He’s infinitely worse.
“She did bust out of the pen pretty regularly,” he tells Junie. “Tony found her hip-deep in the creek, wailing and mooing because she was scared of the fish swimming around her.”
“No.”
“That one’s God’s honest truth. She was eyeballing those minnows swimming at her knees like they were gonna eat her. Tony took some video when it happened. Can probably find it for you back at the house later if you want to see.”
“You knew my great-uncle?”
“Really well.”
My daughter wrinkles her nose.
I can only imagine what she’s thinking. ProbablyI never even knew I had a great-uncle until Mom told me we were moving to this ranch that she inherited from him.
I talked about him to her, didn’t I? We’d email. Occasionally call. He was the funniest old guy, and I never knew if he was telling me true stories or if he was talking nonsense to make me laugh, but I always felt lighter after we talked.
Junie should’ve known him.
She would’ve loved him. And he would’ve loved her.
But instead, he was my crazy Uncle Tony. The black sheep of the family. The one with theutter nonsense ideas about the world. The one who got a wild hair to buy himself a hobby ranch in Wyoming when he hit the lottery thirty years ago.
Literally.
“I’m so glad Gingersnap lived a good life,” I say. “All cows should.”
“There was this other morning, she wouldn’t quit mooing.” Flint’s smiling at Junie again. I need to find out what subject he teaches at the high school and decide if I want to make sure she does or doesn’t have him.
If we even have a choice.
I was told the high school is pretty small when I called to ask how to enroll her the day after I decided we were moving here.
So I’ll take solace in the fact that him not liking me doesn’t automatically mean he’d be a bad teacher for her.
People are more complicated than that.
“Why was she mooing?” Junie asks.
“Only thing Tony could figure was that she didn’t like how Helen Heifer was looking at her wrong. She’d quit mooing as soon as Helen Heifer looked away.”
Junie cracks up.
I haven’t heard her laugh inweeks, and here she is, laughing at a man telling us stories about a cow.
“And then there was the drunken-oats debacle.” Flint shakes his head, eyes twinkling under the brim of his baseball cap. “Now, most of these cows get grass, but oats are good for them too. Until the oats get rained on and ferment, and Gingersnap gets into the feed truck and starts walking around like a tipsy old lady who’s been cheating at cards. You ever hear a cow laugh?”
Junie shakes her head.
“Thing to behold. You get out and help feed ’em enough in the mornings, stick around for the milking, you might get to hear it too.”
My cheek is twitching with the effort of keeping my appropriately moderated smile in place.
Junie finding something—anything—to like here isgood. Connecting with someone who’ll be there at the high school, possibly even as one of her teachers when school starts again next week, isgood.
But watching an adult win her over in ten minutes with stories about a dead cow when she’s so mad at me—she’ll barely talk to me some days—is absolute torture.
“Do you take care of the cows every morning?” Junie asks him.
