remember the rest of my life. She held the buckle out to Ashlyn with both hands.

“Can you hold it?” she asked. “For the picture? I want to hold onto Bentley, and I can’t do both.”

The picture ran in the county paper that Thursday, on the front of the second section.

I have it taped to my mirror at the shop, and more customers have asked about it than about anything else I have ever put up there.

Emmy is in the middle in her pink shirt with dirt on her face, her helmet pushed back and wool still stuck in her braid.

She has one arm around Bentley’s neck, and he has his crooked black hat on, and both of them are grinning with every tooth they have.