Page 87 of Devoted

"He wore that one to my graduation."

"He wore the brown one to my wedding," Edna said. "Wrap the lamp."

School had let out Friday at noon. Twenty of them hugged her at the door. Dalton Pruitt gave her a rock with a face drawn on it in ballpoint and told her it was for the drive. She put it in her coat pocket, said thank you, drove home, and unloaded the dishwasher.

"Bea Nunley called," Edna said. "Owen Royston's put a complaint in on his own daddy's water. With the state. His own name on it."

Olivia taped a box.

"It's been at Earl's a week and a half. Pearl's got it too."

"All right."

"That's all I'm going to say about it."

"Good."

"I've said it, though."

Olivia cut the tape.

Gruver's truck came at seven Tuesday with two men in it and backed to the chute her daddy welded out of oil pipe the year she was born.

Sixty-one head left. The rest had gone through May, ten and twelve at a time, and she'd counted every one of them out and got good at it. This was the last of it. She'd known that since Sunday and she'd slept about two hours.

The driver's name was Herrera and he'd hauled for her father. He said so at the gate, not making anything of it.

"Twelve, fifteen years back. Out of this same chute."

"He'd have been glad it was you."

"He was a hard man to load for." Herrera grinned at the ground. "He'd stand right where you're standing and tell me my own business."

"He'd tell anybody their business."

"Yes ma'am. He surely did." He looked down the alley. "You keeping any?"

"No."

"Not one?"

"There's nowhere to keep one."

He nodded like that was an answer he'd heard before, and went to get his gates.

They brought them up three at a time. She worked the gate herself. There was nothing else she was going to do with that morning, and her hands did it right. The cattle went up the ramp the way cattle go, doubtful and then all at once, and the truck rocked on its springs as they loaded. The two men were quick with them and never raised a voice.

"You want to walk this bunch or you want me to?"

"I'll walk them."

"Yes ma'am."

The second lot had the old cows in it. Mabel came up next to last, big and brindle and unhurried, the orange three still faint on her hip where the rain hadn't taken it. Eleven calves. Never lost one. She'd raised more of this herd than any cow that ever stood on the place. She went up without an argument, and at the top she stopped and looked back down at the yard the way an old cow does, waiting to be told. Olivia stood at the gate with her hand on the pipe and told her nothing.

Opal went up behind her, one-eyed, feeling for the ramp with her off front foot.

And they were all on.