“He went straight to the bank that spring and got another loan; he had good credit by then, no problems the first year. He wanted to buy more cattle that year, maybe fifty head, but for once he listened to us, maybe he was tired of thinking it all out for himself, and we told him forty was too many for that land, so much of it was bush and the rest pretty well scrub, never mind fifty, so he bought forty again. But the loan was bigger than the year before anyway, because cattle prices were up that spring.

“They set out to do it all over again, but things were different that year. It was a blazing summer, that one, I think it set records, and everybody was having troubles. Not enough rain, August was just one long, hot dry spell, and everything turned brown and there wasn’t a thing anybody could do but watch it happen. Belle was still raising her chickens, and she brought the eggs into town to sell. God she looked terrible that summer, looked as if the child she was carrying was eating her alive, she didn’t seem to have anything for herself, and there she was, working like the devil. She was real listless, just brought the eggs in and sold them and went home again, didn’t want to talk to anybody. He came in with her sometimes, and he was dead worried, getting the squinty pinched look my dad had. Mostly he stayed out on the farm, though, because she couldn’t work much in the garden and he had to do almost the whole of it.

“He’d set up some kind of hose connection with a pump from the creek out there to the garden, so as long as there was water in the creek, he could keep the garden alive, at least. He said he wasn’t going to bother renting a spot for a roadside stand, though; he didn’t have time to sit by the road selling vegetables, and Belle wasn’t able to. He said the baby was coming at just the wrong time.

“Nobody wanted to ask about the cattle; we could guess. All the fields around here were stunted and dry, and there was no way his few acres would support the forty head that year. He didn’t mention it the few times he came to town.

“Finally, early in September, I guess he figured he couldn’t hang onto them any longer, so he had them trucked out for slaughter. He broke even on the price per pound, but they’d lost weight. Goddamn bad luck for them that year; nothing went right, and by the end of it they were well in the hole.