Page 59

"She's a pair," Olivia said. "Three."

"Three. Calf's a bull calf, tag nine. He goes with her."

"I know he goes with her."

"Then write it."

"I'm writing it. Give me a second."

"Take two," Brody said. "He can wait."

Mabel came into the chute and stood. She'd stood in this chute more times than Olivia had. Owen put the paint stick on her hip, a big orange three, and stepped back, and Olivia wrote it on the board, MABEL, and the tag, and the three, and PAIR, in her daddy's hand, and it was done. She was in a lot. A buyer was going to look at her Tuesday and see an old cow with a number on her hip.

"Let her out," Owen said, and she let her out, and the calf didn't follow. He'd been at Mabel's flank the whole way up and he spooked at the paint stick or the gate or nothing, the way they do, and went back down the alley the wrong way with his tail up, and Mabel bawled from the other side of the gate, and Brody said "Well, hell," and went down the catwalk after him, and the calf hit the end and turned.

The alley gate was the only thing between him and the crowd pen with thirty head in it. Olivia went for the latch. Owen went for the latch. They came off the catwalk on the same side at the same time and she got her hand on the bar and his came down over it, all of it, her hand under his glove, and his chest came against her back and stayed there, and the calf hit the gate and it held, and for one second nobody moved. Not him. Not her. His breath was on her cap. His hand was over hers on the cold bar, the way it had been on the headgate in February and on the tape in March, the only way this man had ever put his hand on hers, over the top of it, on a piece of steel, and she felt it go through him where he stood against her, and she felt it go through her, and Brody was on the catwalk above them looking straight down at it.

"Olivia," Owen said.

He took his hand off. He stepped back, turned, went and got the calf himself, bare-handed, carried him up the alley to his mama, and didn't look at her.

Brody came down the catwalk. He took the stick out from under his arm, looked at the board, said, "Opal's next. Then that's the lot," in the same voice he'd had all afternoon, and he didn't look at her either.

"Bring her," Owen said.

"I'm bringing her. She's got one eye, she's not blind."

"She's blind on the side you're on."

"Then she'll hear me." Brody went for the pen. "Liv, tell him I've moved a cow before."

"He's moved a cow before," Olivia said.

"Thank you."

"In Africa. With a broom."

Opal came up the alley with her good eye on the three of them and stood in the chute.

"Three," Olivia said.

"Three. She's dry this year."

"She's a pair on paper. Daddy'd have said so."

"Then she's a pair," Owen said, and put the three on her, and Opal went out behind Mabel. "That's the lot."

"Papers," Brody said.

"On the tailgate."

"I'll get them."

He got them. Owen walked the pens the way he did after, checking every latch with his hand. Brody stood by the tailgate with the sheet and read none of it. She took her gloves off and stood there with her hands cold and didn't know where to look.

"Tuesday week," Owen said, from the pens.

"Ten."