Size twelve. I wear a nine.
I’d walk past them every morning, going out to the barn. Every night, coming back in. Sitting there on the step. Waiting.
People from church kept asking if I wanted help going through his things. His clothes. His tools. Mike’s wife, Deb, offered twice.
I said not yet.
One day I put them on and stuffed the toes so they’d stay on.
It was the second week of June. Raining. My own boots were soaked through from the noon rinse. I came back in the house to change my socks, and I walked past his boots on the step.
I don’t know why I did it. I just did.
I sat down on the step and pulled them on. They were huge. My feet swam in them. I stood up and they nearly fell off.
So I went in the house and got two of his old wool socks out of his drawer. And I balled them up and stuffed them in the toes. And I put the boots back on.
They stayed.
Cooper came out of the barn. He looked at my feet.
He didn’t laugh.
He looked at those boots for a long time. Brown leather. Scuffed white on the right toe.
“Dad would think that was funny,” he said.
I wore them every day after that.
To the barn. To the pen. To the rinse rack. Down the lane with Moose. Every single day.
I’d clomp across the yard in them like a little kid in her daddy’s shoes. I tripped a few times. Once I fell flat on my face in the mud by the water tank.
Cooper helped me up. He was laughing so hard he couldn’t breathe. The first time I’d heard him laugh since May.
“Mom,” he gasped. “You look like a clown.”
“Your dad would think so too,” I said.
“He’d take a picture,” Cooper said. “And put it on Facebook.”
Then we both stopped laughing, at the same time. And stood there in the mud.
Mike saw me in them once.
He drove in on a Tuesday in late June to drop off a part for the swather. I was in the pen, rinsing Moose. In my school cook clothes, black pants and a white polo, and Brent’s brown boots.
He stopped at the edge of the yard. He looked at the boots.
His face did something. I couldn’t read it.
He set the part on the porch and drove away without saying a word.
Chapter Five: The Fan
One day in July, the fan quit and Moose wouldn’t eat.
We keep a big box fan hanging in the corner of his pen. Show steers get hot. Their hair is long and thick and they’re carrying a lot of weight. When it’s ninety-five degrees in Nebraska in July, they need air moving or they quit eating.
I came out for the ten o’clock feeding on a Wednesday night. Ninety-one degrees at ten at night. The air was like a wet blanket.
The fan wasn’t running. The motor had burned out. I could smell it.
Moose was standing in the corner of the pen with his head down. Breathing hard. The bunk was still half full from the afternoon. He hadn’t touched it.
I didn’t know what to do.
I called Cooper’s name. He didn’t come. He was asleep. He’d been up since five.
I stood in that pen in Brent’s boots and stared at that steer. Breathing hard. Not eating. Two weeks before the county fair.
If he went off feed now, he’d lose weight. Maybe fifty pounds. Maybe more. All the work. All summer. Every rinse.
I sat on the water tank and told my husband I didn’t know what I was doing.
Out loud. In the dark. With the barn light buzzing over my head and the bugs going crazy around it.
“Brent,” I said. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”
Nobody answered. Of course nobody answered.
“I don’t know how to fix a fan,” I said. “I don’t know what to do when he won’t eat. I don’t know if he’s sick. I don’t know if I’m feeding him wrong. I don’t know anything.”
I started crying.
“You were supposed to be here,” I said. “You were supposed to do this part. I was supposed to bring lemonade to the fair and sit in the bleachers and clap.”
I sat there on the edge of that water tank in Brent’s boots and cried. Really cried. The way I hadn’t let myself cry at the funeral, because Cooper was watching.
Then something wet pushed into my shoulder.
That steer pushed his wet nose into my shoulder.
Moose. Twelve hundred pounds of him. He’d come over from the corner of the pen without me hearing. He stood there next to the water tank and pushed his big white face into my shoulder.
Not hard. Gentle. The way he used to push Brent when Brent was scratching his neck.
I put my arm around his face. I held on.
He stood there and let me.
Then he walked to the bunk and cleaned it up.
Every bite. All the afternoon feed and the night feed together. He ate it all. Standing in the hot pen with no fan, at ten-thirty at night.
I sat on the water tank and watched him. Wiping my face on my sleeve.
When he was done, he licked the bottom of the bunk. Then he walked back over to the corner and lay down.
