The Lane My Brother in Law Could Not Back

So I pulled forward, slow, out of her lane with 64 calves behind me. Going out was easy. Going out is always easy. It was the coming in that had mattered.

When I looked in the mirror, the whole family was standing in the yard watching us go.

Curtis was out front with his cap in his hand again. Emmett had his arm up, waving.

We rode most of the way to the sale barn without talking.

The sun was full up by then, and the cold sky went on forever in front of us, and the wheat fields were showing green on both sides of the highway.

About halfway there, Hazel reached over and put her hand on the dashboard, just rested it there, the way you would rest your hand on a horse’s neck.

“Emmett’s daddy would have liked you driving these,” she said.

“He used to say the hardest thing in the world was to back into a place where everybody’s watching,” she said. “He said most men can do it when they’re alone.”

She was quiet a while. Then she said, “You did it where everybody was watching. And you did it at my place. I won’t forget that, honey. Not as long as I live.”

I had to look hard at the road for a minute after that.

There was a hymn on the radio, low, one of the old ones, and Hazel hummed along to the chorus with her eyes closed and her hand still on the dash.

At the sale barn, the yard men opened the gate and counted the calves off as I let them out of each compartment.

Sixty-four. Every one of them walked off easy, full and fresh, not shrunk from standing half a day.

Hazel’s calves sold that afternoon for more than they had in years. She told everybody at church the next morning that it was because they rode so smooth.

That is not quite how cattle prices work, and everybody in that church knew it, and nobody corrected her.

I saw Curtis put a folded twenty in the offering plate that Sunday.

He looked over at me when he did it, and I nodded, and that was the end of the twenty dollars.

Bertram’s shoulder healed by Christmas. When I told him about the lane, he only said, “I told you you could do it,” and then he gave me two more of his regular customers to run on my own.

At Thanksgiving that year, Curtis sat down across from me at Hazel’s table, and when the pie came out, he did not say a word about trucks.

He asked me how many loads I had run that fall, and he listened to the answer.

He has called me twice since then to cover his loads. Once when his truck was down in January, and once in the spring when his daughter had her first baby and he wanted to be at the hospital.

Both times he said, “I need somebody I can trust with them.” Both times I went.

I still have that index card from driving school, taped now to the dashboard of the red truck that Bertram lets me drive like it is mine. Watch the trailer. Small corrections.

It is good advice for backing a cattle pot down a narrow lane. I have come to think it is good advice for family too.