Page 29 of Deviant
Settles.
Like a thing that’s been vibrating finds its frequency and goes still.
I don’t do anything with it. I don’t examine it, I just feel it happen, before I look away from his forearm and stare at the fence post, thinking about the cattle work we still have to do this afternoon.
But I felt it.
IknowI felt it.
And that scares me more than the texts, more than the hallway, more than anything else that has happened this week.
We break for lunch at the truck—water and sandwiches Mom packed this morning, same as always. We sit in the truck bed, facing the pasture, and don’t talk much. And that’s fine.
In the afternoon, we check the cattle, moving most of the herd to the upper pasture before the heat peaks.
I know cattle the way I know my own hands. I’ve spent twenty years working this herd, learning their patterns—the way they move as a body and the way individuals break from it. Iknow which ones will test a fence, which ones need space, and which ones will feel your hesitation and use it.
We move through the south pasture methodically, pushing the herd toward the gate. Colt takes direction well, reads the animals better than I expected, and positions himself where I need him without me having to say it twice. We work together, and it goes smoothly.
Then, there’s the heifer.
She’s a three-year-old Angus cross that has always had an opinion about everything. I know her; I’ve moved her a dozen times. She’s stubborn, but she reads people. And if she decides she doesn’t trust you, she will plant her feet and that’s the end of the conversation. I come around her left flank the way I always do, giving her the right amount of pressure, and she sidesteps away from the direction I need her to go.
I adjust—come wider.
She sidesteps again.
I push the angle and she backs up, tossing her head before moving the wrong direction entirely. I’m burning time and she knows it. I can feel Colt watching from my peripheral vision, and I do not need an audience for this. I circle back and try again, but she throws her head, plants her feet, and stares at me with those flat dark eyes, like she can see straight through me and has decided I don’t deserve her cooperation.
“Hey.” Colt’s voice is quiet. “Let me try something.”
“I’ve got her.”
“Rhett.”
“I said I’ve got her.”
But I don’t have her, that’s the problem. I try once more, coming in slow and low, and she sidesteps so deliberately it almost feels personal. I straighten up and there’s a burn in my chest that has nothing to do with the animal and everything to do with the fact that I’m failing at something on my own land,in front of someone I am desperately trying not to care about impressing.
Colt moves past me without asking. He doesn’t even look at me, just walks up to the heifer’s left side and puts one hand out flat and waits. The heifer looks at him and takes one step forward, smelling his hand.
Then she walks.
Just walks through the gate and into the upper field, like that’s what she wanted to do all along and she just needed to be asked differently. Colt closes the gate behind her, latches it, and turns around.
“That’s all Dandee wanted.”
“Dandee?” I ask, annoyance laced in my tone.
“Yeah. I named her.”
“We don’t name the cows.”
“That’s a shame,” Colt says.
I roll my eyes and get back to work.
After we make our way back to the main house, Colt rinses his hands at the outdoor spigot, then dries them on the back of his jeans, before grabbing his helmet off the fence post where he always leaves it. He doesn’t make a production of leaving, just a nod in my direction, a quiet “see you tomorrow,” then the sports bike rumbles to life, and he’s gone down the drive, the sound fading just as quickly as he revved it up.
