“Dad was better at most things,” Ben said.
“He was.” Dwayne coiled the twine over his arm. “He was a hell of a man, your father.”
“You’re not bad,” Ben said, almost inaudibly.
Dwayne said nothing. But when I carried out the coffee, his eyes were wet.The snow came the second week of November, early and hard, a four-day blizzard that closed the highway and buried the fences. I spent it in the barn with a flashlight and a bucket of calf feed. Ben went out every four hours to break ice. We lost no cattle. We lost no hay. The stackyard, under a foot of drift, stood solid and silent, two hundred and twelve bales, every one of them home.
On the fifth day, when the plow finally came through, a truck turned in at the gate. I thought it was the county. It was Arlen, in his green Ford, with a thermos and a coffee cake wrapped in foil.
