The Joke Calf That Topped the Sale

Later, Tatum told me what happened in that alley in the last minute before the gate.

She reached up and scratched Pocket on the poll, right between the eyes, where he’d always liked it.

“Pocket,” she whispered. “It’s just like home. You walk with me.” He put his big head down, very gently, and pushed it against her coat, and held it there for a second.

Then the gate man said, “Ready, hon?” and she stepped back and gathered up her rope.

Up in the box, Harlan leaned into his microphone. “Lot 64,” he said. “Our last bull of the day. A little consignment bull. Raised by my former daughter-in-law.”

Somebody high in the bleachers chuckled. A couple of people turned to look at me.

I kept my hands on the top board of the rail and my eyes on the gate.

The gate swung open.

Pocket walked into that sawdust like he’d done it his whole life. He didn’t trot or snort or bawl.

He walked in on a slack rope behind my daughter, his big feet setting down soft.

He was deep-bodied, long and thick through the heart, with a back straight as a board and a big, quiet eye.

He looked like a bull you could turn out in rough country and find fat in August.

Tatum walked him once around the ring, slowly, and he followed her like a dog.

When she stopped, he stopped. When she turned him broadside to the bleachers, he stood square on all four feet.

The chuckling stopped. I have been to a lot of bull sales in my life, and I have never heard a barn go that quiet that fast.

It was like somebody shut off a radio.

Then I watched the bleachers lean forward. It started at the front row and moved up, row by row, all those hats tipping toward the ring, catalogs coming back out of pockets.

The men who had been heading for the doors stopped and turned around.

Lorraine Thiel was sitting halfway up on the left side. She had been talking to the man next to her. She wasn’t now.

Rod looked down at Tatum for a long moment.

Then he looked over at Harlan, who sat with his hand on his microphone and an expression I had never seen on his face.

“Folks,” Rod said, “where do you want to start this bull?” Harlan leaned toward his microphone to answer. Lorraine was already raising her hand.

“Three thousand,” she said, clear across the ring.

Rod didn’t even pause. A big rancher from up by Lemmon, a man who runs twelve hundred cows, lifted his catalog. “Four,” Rod called. Lorraine nodded. Five. The man from Lemmon nodded. Six.

Then a third hand came up, a young manager for a big Wyoming outfit who had bought six of Harlan’s bulls that afternoon.

Seven. Rod’s voice rolled faster, and the ringmen barked out bids.

Eight. Eight and a half. Nine. Tatum stood in the middle of the ring with Pocket quiet beside her, and she didn’t look up once. I don’t think she breathed.

At nine thousand five hundred, the young man from Wyoming shook his head and folded his catalog.

It was Lorraine and the man from Lemmon. Ten thousand. Ten thousand two hundred and fifty.