Chapter 18: Slow Work

On Saturday Lottie wanted to see the colts, and nobody in my yard was willing to tell her no.

I had not slept much since the white truck at my cattle guard.

Jesse had walked the lane at first light and found tire marks and one cigarette butt.

Neither of us said Ward's name over the coffee.

We both knew whose truck it was, and that he had come to look at the barn where his son slept.

So at seven in the morning I loaded her into the truck in a car seat Kit had borrowed from the foreman's wife.

Jesse got in on the passenger side with a thermos of coffee and a braid of baling twine.

"What's the twine for?" I said.

"The east fence. Wire's down at the third post."

"You're going to fix it with twine."

"I'm going to fix it with wire. The twine is for Lottie."

He turned in his seat.

"Hat!" Lottie said, and held up her hat.

"Right. Hat." He tied the twine in a loop around the brim and dropped it over her head, so the hat hung down her back.

"There," Jesse said. "Now you can't lose it."

She yanked the loop up over her nose.

The hat went with it.

She stared at us from under the straw, absolutely furious.

I laughed.

It came out of me before I knew it was coming, an ugly, wheezing bark.

I had to put my forehead down on the steering wheel.

"It's not funny," Jesse said, and he was laughing too.

"It's a little funny."

"It's the funniest thing that has happened to this family in a month."

"Take it off her."

"Hat," Lottie said, with bitter dignity.

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