Chapter 13: The Pen

I did not speak to him for three days.

I said "pass the salt" at dinner and "excuse me" in the hall, and I slept in the east wing with the door shut.

It was lonely and a little stupid.

My body knew better than my head, and it kept waking me at two in the morning.

On the fourth day I got a call from the south pasture.

A heifer had gone through the creek fence and was bawling in a stand of cedar on the far side, tangled in wire.

I drove out in my truck with the bolt cutters and a bottle of iodine.

The creek had flooded the week before.

The bank on the near side was a foot of red mud.

I stepped off the dry gravel and my left boot went in to the knee.

I pulled.

The boot stayed, and my foot came out in a wet sock.

"Damn it."

I tried the other leg for balance and sank that one too.

For a minute I stood there in the muck, in the middle of a creek bed with a heifer yelling at me, and I started to laugh.

"Need a hand, Dr. Roane?"

I looked up the bank.

Jude sat his horse at the top, in his hat, with a coil of rope on the saddle.

I didn't ask how long he'd been there.

"No," I said. "I'm fine."

"You're stuck in the mud."

"I'm taking a moment," I said.

"You're up to your shins."

"Go away, Jude."

He swung down.

He walked to the edge of the mud, studied me, and held out his hand.

"Give me your arm."

"I can get out myself," I said.

"I know you can. It'll take twenty minutes and you'll lose both boots."

I took his hand.

He pulled, and my right leg came out with a long wet sucking sound.

My left foot did not.

"Hold on," he said.

He went down on one knee on the bank, reached into the mud up to the elbow, and worked my boot loose.

It came free with a pop.

He threw it up the bank.

Then, without asking, he put an arm behind my knees and the other around my back and lifted me out of the creek bed.

I yelped.

"Put me down."

"In a minute."

He carried me up the slope and set me on the tailgate of my own truck.

I sat there with my feet hanging, one bare and filthy, one in a wet sock.

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