Page 52 of Devoted

“It’s the one you always have. You can’t help it. You can’t say. You’ve got a whole language for not telling me things, and I speak it, I’ve been speaking it since I was seventeen.”

“You want me to quit coming, say so. I’ll quit. I’ll haul what’s on that trailer to the sale barn Thursday and that’s the last you’ll see of my truck in your yard.”

“There. You just did it again.”

“Did what?”

“I say a true thing and you hand me a gate.” She pointed at him with the broken chalk. “Quit coming, don’t quit coming, like that’s what I asked. I didn’t ask you to quit. I told you what it is. You’re managing me, Owen. You’ve managed me for eight weeks. You manage my cows and my mama’s supper and my hands, and you’re good at it, and I’d rather you’d hit me.”

“Don’t say that.”

“I’d know where I stood.”

“You know where you stand.”

“I know where you put me. It’s not the same thing.” She threw the chalk down. “You want to know what Brody does? He asks. He asks me what I want to eat and he asks me if I want to go home, and I tell him, and he does it. He’s a con man and he asks. You’ve never asked me a thing in your life that wasn’t about a cow.”

“He’s got nothing to lose asking.”

“And you do?”

He didn’t answer that. He walked. He didn’t decide to, his feet went, toward the barn, because the chain was in the barn and the cow was on the concrete and the work didn’t stop for anybody’s mouth, and she came after him across the lot still talking.

“Where are you going?”

“Chain.”

“We’re not done.”

“I heard you. I’ve got a cow to drag.”

“You’ve got a cow to drag.” She caught up. “You’ve always got a cow. You had a cow at Harvey’s, I watched you. You had a cow at the creek.”

“Leave the creek out of it.”

“You brought Brody into it. I get the creek.”

“I brought Brody into it because he’s in it.”

“He’s in it because you put him there.” She was at his elbow now, keeping up. “You looked at me in that lot and you couldn’t say one word, and Saturday he had his hand out before the band got through the first verse. You think I don’t know what that looks like? I know what it looks like. I let it look like that.”

“Why?”

“Because you made it so I had nothing else.”

“You had plenty else.”

“Name it.”

“Tuesday. Saturday. My alley.”

“Taking orders.”

“Working. Same as⁠—”

“Same as always. You’d have had me chalking your board till June and called it something.” She was a step behind him now, at the barn. “Then I’d have gone to Midland with Mama, and you’d have gone to Pearl’s and drunk your coffee and never said my name to anybody.”

“I’d have said it.”