Page 55 of Devoted

She put the cap on. She did the button on her jeans and left the shirt, pulled her coat shut over it, walked past him out the barn door into the last of the light without a word. He heard her truck door. Her engine. The cattle guard at the gate.

He stood in the barn. He’d taken her against a wall twice now and set her down twice, and the second was worse than the first. A better man would’ve said it or quit coming. He’d done neither. He’d done this.

He took the chain off the wall.

He did Hattie in the dark, with the tractor lights. Ran the chain around her hind legs above the hocks, hooked it to the drawbar, dragged her off the apron and out the back of the pens to the draw where the old cows had always gone, the ones that didn’t get up, and unhooked her there and left her for the coyotes and the sun. He’d done it a hundred times. He’d never done it with his hands shaking. He parked the tractor, went in the house, didn’t turn the light on.

Pearl’s was lit at seven like it was every morning, and her truck was in front of it.

He’d seen it from the corner. He’d had the whole block to turn around in, and he didn’t. He parked behind her and went in.

She was at the counter with her back to the door, her coffee in front of her, her cap on. Alone. Two elevator men at the far end, Marge at the pass-through. Pearl had the pot in her hand and was coming down the counter with it when the door went, and she looked up, and so did Olivia.

“Olivia,” he said, and touched his hat.

He sat down nine feet from her. He put his hat on the counter. Pearl came the rest of the way with the pot, stopped at his cup, and looked at him.

She looked at him a long time for Pearl. Then she looked down the counter at Olivia.

“More, honey?”

“I’ve got plenty, Pearl.”

“You have.” Pearl looked back at him, and she set the pot on the burner behind her without pouring a drop. “Marge. Miss Bateman’s eggs.”

Nobody in the room said anything about anything. The elevator men ate. Olivia drank her coffee, looking at the wall. Owen sat with his hat beside him, his hands on the counter, an empty cup in front of him, and nobody filled it, and nobody was going to.

He’d had that coming for eleven years.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Brody's truck was in Owen's yard when she came through the gate Saturday, parked where she parked, so she left hers behind it and sat a second with the engine off.

They'd been at it an hour. The alley was full, the crowd pen was half down, and the two of them were working it the way they'd worked brandings at seventeen, when anybody who hired the pair of them got about one man's work. Brody was up on the catwalk with a sorting stick, in Owen's yellow gloves. Owen was at the chute with his hat pushed back. Neither one looked up when her door shut.

"Four's a five-year-old," Brody called down. "Board says lot one."

"Let her by."

"She's by. Next one's got a calf that doesn't want to come."

"He'll come. Don't crowd him."

"I'm not crowding him. He's crowding me."

"Then get out of his road."

"I'm on a catwalk, Owen. There's no road up here."

"Then stand still and he'll go under you."

"He's going. Look at him go. Lot three?"

"His mama's a three. He's whatever she is."

She got her cap on and her gloves out of her back pocket and walked down to the pens, and Brody saw her and came down the catwalk like he had all day.

"Liv." He took the gloves out of her hand before she'd got the first one on, shook them open, held the right one for her to put her hand in. "You're late. We've done thirty head and I've been insulted by all of them."