“Okay, fair is fair. Maybe once. Grew up breaking them and studying their ways. Get to a point where you can read their movements and manners. Then you adjust.”

“Exactly,” he says. “That’s how I am with a bike. You put all that time and money into something, last thing you want to do is destroy it.”

“The last thing I want is my father destroying himself on this farm. Since my mother passed away, I’ve been on him to retire, sell this place. But he won’t, because it’s all he has left of her. Her memory. He’s been offered millions, but he keeps turning it down.”

“That’s tough. Sometimes you gotta help them relocate. My father didn’t know what else to do when I moved away. So I told him, go be with your brother, around family. He relocated to California.”

Or was it something else? Having an affair. Another kid. His father had to know the score. Maybe he was running away.

Tara opens a tube of ointment, squeezes a small blob onto her gloved index finger, and smooths the antiseptic over the weeping flesh. Then she opens a sterile dressing pad and lays it over the wound.

While taping down the dressing, she looks at the tattoo on his hand. “Gotta be a story there,” she said.

The crazy black outline of a skull with Xs for eyes and “BBH” with a line through it for the teeth. He explains that it was what his grandfather kept telling him and his father when he was suffering from dementia, rubbing his “big bald head,” as he called it. It was something that stuck. A way to remember his grandfather.

“You know, I’ve helped my dad my entire life,” Tara says. “Built all this. Made a life of comfort out of hard work with horses and cattle. Had a couple make the Kentucky Derby. I just want him to enjoy some time without labor before something like that happens to him—cancer, dementia, Alzheimer’s disease. But he won’t leave.”

“Why you think that is?”

“Mom. She passed. Like I said, this was her family’s farm. He wants it to be mine. But I can’t be reminded of it all anymore.”

“Have you told him that?”

“More times than I got fingers on my hands. He doesn’t want to forget.”

“So he doesn’t wanna let it go. Understandable.”

“No, he doesn’t. And it’s not like she’s coming back.”

“Rebirth, you mean. Like a reincarnation.”

“Yeah, like we’re Tibetan or some shit.”

“From what I can see, looks like a great place.”

“It is, but it’s too much. Too much space. Too much upkeep. People to pay. Lot of overhead.” She looks at him sitting there with one very pale leg exposed, and smiles. “You work out?”

“Powerlift. Yeah.”