There, he stops and thinks, breathing hard. He doesn’t want Robbie to remember how irrational Lance can be, so he needs to act normal. He recognizes that his reaction to finding out someone lives in his father’s house, someone he didn’t know about, is out of proportion. He shouldn’t care. It’s barely even his problem. What difference does it make if it’s empty and rotting or if someone’s living there?

Someone with a kid the right age for that bike.

He goes inside, hurrying out of his borrowed coat. He doesn’t see Robbie, but hears water running in the bathroom. He frowns when he finds the bathroom door ajar. Would Robbie be showering with the door open?

All of the confusing, mixed emotions Lance has been avoiding with respect to Robbie come crashing back down. Just like when he went up the creekbank toward his old house before he consciously decided to move, he finds himself stepping out of his coveralls, kicking off his boots, and walking toward the bathroom, through the haze of light and steam emanating from inside.

When he steps into the doorway, what he sees is somehow the last thing he expected.

“Is that a calf?”

Chapter Ten

Robbie

Twenty-three years ago.

“Here, son,” says his father, reaching out with a hand that’s scraped raw on the knuckles. His father, for some reason, never wears gloves, but he always makes Robbie put them on. You need to get in the habit, he’ll say. He’s just been leaning into the back of the pickup truck, outwardly calm but with a grim expression. There’s a steer with his head stuck in the pipe-post fence.

Robbie takes the wire-cutters and then trots after his father, who’s carried by much longer legs at a brisk walk. The center and top bars of the fence around the feed pen are pipe, but it also has three rows of sucker rod, including the two closest to the ground. The sucker rod is just flexible enough that the steer, trying to reach for the green grass on the other side of the fence, could worm his head through like someone cramming their fist into a jar. Now he’s stuck tight, wailing, tail lashing back and forth.

The whole scene makes Robbie’s heart pound, but his dad is matter-of-fact as he bends down. The steer rolls its wide eyes toward them, fighting hard for another second. Then, he abruptly goes limp. Another long, low bawl escapes his muzzle, where a thin foam of saliva has built on the fine hairs around his lips. Then, he’s silent as well as still.

Robbie’s father swears, grasping one piece of the sucker rod in each hand. He pushes and pulls at the same time, using so much of his strength that his shoulders tremble. He widens the gap in the rebar rungs enough that they aren’t biting into the steer’s neck quite so hard, and the steer’s eyes refocus, but still he doesn’t move.

Swearing again, Robbie’s dad gives the steer’s snout a hard nudge with his left knee, but at his angle and with so much of his effort dedicated to bowing the rebar, it doesn’t have any force. The steer doesn’t even seem to notice as his eyes drift closed again.