She’s seventeen. The moments when she lets me leave my hand anywhere are fewer than they used to be.
“Who do you want to walk you out?” I asked. “Not who you’re supposed to want. Who.”
She thought about it longer than I expected.
Then she said, “Can Grandpa do it?”
My father is Duane Ostrem. He’s seventy-nine years old.
He milked Holsteins on the same quarter section east of town for fifty-one years. Twice a day. Three hundred and sixty-five days a year.
He sold the herd in 2011. The spring after my mother died.
He said the cows didn’t need a man who talked to them that much.
He still lives on the place. He still gets up at 4:30 every morning.
He had his left hip replaced two winters ago. He’s walked with a cane ever since. A plain wooden hickory cane, with a rubber tip he replaces from the farm store when it wears through.
