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“I’ve got excellent penmanship.”

“You got stock?”

“I know stock contractors.”

“You got an arena?”

“Carrow Creek has dirt. Rodeo was invented by men who looked at dirt and made questionable choices.”

That one landed.

The room laughed again, and I let it. I stood loose against the bar, boot crossed over boot, grin exactly where people expected it.

Inside, something tightened.

I knew this laugh too.

It was the one people gave a boy who’d announced he planned to rope the moon. They liked the nerve of it. They liked him for trying. Nobody went outside to build him a loop.

“Wyatt know about this?” Earl asked.

The question cut through the rest.

I turned my head toward him. “He does.”

Earl waited.

“He said yes.”

The room changed.

Not much. A small shift of shoulders. A glance traded over a bottle. Wyatt didn’t say yes for recreation. Wyatt said yes after numbers had been tied down, interrogated, and advised of their legal rights.

“Your Wyatt?” Earl asked.

“No, I keep a second one for parties.”

“He agreed to a rodeo.”

“He agreed I could put on a rodeo. Subtle difference. In one version, Wyatt helps. In the other, he watches from a safe distance with a fire extinguisher.”

Earl lifted his beer at last, but his expression stayed put.

The room had grown attentive in a way I hadn’t ordered.

I reached behind me, found my beer, and raised it. “To Carrow Creek.”

Several glasses lifted automatically. Habit was useful that way.

A few voices answered.

Earl didn’t.

He rested both forearms on the table and looked at me from under the seed cap.

“Who’s your producer?”

I drank.