Chapter 5: Clover

I was already pulling my boots on with the phone pinned to my shoulder.

"What time does it start, Dot?"

"Five-thirty," she said. "The kill buyers like to be on the road by seven."

"I'm going."

"I know you are, baby. I'll meet you there."

When I opened my door, Hayes was standing in the hall in jeans and a flannel shirt, holding his truck keys.

"I heard the phone," he said. "Get in the truck."

The Mercer County sale barn was a long tin shed with a dirt ring and metal bleachers.

It smelled like manure and diesel and frightened animals.

It was still full dark outside when we walked in, and the lights buzzed overhead.

There were maybe forty people in the bleachers, mostly men in feed caps with coffee in foam cups.

In the front row sat a heavy man with a clipboard and a calculator.

"That's him," Dot said, coming up beside me in her barn jacket. "He buys by the pound."

The horses were in pens out back, packed in together.

Clover was in the third pen with a number glued on her hip.

She was twenty-one years old, a bay mare with a white blaze, and she'd taught me to ride when I was four.

My mother rode her every morning until the week she got too sick to stand.

Clover saw me and pushed her nose through the rails.

I put my face against her neck and breathed in, and for a second I couldn't do anything else.

There was a clipboard hanging on the pen gate.

The consignment slip was on top.

Under seller, in big round handwriting, it said Kaylee Strunk.

She'd even dotted the i in Kaylee with a little heart.

I took a picture of it with my phone.

"I'll bid," Hayes said quietly behind me. "Whatever it takes."

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