The next morning, before I went to work, a new fan was hanging in the corner of the pen.
A big one. A sixty-inch barn fan, the kind they use in dairy barns. Running. Blowing cool air across the whole pen.
I didn’t buy it. Cooper didn’t buy it. We didn’t have the money.
There was a receipt from the Cedar Bend Co-op stuck to the fence post with a piece of baling wire.
Sold to: Mike Olson. 60-inch barn fan. $389.00. PAID.
Chapter Six: The Weigh-In
He weighed in at the county fair at 1,342 pounds.
The Platte Valley County Fair. The last week of July. At the fairgrounds on the east edge of Cedar Bend, with the big white livestock barn and the show arena with the pipe rails and the grandstand where they have the tractor pull on Saturday night.
We hauled Moose in on Wednesday morning. In Brent’s stock trailer, behind my pickup. Cooper rode in the back with him, so he wouldn’t be scared.
Weigh-in was at nine. A long line of kids and steers waiting to cross the big scale at the end of the barn.
Cooper led him on. Moose stood perfectly still.
The man at the scale, a retired banker named Herb, looked at the readout.
“Thirteen forty-two,” he said.
Cooper turned around and looked at me.
I had Brent’s green notebook in my back pocket. I took it out. I opened it to the page from April. Brent’s handwriting at the bottom.
Guess for fair: 1,340.
Brent had guessed 1,340 in April.
Two pounds.
Cooper looked at the notebook. Then at me. Then at the scale.
“Two pounds,” he said. “He was off by two pounds.”
“Your dad was good at guessing,” I said.
Cooper took the notebook out of my hand. He took a pen out of his pocket. And under his dad’s guess, he wrote:
Actual: 1,342. You were right, Dad.
The steer show was Friday afternoon.
Three o’clock. In the big arena. Nine steers in the market steer class. Then the champions from each class would come back for the Grand Champion drive.
Cooper was up early. Five a.m. In the barn, at the fairgrounds, with Moose. Rinsing. Brushing. Blowing. Fitting. Trimming the hair on his legs with Brent’s clippers.
I helped. In Brent’s boots. Holding the halter while he worked.
Mike was in the barn too.
His son Logan had a steer in the same class. A black crossbred named Tank. Logan’s pen was three down from ours.
Mike and Logan were fitting Tank. Mike was working on the legs with his own clippers. He didn’t look over at us. Not once all morning.
But I saw him look at Moose. When he thought nobody was watching. Standing in the aisle, holding a can of adhesive spray, just looking.
Parents don’t walk into a 4-H class.
Everybody knows that. It’s a rule. Not written down anywhere, but everybody knows it. The kids show. The parents stand at the rail. You can help in the barn. You can fit the steer and wash him and clip him and blow him out. But when it’s time for the ring, the kid goes in alone.
That’s the point. That’s what 4-H is. Head, heart, hands, health. The kid does it.
So I knew I’d be standing at the rail. In the bleachers. Clapping.
That’s what I’d always thought I’d be doing.
Chapter Seven: One Lap
At two-forty-five, the steer show was about to start.
The arena was full. The bleachers on both sides. People standing three deep along the pipe rail. Farm families. Town families. Old men in seed caps. Kids in FFA jackets.
The nine steers in Cooper’s class were lined up in the warm-up area behind the big gate. Nine kids in white show shirts and jeans and boots. Holding their show sticks. Their steers groomed and fitted and gleaming.
I was standing at the gate. Just outside it. Where parents stand, to wish their kid luck before he goes in.
The superintendent stood in the middle of the ring with a microphone.
Dean Schmeckpeper. Sixty-two. He’s run the beef show at the Platte Valley County Fair for twenty-six years. He’s a big man with a white mustache and a voice like a combine starting.
“Good afternoon, folks,” he said. “Welcome to the market steer show.”
The crowd clapped.
“Before we get started,” Dean said, “I’d like to ask everybody to take a moment.”
The arena went quiet.
“Most of you knew Brent Olson,” Dean said. “Brent showed steers in this ring for eight years, when he was a kid. He won Grand Champion in 1998. He came back every year after that to help with the show. He hung the banners. He ran the scale. He stood right over there at the gate and told every nervous kid to breathe.”
He pointed at the gate. Where I was standing.
“We lost Brent in May,” he said. “He was forty-one.”
The whole arena was silent. Not a sound. Not a kid. Not a cow.
“He’d want us to have a good show,” Dean said. “So let’s have one. For Brent.”
Then he looked at me at the gate.
He didn’t say anything for a second. He looked at me. He looked down at my feet. At Brent’s brown Red Wings, three sizes too big, with the white scuff on the right toe.
He lowered the microphone. He walked across the ring to the gate. He stopped in front of me.
“Jamie,” he said quietly. “One lap. Then the rail.”
I didn’t understand.
“Dean, parents don’t go in.”
“I know the rule,” Dean said. “I wrote half the rules for this show.” He looked at my boots again. “One lap, Jamie. With your boy. For Brent. Then you go to the rail.”
He held the gate open.
Cooper looked at me. He was standing right behind me with Moose on the halter.
“Mom,” he said. “Come on.”
I walked into that ring in Brent’s brown boots, three sizes too big.
Hot July afternoon. Ninety-three degrees. The sun coming through the big open doors at the end of the arena.
Soft wood shavings underfoot. My boots sank into them. The wool socks in the toes squished.
A white barn behind the pipe rail. With the 4-H clover painted on the side. And a big banner hanging over the door: PLATTE VALLEY COUNTY FAIR, SINCE 1911.
Cooper led Moose in his white show shirt, his dad’s show stick in his hand.
Brent’s show stick. A long aluminum stick with a curved hook at the end, for scratching the steer’s belly to keep him calm. Brent got it when he was ten. He used it for eight years. He kept it in the barn on two nails over the door.
Cooper took it down the morning of the fair. He didn’t ask. He just took it.
I walked beside them. On the left side of Moose. Where I always walked down the lane at home.
We went around the ring. Slowly. The way Cooper taught me. Steer’s head up. Steer’s feet moving. Nice and easy.
The crowd didn’t make a sound.
I could hear the fans in the barn. I could hear the shavings under Moose’s hooves. I could hear my own breathing.
I could hear somebody in the bleachers crying.
I looked at the rail once.
Halfway around. On the far side of the ring. By the gate where the steers come out.
Mike was leaning on the pipe in his seed cap and tan work shirt.
Logan was beside him with Tank, waiting to go in. But Mike wasn’t looking at Logan. He was looking at me.
Not smiling. Not frowning.
Just watching.
He watched me walk his brother’s steer around that ring in his brother’s boots. His face didn’t move. His hands were on the pipe rail. His knuckles were white.
I looked away.
I finished my lap and stepped out.
Dean held the gate. I walked through it. I went to the rail. I stood there.
I didn’t trust my legs. I held on to the pipe.
Chapter Eight: The Judge
Nine steers in the class.
The judge was a man from Iowa. Tom Riggins. A cattle feeder from Atlantic, with a big operation and a reputation for being fair and blunt. He’d judged the Iowa State Fair twice. He wore a straw cowboy hat and jeans and a pressed blue shirt.
He stood in the middle of the ring and watched the nine steers walk around him. He didn’t say anything. He just watched.
