The Old Mares on the Stone Boat

Eli unhooked them. He didn’t say anything. He just stood with his forehead against Belle’s shoulder for a second, and then he took her lead.

When I turned around, Glen was walking across the dirt toward me.

People were still clapping. He came through the dust with his checkbook already in his hand, the way he goes to a sale barn when he has made up his mind.

He stopped about six feet away.

His face was red, from the heat or from something else. Folks in the front rows of the grandstand were watching. So were the other teamsters along the rail, and the hook boy, and the tape man, and the crew stacking the blocks back on the truck.

“How much would you take for them?” he asked.

It wasn’t loud. But it carried. The whole front of the grandstand heard Glen Rausch, who had told half of Holmes County I’d bought sixteen hundred dollars of dog food, ask me what I’d take for those mares.

I took my gloves off. I took my time doing it.

“They’re not for sale,” I said.

“I’ll give you four thousand,” he said. “Five.”

“No, Glen.”

“Name it. Whatever you want.”

“They’re not for sale,” I said again. “Not to you. Not to anybody. They’re going to live on our farm and work as long as they want to work, and when they’re done working they’re going to stand in the shade and get fat. That was always the whole idea.”

He stood there with his checkbook. The grandstand had gotten quieter, the way a crowd does when it knows it is watching something private.

I could have said something more. I could have said the dog food thing back to him. People have told me I should have.

I didn’t. I looked at him the way I would look at a man who had just lost something, because he had, and it wasn’t the pull.

“You can come see them, though,” I said. “Any time. They’re in the same barn. Eli told me about your dad.”

Glen looked at Eli then. Eli didn’t look away. Something went across Glen’s face, and his eyes got wet, and he put the checkbook back in his pocket.

He reached up and touched Queenie on the forehead, the white star there, just with his fingertips. She let him.

He didn’t say anything. He turned around and walked back to his geldings, who were tied at the trailer still blowing and stamping. The hook boy was standing there holding their leads and didn’t know where to look.

Up in the stand, Herb said into the microphone, “Folks, that’ll do it for the heavyweights. Let’s give all eight teams another hand.” And the grandstand did, and the moment was over, and everybody went to get a lemonade.

I won a ribbon, a little purple rosette, and a check for a hundred and fifty dollars. I gave half of it to Eli for the steel in that evener. He tried to give it back. I wouldn’t take it.