Page 36 of Devoted

“I heard you. Little man. You said it already.”

“He earned it.”

“He’s got your bull’s head on him. Poor thing.”

“That’s a good head.”

“It’s a big head. I’ve had my hand on it for two hours, I’d know.”

“That head’s paid for this place eleven years.”

“I know what that head’s paid for.” She wiped her face with the back of her wrist, which made it worse. “He sneezed on me.”

“He sneezed on both of us.”

“You were closer. You had it coming.”

“I had it coming.” He looked at the calf, not at her, and the grin went. “Tag him in the morning. Put him on the board Tuesday.”

“I’ll put him on the board when I get to your place. That’s how the board works.”

“I’m saying don’t forget.”

“I’ve never forgot a calf in my life, Owen. I forget birthdays.”

The heifer got herself up. She turned and put her nose down to the calf and started in licking, rough long strokes that rocked the whole calf sideways, talking to it low in her throat, and the calf wobbled its head at her. Owen shifted back on his heels to give the mother room, and Olivia moved with him, and they ended up side by side against the pen boards in the straw with nowhere left to be.

“She’s going to be all right,” he said. “She’s got the calf figured. Look at her.”

“I’m looking. She’s better at it than I’d have guessed.”

“They mostly are. You’ll want to get him on her in the next hour. If he can’t find it, you help him. Don’t let her walk off from him.”

“She won’t walk off. Look at her. She thinks she invented him. And I’ve put a calf on a teat, Owen.”

“I know it. I’m talking because it’s two in the morning.”

“Three.”

“Three, then.” He was quiet a minute, watching the calf. “Who taught you to warm the chains?”

“Daddy. He kept them in his shirt. Mama fussed about the shirts.”

“Mick warmed his chains,” Owen said, mostly to himself. “I’d forgot that.”

“I hadn’t.”

“No. You wouldn’t have.” He rubbed a thumb over the blood drying on his other wrist. “He’d have had this one out in half the time.”

“He’d have had it out and told you about it for a month.”

“He’d have earned the month.”

“He’d have called you at midnight, not two.”

“He’d have called me,” Owen said. “Yeah.”

Her hands were still wet. She could feel them going numb where the fluid dried in the cold, and the bucket was four feet away, and she didn’t move. He was close enough that his sleeve would’ve touched hers if he’d had one, forearms across his knees, blood and slick to both elbows, watching the calf try its legs. The heat came off him like off a horse ridden hard, and she sat in it. Every part of her hurt and every part of her was awake. She watched his hands hang loose off his knees, the same hands that had just turned a calf inside a cow, and she quit lying to herself.