\u201cMy Brother-in-Law Walked Onto My Property Without Asking and Shot the Steer I Had Spent Two Years Raising by Hand for Our Family\u2019s Freezer, Shrugging It Off as Nothing More Than a Harmless Mistake \u2014 I Didn\u2019t Yell or Threaten Him, but What I Did With That Meat the Next Day Surprised Everyone at the Table\u201d<\/p>\n
7:40 on a Saturday<\/p>\n
The shot came from the fence corner at 7:40 on a Saturday morning.<\/p>\n
I was in the kitchen with my hands in a bowl of pancake batter. The radio was on. KMA out of Shenandoah, the farm report, a man reading off the price of corn in a flat voice. Kinley was still upstairs asleep. It was the first Saturday in weeks she didn\u2019t have to be up for anything.<\/p>\n
Then the shot.<\/p>\n
One crack, flat and hard across the pasture. It rattled the window over the sink.<\/p>\n
You hear gunshots in the country. That\u2019s normal. Somebody after a coyote. Somebody sighting in a deer rifle for November.<\/p>\n
But not that close. Not from the fence corner. Not on a Saturday morning in October with the cattle out.<\/p>\n
I set the bowl down. I didn\u2019t wipe my hands. I went out the back door in my slippers and my barn coat and ran.<\/p>\n
Domino was down against the wire.<\/p>\n
On our side.<\/p>\n
He was lying on his side in the brown grass at the northwest corner of our pasture, where our fence meets Vern\u2019s. His legs were stretched out stiff. His big black-and-white head was pressed up against the bottom strand of barbed wire, like he\u2019d fallen into it.<\/p>\n
There was blood in the grass. A lot of it.<\/p>\n
His eyes were open.<\/p>\n
Our daughter Kinley raised him from a bottle calf.<\/p>\n
He was born in a snowstorm in February two years ago, on the Petersen place three miles south. His mother died having him. Old Ray Petersen called me on the mail route and asked if Kinley wanted a calf to raise. She was nine.<\/p>\n
Dale brought him home in the back seat of the pickup wrapped in a horse blanket. He was so small. Black and white, with one white patch over his left eye and three more on his side. Kinley took one look at him and said, \u201cDomino.\u201d<\/p>\n
She fed him at five every morning for eight weeks, before the school bus.<\/p>\n
A big plastic bottle with a red rubber nipple, full of warm milk replacer. She\u2019d mix it in the kitchen sink in her pajamas and her boots and walk out to the barn in the dark with a flashlight. Every morning. Snow, rain, twenty below.<\/p>\n
Then again at five at night, after school.<\/p>\n
He followed her around the pasture like a dog. He\u2019d come running when she called his name. He\u2019d put his big head against her chest and push until she scratched behind his ears.<\/p>\n
He was going to be our freezer beef this winter. Kinley knew that. She\u2019d always known. That\u2019s how it is on a farm. You raise an animal for food and you love it anyway. She\u2019d made her peace with it in August. She\u2019d cried. And then she\u2019d picked the date with me, at the kitchen table, on the calendar from the co-op.<\/p>\n
Two weeks from that Saturday. He was scheduled at the locker on the twenty-sixth.<\/p>\n
Vern stood at the edge of his standing corn with a rifle.<\/p>\n
Twenty yards away. On his side of the fence. In his canvas coat and his DeKalb cap, with a deer rifle held loose in his right hand, barrel pointed at the ground.<\/p>\n
He wasn\u2019t looking at me. He was looking at the steer.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was in my corn again,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
I looked at the fence.<\/p>\n
Four strands of barbed wire. Tight. Every strand pulled taut between the steel posts. Every staple where my husband put it.<\/p>\n
Dale rebuilt that whole corner in April. I helped him. I held the wire stretcher while he cranked. I remember because I cut my thumb on a barb and bled all over my jeans. We went down the line together and checked every post and every staple, and when we were done, he plucked the top wire with his finger and it sang.<\/p>\n
That fence was tight. Domino couldn\u2019t have gotten through it. A rabbit couldn\u2019t have gotten through it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThrough what, Vern?\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t answer.<\/p>\n
He looked at me for a second. His face was gray and closed, like a barn door shut against the wind.<\/p>\n
Then he turned and walked back toward his yard. Through the end rows of his corn. With his rifle in his hand.<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t look back.<\/p>\n
Chapter Two: Across That Fence<\/p>\n
I could have called the sheriff.<\/p>\n
I had my phone in my barn coat pocket. I could have pulled it out right there and dialed 911. Shooting somebody else\u2019s livestock is a crime in Iowa. I know that much. Criminal mischief. Maybe more, depending on what it was worth.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
Vern is Dale\u2019s brother.<\/p>\n
Older brother. By four years. Vern is fifty-three. Dale is forty-nine. They grew up on the same farm, the one we live on now, the one their father, Harold Nyquist, farmed for fifty years. They shared a bedroom until Vern was fifteen. They played on the same Little League team. Vern taught Dale to drive a stick shift in the very pasture where Domino was lying dead.<\/p>\n
When their father died nine years ago, he split the land. Dale got the home place. The house and the barns and two hundred and forty acres. Vern got the north half. Two hundred and forty acres of the best corn ground in the township, and the old Lindgren house their dad bought in 1988.<\/p>\n
The fence between them is the line their father drew.<\/p>\n
And Vern would be Dale\u2019s brother across that fence for thirty more years.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s what I was thinking, standing there in my slippers in the wet grass. Thirty more years. Thanksgiving dinners. Funerals. Kinley\u2019s graduation. Her wedding, someday.<\/p>\n
A sheriff\u2019s report would split the family. And it would split the road.<\/p>\n
Everybody on Hollow Creek Road would take a side. They\u2019d have to. Six families on a gravel road, and every one of them knew both brothers since they were boys. A report would sit in the paper in the sheriff\u2019s log, and everybody would read it, and everybody would talk at the caf\u00e9 and the co-op and the Lutheran church.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve seen it happen. Over less. Over a cow. Over a ditch. Over a dog.<\/p>\n
So I didn\u2019t call.<\/p>\n
I knelt in the wet grass beside Domino.<\/p>\n
His big black-and-white side wasn\u2019t moving. But I knew what I had to do. I\u2019ve lived on a farm for nineteen years. I grew up on one before that.<\/p>\n
I knelt and bled the steer with the knife off my belt.<\/p>\n
You don\u2019t waste an animal. Not ever.<\/p>\n
My grandpa taught me that. When I was ten, on his farm in Kossuth County, a heifer broke her leg in a gopher hole, and he had to put her down. He did it quick and clean with a .22. And then he handed me a knife.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t waste her,\u201d he said. \u201cShe gave her life. You make it count.\u201d<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t understand what he meant then. I do now.<\/p>\n
I did it fast. The way you\u2019re supposed to. So the meat would be good. So it would count.<\/p>\n
My hands were shaking. I made them stop.<\/p>\n
When it was done, I sat back on my heels in the bloody grass. My slippers were ruined. My barn coat was stained to the elbows. I looked at Domino\u2019s open eye. The one with the white patch around it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sorry, buddy,\u201d I whispered. \u201cI\u2019m so sorry.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then I stood up and took out my phone.<\/p>\n
Then I called Arnold Fogle at the locker in town.<\/p>\n
The Plainview Locker. On Main Street, next to the Casey\u2019s. Arnold\u2019s family has run it since 1951. He butchers and processes beef and hogs for every farm in the county.<\/p>\n
He answered on the second ring. \u201cLocker.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cArnold,\u201d I said. \u201cIt\u2019s Jill Nyquist. I\u2019ve got a steer down in my pasture. I need you to come get him. Now.\u201d<\/p>\n
There was a pause.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Domino steer?\u201d Arnold said. \u201cKinley\u2019s? He\u2019s not scheduled till the twenty-sixth.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s down, Arnold.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another pause. Longer.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll be out inside the hour,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Chapter Three: The Top Wire<\/p>\n
He was out inside the hour.<\/p>\n
He came up our gravel lane in his white truck with the hoist on the back, the one he uses for on-farm kills. He\u2019s sixty-eight, with a white crew cut and forearms like fence posts. He\u2019s butchered our beef for nineteen years.<\/p>\n
He parked by the pasture gate. He got out and walked across the grass to where Domino was lying. He looked at the steer for a long time.<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t say anything about the bullet hole. He didn\u2019t have to.<\/p>\n
He walked over to the fence corner.<\/p>\n
He looked at the posts. He looked at the wire. Four strands, tight.<\/p>\n
Then he reached up and plucked the top wire with his thumb. Like a guitar string.<\/p>\n
It sang. A high, clear twang that went down the whole line.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat corner\u2019s tight,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t say anything else. He looked across the fence. At Vern\u2019s corn. At the end rows where Vern had stood with his rifle. At the house beyond, the old Lindgren place, with smoke coming out of the chimney.<\/p>\n
He looked back at me.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou want me to call anybody, Jill?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
He nodded slowly. Like he understood.<\/p>\n
Then he went to get his hoist.<\/p>\n
Kinley came across the pasture at a run.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t hear her coming. I was helping Arnold with the chains. I looked up and there she was. Running across the brown grass from the house in her pajama pants and her sweatshirt and her rubber boots. Her hair still messy from her pillow.<\/p>\n
She\u2019d heard the shot. Or she\u2019d heard Arnold\u2019s truck. Or she\u2019d just looked out her bedroom window and seen the locker truck in the pasture and known.<\/p>\n
I met her halfway and held on.<\/p>\n
I dropped the chain and ran to her. I caught her in the middle of the pasture, about fifty yards from the fence corner, before she could get close enough to see. I wrapped both my bloody arms around her and held on.<\/p>\n
She fought me. She tried to pull away. \u201cMom, let me go. Mom. Is that Domino? Mom!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t look, baby,\u201d I said. \u201cDon\u2019t look. Come back to the house.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIs it him?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n
She stopped fighting. She went limp against me. She was eleven years old and she was almost as tall as me now, and she sagged against me like she was three.<\/p>\n
She didn\u2019t cry until we reached the porch steps.<\/p>\n
We walked back across the pasture together. My arm around her shoulders. Her face pressed against my shoulder so she couldn\u2019t look back. She didn\u2019t make a sound the whole way.<\/p>\n
Then we got to the porch steps. And she sat down on the bottom one. And she looked at her rubber boots. The same ones she wore every morning to feed him.<\/p>\n
And she broke.<\/p>\n
I sat down next to her on the step. I held her while she cried. Big, gasping sobs. The kind that shake your whole body.<\/p>\n
Behind us, in the kitchen, the radio was still playing. The pancake batter was still sitting in the bowl on the counter.<\/p>\n
Out in the pasture, Arnold was working. I could hear the hoist.<\/p>\n
\u201cWho did it?\u201d Kinley finally asked. Into my shoulder. \u201cMom. Who shot him?\u201d<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t want to tell her.<\/p>\n
But I\u2019ve never lied to my daughter. Not once. Not about Santa Claus, not about where babies come from, not about where hamburger comes from.<\/p>\n
\u201cUncle Vern,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
Chapter Four: Two Hundred Miles<\/p>\n
Dale was two hundred miles away hauling corn for the co-op.<\/p>\n
He drives a semi for the Plainview Farmers Cooperative during harvest. Runs corn from the elevator to the ethanol plant in Shell Rock and the river terminals in Dubuque. Twelve, fourteen hours a day. He was in Dubuque that Saturday, waiting in a line of semis at the terminal on the Mississippi.<\/p>\n
I called him from the porch. He picked up on the first ring.<\/p>\n
\u201cJill? What\u2019s wrong?\u201d<\/p>\n
I told him.<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t say anything for a long time. I could hear his diesel idling. I could hear other semis around him. Somebody\u2019s air brakes hissing.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe shot her steer,\u201d he said finally. \u201cKinley\u2019s steer.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIn our pasture.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIs Kinley okay?\u201d<\/p>\n
I looked at her. Sitting on the porch step next to me with her knees pulled up, staring at the pasture.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
He called his brother twice. No answer.<\/p>\n
He told me later. He called from the terminal line in Dubuque. Vern didn\u2019t pick up. He called again an hour later from the road. Vern didn\u2019t pick up.<\/p>\n
Dale got home at eleven that night. He\u2019d driven straight through from Dubuque without stopping. He came in the back door and went straight up to Kinley\u2019s room. She was asleep. He sat on the edge of her bed in the dark for a long time.<\/p>\n
Then he came back downstairs and took a flashlight off the hook by the door.<\/p>\n
That night he walked the fence with a flashlight.<\/p>\n
The whole line. Every post. From the road all the way to the creek. Half a mile. I watched him from the kitchen window. A little circle of light moving along the fence line in the dark. Stopping at every post.<\/p>\n
He was gone an hour and a half.<\/p>\n
When he came back in, he set the flashlight on the kitchen counter. He sat down at the table across from me. He looked tired. Older than forty-nine.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s tight,\u201d he said. \u201cEvery strand. Every staple. The corner\u2019s tight as a drum. There\u2019s not a hair on a barb anywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t say anything.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s my brother, Jill,\u201d Dale said. \u201cI\u2019ve known him my whole life. I don\u2019t know why he did it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI know.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut it was your steer,\u201d Dale said. \u201cYours and Kinley\u2019s. You raised him. You paid for his feed.\u201d He rubbed his face with both hands. \u201cSo it\u2019s your call. Whatever you want to do. Call the sheriff. Don\u2019t call the sheriff. I\u2019ll back you either way.\u201d<\/p>\n
I thought about it for a long time. Sitting at that kitchen table at one in the morning.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s something you should know,\u201d Dale said. \u201cSomething I didn\u2019t tell you.\u201d<\/p>\n
I looked at him.<\/p>\n
\u201cVern had the line surveyed,\u201d Dale said. \u201cIn August. He hired a surveyor out of Waterloo. The guy came out and walked it with a GPS. I saw him out there. I didn\u2019t think anything of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd Vern called me,\u201d Dale said. \u201cRight after Labor Day. He said the survey shows the fence is eighteen feet onto his side. The whole length. Eighteen feet by half a mile.\u201d He looked down at the table. \u201cHe said Dad put it in the wrong place in 1972, and we\u2019ve been grazing on his land for fifty years. He wanted me to move it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat did you say?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cI said no,\u201d Dale said. \u201cI said Dad put that fence there, and it\u2019s been there fifty years, and it\u2019s not moving.\u201d He shook his head. \u201cHe hung up on me. We haven\u2019t talked since.\u201d<\/p>\n
I sat there with that for a long time.<\/p>\n
So that\u2019s what he meant. He was in my corn again. Not corn. Grass. Eighteen feet of pasture that Vern believed was his.<\/p>\n
Domino had been grazing on our side of a fence. On ground Vern thought he owned.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat doesn\u2019t make it right,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d Dale said. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t make it right.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chapter Five: Domino<\/p>\n
Domino hung six hundred and forty pounds.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s hanging weight. The weight of the carcass after Arnold skinned it and cleaned it and hung it on a hook in his cooler. He called me on Monday to tell me.<\/p>\n
\u201cSix-forty,\u201d he said. \u201cNice steer, Jill. Real nice marbling. Kinley did a good job with him.\u201d<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t say anything. I couldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll let him hang fourteen days,\u201d Arnold said. \u201cSame as I would\u2019ve. Then we\u2019ll cut him. You know how you want it?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll call you,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
About eighteen hundred dollars of beef.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s what Domino was worth. At the price of beef that fall. Steaks and roasts and ground beef. Enough to feed our family of three all winter. Into spring, if we were careful.<\/p>\n
That was the plan. Eighteen hundred dollars we didn\u2019t have to spend at the Fareway in town. Eighteen hundred dollars of meat that Kinley raised herself, with her own two hands, at five in the morning in the snow.<\/p>\n
I thought about it all week. On the mail route. In the car.<\/p>\n
I carry the mail on Hollow Creek Road five days a week. Rural Route 2 out of the Plainview post office. A hundred and twelve miles of gravel. Three hundred and eighty mailboxes. I\u2019ve done it for eleven years.<\/p>\n
I know every mailbox on it. I know who gets the Farm Journal and who gets the Successful Farming and who gets their medicine from the VA in Des Moines. I know who\u2019s behind on their electric bill because the envelopes from MidAmerican Energy turn pink. I know whose kids are away at college because of the care packages going out.<\/p>\n
I know Marge Hansen, who\u2019s eighty-four and gets a letter from her sister in Norway every two weeks. I know Pete Larson, who farmed next to Harold Nyquist for forty years. I know the Brennans, who just had a baby. I know the Molinas, who moved up from Texas to work at the hog plant. I know old Mr. Thorson, who\u2019s blind and listens to books on tape from the state library.<\/p>\n
And I know Vern Nyquist. Whose mailbox sits on a post at the end of his lane.<\/p>\n
On Thursday night, I sat down at the kitchen table with a legal pad.<\/p>\n
Dale was gone again. Hauling corn to Shell Rock. Kinley was in her room. She\u2019d barely come out since Saturday. She went to school and came home and went to her room and shut the door. She didn\u2019t eat much. She didn\u2019t go out to the barn.<\/p>\n
I wrote down the names of every family on Hollow Creek Road.<\/p>\n
There were six of them. Six families. Six porches.<\/p>\n
Including Vern\u2019s.<\/p>\n
I called Arnold the next morning from the post office.<\/p>\n
\u201cHere\u2019s how I want him cut,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
I told him. Steaks. Ribeyes and T-bones and sirloins. Roasts. Chuck and arm and rump. A few packages of short ribs. And the rest in ground beef. One-pound packages. Wrapped in white butcher paper and labeled.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then,\u201d I said, \u201cI want you to divide it up.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDivide it?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cInto seven,\u201d I said. \u201cOur share. And six boxes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Arnold was quiet on the phone for a long time.<\/p>\n
\u201cSix boxes,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSix,\u201d I said. \u201cRoasts, steaks, and ground in each one. As even as you can make them.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWho are they for, Jill?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody on our road,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
Another long silence.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody,\u201d Arnold said.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
I heard him breathe out. Slowly.<\/p>\n
\u201cOkay,\u201d he said. \u201cOkay. I\u2019ll have them ready a week from Saturday. In waxed boxes. On the dock.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chapter Six: Six Times<\/p>\n
We kept our share.<\/p>\n
That was the first box. Bigger than the others. A family of three needs more than a widow. Arnold packed it full. Ribeyes and a chuck roast and twenty pounds of ground. Enough for the winter, if we stretched it.<\/p>\n
The rest went into six boxes.<\/p>\n
Roasts, steaks, and ground in each one.<\/p>\n
Arnold packed them himself. In white waxed cardboard boxes with lids, the kind he uses for half beefs. Each one with a chuck roast and an arm roast. Two T-bones and two sirloins. Six pounds of ground beef. All wrapped in white butcher paper and labeled in Arnold\u2019s square handwriting. GROUND. SIRLOIN. CHUCK RST.<\/p>\n
About eighty dollars of beef in each box. Maybe more.<\/p>\n
At the locker dock, Kinley sat on the tailgate with a marker.<\/p>\n
It was Saturday morning. Two weeks after the shot. The day Domino was supposed to go to the locker in the first place. October twenty-sixth.<\/p>\n
She hadn\u2019t wanted to come. I hadn\u2019t made her. But at the last minute, when I was going out the door with my car keys, she came down the stairs in her jeans and her barn coat.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to come,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The dock behind Arnold\u2019s locker is a concrete loading platform with a steel roller door. Arnold had the boxes stacked on a hand cart. Seven of them. White and clean.<\/p>\n
We backed the pickup up to the dock. Kinley got out and sat on the open tailgate. She had a black Sharpie marker in her hand. She\u2019d brought it from home in her pocket.<\/p>\n
Arnold wheeled the boxes out one by one and set them in the truck bed.<\/p>\n
As each one came, Kinley turned it over.<\/p>\n
She wrote his name on the bottom of every box.<\/p>\n
DOMINO.<\/p>\n
In her careful sixth-grade handwriting. Big capital letters. Black marker on white wax.<\/p>\n
Domino. Six times.<\/p>\n
She didn\u2019t write it on ours. Just the six.<\/p>\n
I stood there on the dock and watched her do it. One box. Then the next. Then the next. Her tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth the way it always does when she concentrates.<\/p>\n
Arnold stood beside me with his arms crossed. He didn\u2019t say anything.<\/p>\n
When she finished the last one, she capped the marker and put it back in her pocket.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo they know who he was,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Arnold made a sound. Like something got caught in his throat.<\/p>\n
He turned around and went back into the locker. He didn\u2019t come back out for a while. When he did, his eyes were red.<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t charge me for the processing. I tried to pay. I had the checkbook out. He wouldn\u2019t take it.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot for this one, Jill,\u201d he said. \u201cNot for Domino.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chapter Seven: The Route<\/p>\n
Saturday I drove it with the boxes stacked in my pickup.<\/p>\n
Hollow Creek Road. Six miles of gravel running north out of Plainview, past cornfields and bean stubble and pasture, to where it dead-ends at the creek. The road I drive five days a week with three hundred and eighty pieces of mail.<\/p>\n
Not mail today. Beef.<\/p>\n
Our own share rode in the bed behind them.<\/p>\n
Our box was in the back, against the cab. The six boxes were stacked in front of it, closest to the tailgate, so I could reach them.<\/p>\n
Kinley rode in the passenger seat with her hands folded in her lap.<\/p>\n
A box on each porch.<\/p>\n
A note in my route-book handwriting.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d written them the night before. On index cards. Six of them. The same words on each one.<\/p>\n
From Kinley\u2019s steer, Domino. Enjoy him.<\/p>\n
I tucked each card under the lid of each box.<\/p>\n
The Brennans were first. The young couple with the new baby. Nobody was home. I set the box on their porch next to the stroller and the pumpkins.<\/p>\n
The Molinas were second. Rosa Molina came to the door holding a dish towel. I handed her the box. She read the card. She looked at me. Then past me at Kinley in the pickup.<\/p>\n
\u201cDomino?\u201d she said. \u201cThe cow your girl raised?\u201d<\/p>\n
I nodded.<\/p>\n
She put her hand on her chest. She didn\u2019t say anything else. She just held the box against her hip and stood in her doorway and watched us drive away.<\/p>\n
Old Mr. Thorson was third. He\u2019s blind. I put the box in his hands so he could feel the weight of it. I read him the card out loud.<\/p>\n
He held the box for a long time.<\/p>\n
\u201cHarold\u2019s granddaughter,\u201d he said. \u201cRaised a steer.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, sir.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHarold always said that girl had a way with animals.\u201d He smiled. \u201cTell her I said thank you. Tell her I\u2019ll think of him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Marge Hansen opened her door and just lifted her hand.<\/p>\n
She\u2019s eighty-four. She\u2019s lived on Hollow Creek Road for sixty-one years. She was standing at her storm door in a housecoat when we pulled up. She\u2019d seen us coming.<\/p>\n
I carried the box up her porch steps. I set it down by the door.<\/p>\n
She looked at the box. Then at the card. Then out at the pickup, where Kinley was sitting.<\/p>\n
She didn\u2019t say anything. She just lifted her hand. Toward the pickup. Toward Kinley. And held it there, up in the air, like a blessing.<\/p>\n
Kinley lifted her hand back.<\/p>\n
Pete Larson met us by his shed.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s seventy-eight. He farmed the quarter across the creek from Harold Nyquist for forty years. He was Harold\u2019s best friend. He was a pallbearer at his funeral. He knows Dale and Vern better than anybody alive.<\/p>\n
He was in his machine shed working on a grain auger when we pulled up. He came out wiping his hands on a rag.<\/p>\n
He saw the box in my arms. He saw the name on the bottom. DOMINO, in black marker.<\/p>\n
He stood there for a long time.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat steer left his corner two weeks early,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
I looked at him.<\/p>\n
He knew. Of course he knew. Everybody on Hollow Creek Road knew. The shot carried. Arnold\u2019s truck was seen. Somebody talked at the caf\u00e9.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe did,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
Pete took the box from me. He held it against his chest with both arms.<\/p>\n
He held that box like it weighed a hundred pounds.<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t ask whose fence.<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t have to.<\/p>\n
He just stood there in front of his machine shed, holding that box, looking past me. Up the road. Toward the end. Toward the last mailbox.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou going up there?\u201d he asked quietly.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n
He looked at me for a long moment.<\/p>\n
\u201cHarold put that fence in in \u201872,\u201d he said. \u201cI helped him. I held the posts.\u201d He shook his head. \u201cHe knew right where the line was. He put it there on purpose.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d<\/p>\n
But Pete just shook his head again and turned and walked into his shed with Domino against his chest.<\/p>\n
Chapter Eight: The Last Mailbox<\/p>\n
Five porches.<\/p>\n
Kinley stayed in the cab for the last one.<\/p>\n
We pulled up at the end of Vern\u2019s lane. The last mailbox on Hollow Creek Road before it dead-ends at the creek.<\/p>\n
I put the pickup in park. I looked over at my daughter. She was looking straight ahead through the windshield. Not at Vern\u2019s house. At nothing.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou want to come?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
She shook her head.<\/p>\n
I opened my door. I started to get out.<\/p>\n
\u201cMom,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
I stopped.<\/p>\n
\u201cTell him his name,\u201d she said as I got out. \u201cDomino. Make sure he knows his name.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vern\u2019s mailbox sits on a post at the end of his lane.<\/p>\n
A big black rural box on a cedar post. NYQUIST in white reflective letters on the side. The flag\u2019s been broken for two years. It hangs down crooked.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve put mail in it for eleven years.<\/p>\n
I know what comes. The Farm Journal. A seed catalog from Pioneer. Bills from MidAmerican Energy and the co-op. A statement from the Farm Credit office in Ames. A letter every month from the Social Security Administration, for Vern\u2019s mother, Lorraine, who lived with him until she died last winter. He never stopped the letters. They kept coming. I kept delivering them.<\/p>\n
And for the last eight months, letters from Farm Credit with FINAL NOTICE stamped on the front in red.<\/p>\n
I stopped my dark red pickup beside it and dropped the tailgate.<\/p>\n
Gray October sky. Low clouds coming in from the west. The wind out of the northwest, cold and wet, smelling like rain. Brown grass in the ditch. The corn on Vern\u2019s side of the road still standing, dry and rattling. He hadn\u2019t combined it yet. It was the end of October and he hadn\u2019t combined.<\/p>\n
I turned around and looked south, back down Hollow Creek Road.<\/p>\n
Our farmhouse small and far back down the road. A little white house with a red barn, a mile and a half away, at the end of the gravel.<\/p>\n
I took Vern\u2019s box out of the bed of the pickup.<\/p>\n
The last one. DOMINO written on the bottom in black marker. The card tucked under the lid. From Kinley\u2019s steer, Domino. Enjoy him.<\/p>\n
I stood there in my barn coat with his box against my hip.<\/p>\n
I meant to walk it up to his porch like the others.<\/p>\n
His lane is a quarter mile long. Gravel, with a strip of grass down the middle. The old Lindgren house at the end of it. White, two-story, with a sagging porch and a screen door that never quite shuts.<\/p>\n
I took a step. Then another.<\/p>\n
Then his front door opened.<\/p>\n
Vern came down the lane slowly.<\/p>\n
He was in his canvas coat. No rifle. No cap. His gray hair was messy, like he\u2019d been running his hands through it. He walked down that quarter mile of gravel like a man walking to his own sentencing.<\/p>\n
He\u2019d been watching the whole road from his yard.<\/p>\n
He must have been. He must have stood at his window and watched me stop at every mailbox on Hollow Creek Road. Watched me carry a white box up to every porch. Watched Marge Hansen lift her hand. Watched Pete Larson hold his box against his chest.<\/p>\n
He knew what was in them. He knew whose name was on the bottom.<\/p>\n
He stopped six feet from me and looked at the box.<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t look at me. Just the box. Against my hip.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Not a question. Just two words. Flat.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour share,\u201d I said. \u201cIt was going on your porch.\u201d<\/p>\n
He reached out and took it from me.<\/p>\n
He took it slowly. With both hands. Like it might be hot. Like it might bite.<\/p>\n
He held it for a second. Then he turned it over.<\/p>\n
He looked at the bottom.<\/p>\n
DOMINO. In big capital letters. In black marker.<\/p>\n
He looked at my daughter\u2019s handwriting for a long time.<\/p>\n
A long time. The wind blew. The corn rattled behind him. Somewhere down by the creek, a crow called.<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t move. He just stood there at the end of his lane, holding a box of beef upside down, staring at one word.<\/p>\n
Then he looked up at me.<\/p>\n
His face had changed. The barn door was open. Everything that had been shut up behind it was standing there in his eyes. Gray and wet and broken.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe wrote that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cKinley.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n
He looked back down at it. His hands were shaking. The box trembled.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis name,\u201d he said. \u201cI didn\u2019t know his name.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chapter Nine: What Vern Said<\/p>\n
\u201cShe asked me to tell you,\u201d I said. \u201cShe said, Make sure he knows his name.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vern made a sound. Low. Like something breaking inside his chest.<\/p>\n
He turned the box right side up. He held it against his stomach with both arms. The way Pete did.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t know his name,\u201d he said again.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy\u2019d you do it, Vern?\u201d<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t answer for a long time.<\/p>\n
He looked past me. Down the road. At our little white house a mile and a half away. At the pasture. At the fence corner where he\u2019d stood with his rifle.<\/p>\n
\u201cEighteen feet,\u201d he said finally.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe survey,\u201d I said. \u201cDale told me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vern nodded slowly.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe bank sent a man out in July,\u201d he said. \u201cFrom Farm Credit in Ames. To appraise the land. For the loan.\u201d He swallowed. \u201cI\u2019m behind, Jill. Two years. Corn was bad last year. Beans were worse. And Mom\u2019s nursing home took everything before she died. Eleven months at Good Samaritan. Eighty-four hundred a month.\u201d<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t say anything.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe appraiser said the acres don\u2019t match,\u201d Vern said. \u201cSaid the deed says two hundred and forty, but he could only find two hundred and thirty-eight. Said I\u2019d better get a survey.\u201d He shook his head. \u201cSo I did. Fourteen hundred dollars I didn\u2019t have. And the surveyor said the fence is eighteen feet onto my side. All the way. That\u2019s my two acres. That\u2019s the difference.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI called Dale,\u201d Vern said. \u201cI asked him to move the fence. Just eighteen feet. Just so the bank would leave me alone.\u201d He looked at the ground. \u201cHe said no. He said Dad put it there and it\u2019s not moving.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo you shot Kinley\u2019s steer.\u201d<\/p>\n
He flinched.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t mean to,\u201d he said. \u201cI swear to God, Jill. I didn\u2019t plan it. I got up that morning and there was another letter from Farm Credit. And I walked out to the end rows to check the corn because I can\u2019t afford to combine it, I can\u2019t afford the fuel. And I looked across that fence.\u201d<\/p>\n
He stopped.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd there he was,\u201d Vern said. \u201cEating grass. On my eighteen feet. Fat and happy. Dale\u2019s steer on my land.\u201d His voice broke. \u201cAnd I had the rifle in the truck for coyotes. And I just\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
He couldn\u2019t finish.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe wasn\u2019t Dale\u2019s steer,\u201d I said quietly. \u201cHe was Kinley\u2019s. She fed him at five every morning before the school bus. For eight weeks. In the snow.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vern closed his eyes.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know,\u201d he said. \u201cI know that now. I\u2019ve known it since Saturday. Since I watched her run across that pasture.\u201d He opened his eyes. They were full. \u201cI watched her from my window, Jill. I watched you catch her. I watched her sit down on your porch steps.\u201d<\/p>\n
He looked down at the box in his arms.<\/p>\n
\u201cI haven\u2019t slept since,\u201d he said. \u201cNot one night.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy didn\u2019t you answer Dale?\u201d I asked. \u201cHe called you twice.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause I couldn\u2019t,\u201d Vern said. \u201cWhat would I say? I shot your daughter\u2019s steer because I\u2019m losing my farm and I was mad at you about a fence our dad built?\u201d<\/p>\n
He laughed. A terrible, hollow sound.<\/p>\n
\u201cLorraine\u2019s gone,\u201d he said. \u201cMy wife\u2019s been gone six years. My boy\u2019s in Denver and doesn\u2019t call. I\u2019ve got two hundred and thirty-eight acres of corn I can\u2019t afford to combine and a bank that wants to take it. And my little brother\u2019s got the home place and a wife and a daughter and a steer.\u201d<\/p>\n
He looked at me.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve never been so ashamed of anything in my life,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t say anything for a long time.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d been angry for two weeks. So angry I couldn\u2019t sleep either. Angry while I bled that steer. Angry while I held my daughter on the porch steps. Angry while I drove the mail route past his mailbox every single day.<\/p>\n
Standing there at the end of his lane, I was still angry.<\/p>\n
But I looked at him. At his gray face and his messy hair and his shaking hands. Holding a box of beef with my daughter\u2019s handwriting on the bottom.<\/p>\n
And I thought about what my grandpa said. You don\u2019t waste an animal. She gave her life. You make it count.<\/p>\n
\u201cVern,\u201d I said. \u201cDo you want to tell her yourself?\u201d<\/p>\n
He looked up at me. Startled.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s in the truck,\u201d I said. \u201cShe asked me to tell you his name. But she\u2019s right there.\u201d<\/p>\n
He looked past me at the pickup. At the passenger window. At Kinley\u2019s face, behind the glass.<\/p>\n
He was quiet for a long time.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe won\u2019t want to see me,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know what she wants,\u201d I said. \u201cAsk her.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chapter Ten: Kinley<\/p>\n
Vern walked to the pickup.<\/p>\n
Slowly. With the box in his arms. He stopped beside the passenger door. He stood there for a long moment.<\/p>\n
Kinley didn\u2019t roll down the window. She looked at him through the glass. Her face didn\u2019t move.<\/p>\n
Then she opened the door.<\/p>\n
She didn\u2019t get out. She just opened it. And sat there in the passenger seat with her hands in her lap, looking at her uncle.<\/p>\n
Vern stood there in the gravel. He held the box.<\/p>\n
\u201cKinley,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
She didn\u2019t say anything.<\/p>\n
\u201cI shot your steer,\u201d Vern said.<\/p>\n
He said it plain. No excuses. I\u2019ll give him that.<\/p>\n
\u201cI shot him, and I lied to your mom about why. He wasn\u2019t in my corn. The fence was tight. Your dad built it right.\u201d He swallowed. \u201cI was angry at your dad about something that wasn\u2019t Domino\u2019s fault. And it wasn\u2019t your fault. And I took it out on him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kinley\u2019s chin was shaking.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sorry,\u201d Vern said. \u201cI\u2019m so sorry, honey. I know that doesn\u2019t bring him back.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kinley looked at him for a long time.<\/p>\n
Then she looked at the box in his arms. At the bottom of it. Where she\u2019d written his name.<\/p>\n
\u201cDid you know he came when you called him?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n
Vern shook his head.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe did,\u201d Kinley said. Her voice was very small. \u201cLike a dog. If you stood at the gate and said Domino, he\u2019d come running from the far end of the pasture. And he\u2019d put his head against your chest and push.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vern\u2019s face crumpled.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe liked his ears scratched,\u201d Kinley said. \u201cRight here.\u201d She touched the spot behind her own ear. \u201cAnd he was scared of thunder. When there was a storm, he\u2019d stand by the barn door till I came out.\u201d<\/p>\n
She was crying now. Quietly. Tears running down her face.<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew he was going to the locker,\u201d she said. \u201cI knew it. I\u2019m not stupid. I live on a farm. I knew he was going to be our hamburger.\u201d She wiped her face on her sleeve. \u201cBut I was going to say goodbye. On the twenty-sixth. I was going to walk him into the trailer myself and scratch his ears one more time and tell him he was a good boy.\u201d<\/p>\n
She looked up at her uncle.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou took that,\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s what you took. Not the beef. The goodbye.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vern couldn\u2019t speak.<\/p>\n
He stood there beside my pickup in the gravel with the box of beef in his arms and the wind blowing his gray hair. And he cried. Like I\u2019d never seen a grown man cry. With his whole body. Shaking.<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t wipe his face. He just stood there and let it come.<\/p>\n
Kinley watched him.<\/p>\n
Then my daughter did something I didn\u2019t expect.<\/p>\n
She got out of the pickup.<\/p>\n
She stepped down onto the gravel in her rubber boots. She walked around the open door. She stood in front of her uncle.<\/p>\n
She reached out and put her hand on the box. On top of it. On the white wax cardboard.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis name was Domino,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cDomino,\u201d Vern repeated.<\/p>\n
\u201cSay it like you mean it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vern looked down at her.<\/p>\n
\u201cDomino,\u201d he said. His voice broke in half on it.<\/p>\n
Kinley nodded once.<\/p>\n
\u201cOkay,\u201d she said. \u201cNow you know who he was.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then she got back in the pickup and shut the door.<\/p>\n
Vern stood there. He looked at me over the top of the cab.<\/p>\n
\u201cJill,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ll pay for him. Eighteen hundred dollars. Every dime. I don\u2019t have it now. But I\u2019ll get it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t want your money, Vern,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen what do you want?\u201d<\/p>\n
I thought about it. About the eighteen feet. About the bank letters with FINAL NOTICE stamped in red. About two hundred and thirty-eight acres of corn rattling in the wind, unharvested at the end of October.<\/p>\n
About Pete Larson. He knew right where the line was. He put it there on purpose.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want you and Dale to walk that fence,\u201d I said. \u201cTogether. Sunday afternoon. And I want you to take Pete Larson with you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chapter Eleven: The Fence<\/p>\n
They walked it on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Dale got home from Dubuque Saturday night. I told him everything. The boxes. The porches. Vern at the end of his lane. Kinley getting out of the pickup.<\/p>\n
He sat at the kitchen table for a long time after I finished. He didn\u2019t say anything.<\/p>\n
Then he picked up the phone. And called his brother.<\/p>\n
Vern answered on the first ring.<\/p>\n
Sunday afternoon. Two o\u2019clock. Gray and cold, with a little spit of rain.<\/p>\n
Dale and Vern and Pete Larson met at the road end of the fence. I watched from the kitchen window. Kinley watched from her bedroom.<\/p>\n
Three men in canvas coats and feed caps, walking a fence line in the drizzle. Pete in the middle, with his cane. Dale on one side, Vern on the other.<\/p>\n
They walked the whole half mile. Slowly. Pete stopped at every post. He\u2019d put his hand on it and say something. Dale and Vern would lean in to listen.<\/p>\n
At the corner, where Domino died, they stopped for a long time.<\/p>\n
Dale told me afterward. At the kitchen table that night.<\/p>\n
\u201cPete knew,\u201d he said. \u201cAbout the eighteen feet. He\u2019s always known. He helped Dad set those posts in \u201872.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat did he say?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe said Dad put it there on purpose,\u201d Dale said. \u201cHe said Dad knew exactly where the surveyed line was. It runs right through a low spot by the creek. Floods every spring. Dad didn\u2019t want to fence through a slough. So he set it eighteen feet north, on high ground.\u201d He shook his head. \u201cAnd he told Pete, someday I\u2019ll fix the deed so it matches. And he never did.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo Vern\u2019s right,\u201d I said. \u201cTechnically.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOn paper,\u201d Dale said. \u201cOn the survey. But Pete says there\u2019s a thing in Iowa law. When a fence has been there long enough, and both sides treat it as the line, it becomes the line. Even if the survey says different.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAcquiescence,\u201d I said. I knew that word. I deliver a lot of mail to the lawyers in Plainview.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s it,\u201d Dale said. \u201cPete says after ten years in Iowa, a fence everybody\u2019s lived by is the boundary. Fifty years, there\u2019s no question. That eighteen feet is ours. Legally.\u201d<\/p>\n
He looked at me across the table.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then he told Vern something,\u201d Dale said. \u201cPete did. Right there at the corner where Domino died.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe said, your daddy put that fence on the high ground so his cattle wouldn\u2019t drown in the slough. And he put it on your side because he figured you boys would always be on the same side of it anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dale put his face in his hands.<\/p>\n
\u201cVern sat down in the grass,\u201d he said. \u201cRight there in the corner. In the rain. Fifty-three years old. And he cried like a kid.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd you?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI sat down next to him,\u201d Dale said.<\/p>\n
They went to see a lawyer in Plainview the next week. Both of them. Together.<\/p>\n
Her name was Rachel Ostrem. She does farm law. She\u2019s been doing it thirty years.<\/p>\n
She drew up a boundary line agreement. A legal document saying the fence is the line. Both brothers signed it. She filed it with the county recorder. She sent a copy to Farm Credit in Ames.<\/p>\n
Then she did something else. Something Dale told her to do.<\/p>\n
\u201cI bought the two acres,\u201d Dale told me that night. \u201cFrom Vern. The eighteen feet.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBought them? I thought they were ours already. Legally.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are,\u201d Dale said. \u201cBut Vern needed it in the books. For the bank. The appraiser said two hundred and forty acres. So now the deed shows two hundred and thirty-eight, and the bank knows why. And Vern\u2019s got the money for those two acres.\u201d He looked at the table. \u201cEleven thousand dollars. At fair value. Rachel figured it.\u201d<\/p>\n
I stared at him.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t have eleven thousand dollars, Dale.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do,\u201d he said quietly. \u201cIt\u2019s my truck-driving money. From harvest. I was saving it for a new pickup.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDale\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s my brother, Jill,\u201d Dale said. \u201cI\u2019ve got a pickup that runs. He\u2019s got a bank that wants his farm.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then, on the first Monday in November, at seven in the morning, I looked out the kitchen window.<\/p>\n
There were combines in Vern\u2019s corn.<\/p>\n
Three of them. Coming down the rows in a line. A green John Deere. A red Case. And a yellow-and-green one I didn\u2019t recognize.<\/p>\n
And grain carts. And semis lined up at the end of Vern\u2019s lane.<\/p>\n
I knew the combines. The green one was Pete Larson\u2019s. The red one was the Brennans\u2019. The yellow-and-green one belonged to Tomas Molina, Rosa\u2019s husband, who custom-harvested on weekends.<\/p>\n
Dale was driving a grain cart.<\/p>\n
I called him on his cell phone.<\/p>\n
\u201cDale,\u201d I said. \u201cWhat is going on?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPete called everybody,\u201d Dale said. \u201cSaturday night. After he walked the fence with us. He said Vern couldn\u2019t afford to combine.\u201d I could hear the engine. \u201cSo everybody on Hollow Creek Road is combining it for him. Fuel\u2019s on the co-op. Arnold Fogle donated it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cArnold?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cArnold,\u201d Dale said. \u201cHe said Domino would\u2019ve wanted it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chapter Twelve: The Last Box<\/p>\n
They had Vern\u2019s corn in by Tuesday night.<\/p>\n
Two hundred and thirty-eight acres. A hundred and ninety-one bushels an acre. Better than anybody expected. Vern sold it at the elevator in Plainview for enough to catch up the Farm Credit payments. Not all the way. But enough. The bank gave him a new note.<\/p>\n
He tried to pay everybody back for the combining. Nobody would take it.<\/p>\n
Pete Larson told him the same thing everybody else did.<\/p>\n
\u201cHarold helped me in \u201881,\u201d Pete said. \u201cWhen my barn burned. I\u2019m just paying it back.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vern came to our house the Saturday before Thanksgiving.<\/p>\n
He knocked on the back door. Dale was home. Kinley was at the kitchen table doing homework.<\/p>\n
Vern stood on the back step in his canvas coat. He was holding a white waxed box.<\/p>\n
His box. The one with DOMINO on the bottom.<\/p>\n
\u201cI haven\u2019t opened it,\u201d he said. \u201cI couldn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
He came in. He set the box on the kitchen table, in front of Kinley.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was wondering,\u201d he said. \u201cIf maybe. For Thanksgiving.\u201d He swallowed. \u201cIf we could all eat him together. Here. At Dad\u2019s table. The whole family.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kinley looked at the box. Then at her uncle.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo you can say goodbye?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo we all can,\u201d Vern said. \u201cI took yours. I thought maybe we could do it together.\u201d<\/p>\n
So on Thanksgiving Day, we ate Domino.<\/p>\n
The chuck roast from Vern\u2019s box. I cooked it all day in my grandmother\u2019s cast iron Dutch oven, with carrots and potatoes and onions, the way my mother taught me.<\/p>\n
There were eleven of us around Harold Nyquist\u2019s old oak table. Dale and me and Kinley. Vern. Pete Larson. Marge Hansen, who drove her Buick down the road at ten miles an hour. Mr. Thorson, who Kinley walked across the yard on her arm. The Brennans and their baby. Rosa and Tomas Molina.<\/p>\n
Arnold Fogle came for pie.<\/p>\n
Before we ate, Dale asked Kinley to say grace.<\/p>\n
She bowed her head. Everybody bowed their heads.<\/p>\n
\u201cThank you, God, for this food,\u201d Kinley said. \u201cAnd for our family. And our neighbors.\u201d She paused. \u201cAnd thank you for Domino. He was a good steer. He came when you called him. He liked his ears scratched.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her voice wobbled. She kept going.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was scared of thunder,\u201d she said. \u201cBut he wasn\u2019t scared of anything else. Amen.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nobody said anything for a moment.<\/p>\n
Then Vern said, \u201cAmen.\u201d Very quietly.<\/p>\n
And everybody else said it. All eleven of us. And we passed the roast.<\/p>\n
That was a year ago.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s October again now. Burning-leaves season. The corn\u2019s coming off on Hollow Creek Road.<\/p>\n
In April, Vern drove down to the Petersen place three miles south. Old Ray Petersen had a heifer that died calving in a snowstorm. Just like two years before. Left a bottle calf.<\/p>\n
Vern bought him. Sixty dollars. He brought him home in the back seat of his pickup, wrapped in a horse blanket. He drove him straight to our place.<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t keep him. He gave him to Kinley.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s red and white this time. A Hereford cross. Kinley named him Checkers.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause Domino was the game you lose,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd Checkers is the one where you get kinged.\u201d<\/p>\n
She feeds him at five every morning before the school bus. A big plastic bottle with a red rubber nipple. Mixed in the kitchen sink in her pajamas and her boots.<\/p>\n
But not alone.<\/p>\n
Every morning, at five, the yard light comes on at the old Lindgren house across the road.<\/p>\n
And Vern walks down his lane in the dark, with a flashlight. Across the gravel road. Through our pasture gate.<\/p>\n
He meets Kinley at the barn. He holds the flashlight while she mixes the milk. He stands at the stall door while Checkers drinks.<\/p>\n
Neither of them says much. It\u2019s five in the morning. They\u2019re not big talkers, either one.<\/p>\n
But I watch them from the kitchen window. Every morning. Two figures in the barn light, one tall and gray and stooped, one small and fierce in rubber boots.<\/p>\n
Last Saturday, I was in the kitchen making pancakes at 7:40. The radio on. The farm report.<\/p>\n
I looked out the window at the fence corner.<\/p>\n
The northwest corner. Where our fence meets Vern\u2019s. Four strands of barbed wire, tight. Every staple where my husband put it.<\/p>\n
Checkers was standing there, at the corner, against the wire. On our side. Red and white and fat in the morning sun, swishing his tail.<\/p>\n
And Vern was standing on the other side. Leaning on a fence post. Reaching over the top strand.<\/p>\n
Scratching Checkers behind the ears.<\/p>\n
I watched them for a long time.<\/p>\n
Then Vern looked up. He saw me in the kitchen window. He didn\u2019t wave. He just nodded once.<\/p>\n
And then he reached up and plucked the top wire with his thumb.<\/p>\n
I couldn\u2019t hear it from the house. But I knew what it sounded like. I could see the wire vibrate in the light.<\/p>\n
A high, clear note, singing all the way down the line.<\/p>\n
Tight. The way his father built it. The way his brother keeps it.<\/p>\n
The way it\u2019s going to stay.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cMy Brother-in-Law Walked Onto My Property Without Asking and Shot the Steer I Had Spent Two Years Raising by Hand for Our Family\u2019s Freezer, Shrugging … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17416,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,9,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-family","category-inspiration","category-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailystoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailystoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailystoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailystoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailystoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20648"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dailystoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20648\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20649,"href":"https:\/\/dailystoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20648\/revisions\/20649"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailystoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailystoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailystoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailystoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}