The Herd Dad Built Came Home

“Clint,” she said. “I thought you were in Louisiana.”

“I got back Sunday. Carlene, are my dad’s cows on the sale?”

“Honey.” She took her glasses off. “I took the consignment sheet on Thursday. Mrs. Brandt came in herself. She said you and Eldon had talked it over, with the memory care and all. I didn’t think to call you. I should have. I’m so sorry.”

“Is Emmett here?”

“He’s in the back, in the ring office.”

Emmett Tolbert has managed that barn for twenty-two years. He’s sixty-eight years old, with a gray mustache and a cattle-buyer’s eyes, and he knew my father for forty years before that. He had been at Mom’s service. He’d bought Dad’s steers every fall since before I could drive.

He was at his desk with the sale order in front of him and a toothpick in the corner of his mouth. He looked up and the toothpick stopped.

“Emmett. Those are Dad’s cows.”

I laid the folder on his desk and opened it. I didn’t say anything else, and I didn’t have to. He picked up the brand certificate first and read it with his lips moving a little. Then the registrations, one after another, laying them out one by one. Then he picked up the white card.

He read it twice. I watched his jaw work.

“Carlene said the wife brought them in,” he said. “Said Eldon was in a facility. Said the family was handling the herd.”

“I’m the family.”

“You are.” He set the card down very gently. “Clint, I want you to understand, I never saw that card this week. It’s in a drawer in Carlene’s file from 2019. Nobody pulled it. Nobody checked.”

“I know.”

“If I’d looked at the name on that sheet, I’d have known right off. Eldon Brandt hasn’t sold a cow through this barn without standing at that rail himself in forty years.”

“Emmett. How many have gone through?”

He leaned and looked at the sale order. “Three. Four, six, and seven. They’re running them in tag order, and nine is in the ring right now.” He looked up. “The buyers have paid. Or they will, at the window.”

“I’ll make it right with the buyers,” I said. “Whatever it costs me. I’ll cover it.”

“You will not,” Emmett said, and stood up.

He’s a big man when he stands. He took his hat off the hook and put it on, and for a second he just stood there. I thought about my father, standing in that same office a thousand times, leaning on that same desk, talking about weather and prices.

“Where is she?”

“Second row. Aisle seat.”

“Has she said anything to you?”

“She hasn’t spoken to me at all. She came in at ten and she’s been in that seat since.” He looked at me. “Come on.”

We walked the narrow hall behind the ring. Through the wall I could hear the auctioneer working. Twenty-five hundred, twenty-six, twenty-six, will ya give me. Then a gavel. Then the next cow’s number called out. Nine, I thought. They’ve got to nine.

I thought, that was seven. That was another one.

Emmett stopped at the doorway to the stands. I stepped around him and stood in the side door, and that’s where I was when I looked down the rows and saw the back of my stepmother’s head, her hair set and sprayed, her purse on her knees.