Twenty Three Marks on the Barn Wall

Kyler rubbed her down with the old towel, hard, all over. We let the heifer out into the last clean pen and put the calf in front of her, and in about twenty minutes the calf was up on those wobbly legs and sucking.

Boyd had not said a word the whole time.

Now he came up beside the pen and leaned on it, with that bad shoulder held close against his side, and watched the calf suck. He reached in his back pocket and took out his wallet.

“What do I owe you,” he said to Kyler. Not a question. Just words he had to get out. Kyler did not answer. He went into the barn.

I thought for a second he was angry, that he had gone in there to keep from saying something. I should have known better. That boy is his father’s son.

He came back out with a feed tag. One of the white paper tags off a mineral bag, the kind with the guaranteed analysis on one side and a blank back. He had a carpenter pencil from Lane’s shelf.

He laid the tag flat on the top board of the pen and wrote on it. Then he handed it to Boyd.

Boyd held it at arm’s length, because his reading glasses were in the truck. Then he brought it a little closer.

I saw it later, when Boyd showed it to me. It said: “Boyd Kettering. One pull, black baldy heifer calf. Alive. Amount owed: $0.00. Paid in full. Kyler K.”

Boyd read it twice. His lips moved the second time.

Then he folded it very carefully, along the crease where it had come off the bag, and put it in his shirt pocket behind his pencil. He put his wallet away.

He looked at Kyler. He looked at the barn wall. Then he looked at the ground for a while.

“Your grandpa, my big brother,” he said finally, “used to pull my heifers when I was about your age. My shoulder was fine then. I was just scared of it.”

“Did he charge you?” Kyler asked. It was not a mean question. Kyler did not have a mean bone. He just wanted to know.

Boyd laughed, one short laugh that did not sound happy. “No,” he said. “No, he did not.”

He stood there a minute more. Then he said, to me this time, “Is Lane up to the house?”

“He’s up.”

“I’m going to go up there,” Boyd said. “If that’s all right.”

“It’s not my house,” I said. “But I imagine he’ll let you in.”

He walked up to the house. He did not take his truck. He walked the whole way, a big man in a faded coat, holding his right arm close to his side.

I do not know everything that was said in Lane’s living room that afternoon. Delia told me some of it. She said Boyd stood in the doorway with his hat in his hands for a long time before he sat down.

She said he told Lane he had been a fool about the river lease. She said he told Lane he was sorry about the fifty dollars, and sorrier about who he had said it to.

She said Lane did not make it easy for him, and he did not make it hard either. Lane listened, and then he said, “You’d better come to supper Sunday. Delia’s making a roast.”