He walked through the line, checking tubes and attachments, pleased to find Walker had done a better job than usual. Maybe he was finally learning something.
“Wild night, Mr. Franklin?” Walker pushed the wide broom near Ty’s feet.
“Watch yourself, kid.” Carlos straightened up from underneath number 039. “That’s your boss you’re talking to.”
“Right, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it,” Walker sputtered, his cheeks pink and awkward. He backed away and took the broom to the other side of the barn.
“But seriously,” Carlos said. “You’re never late. How wild was it?”
“As if I’d tell you anyway.”
“Come on, man! Throw a boy a bone here.”
Ty shook his head. “You need to take that up with Gloria.” He reached over and adjusted a milk line, then ran his hand down the bristly back of lucky number 040.
“I’m in the doghouse.” Carlos sat on a stool and pulled off his boot. Dumped it upside down and two pebbles fell out. He kicked them to the door of the barn. “I missed our anniversary a few days ago. She let me get all the way until ten o’clock that night before saying anything about it. Just kept her anger pent up all day. It’s a wonder that woman doesn’t implode with all the things she doesn’t tell me.”
Ty patted 040 once more, then strode to the back office to make a note to call the vet about a possible bruise on her hoof. He kicked at Carlos’s foot as he passed by. “You need to take care of that, my friend. I heard Ollie’s Meat-and-Three is having a buy-one-get-one-free night. Maybe you should take Gloria out for an apology dinner.”
Carlos was still laughing when Ty reached the privacy of his office. He grabbed a notebook and pencil off the desk and sat on the couch, but he didn’t open the notebook. Carlos’s words had cut a little close. “Woman troubles,” is what Carlos would call it, which was why Ty rarely confided anything real to him. His marriage, his life with Betsy, seemed too private, too covered in nerve endings to even talk about. But the idea of imploding under the pressure of things left unsaid—that touched something raw in him.
He’d had a girlfriend named Summer his first year at Auburn. It was the perfect name for her. She was perky and pink, with a light splatter of freckles across her nose. Always happy. If he did something nice for her—brought her a bunch of daisies he’d bought at Toomer’s Drugs or waited for her after one of her classes in the Haley Center—she’d grin bigger than the moon, wrap her arms around him, and kiss him, front and center, unafraid of anything or anyone watching. If something got under her skin, she’d talk to him about it, work out the issue, then leave it behind. She wasn’t the type to say, “Fine,” when she meant anything but.
In the end they broke up but remained friendly, because things with her could never be anything but friendly, and he’d breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn’t that he wanted someone dark or angry or hard to read, but something about Summer’s open-faced honesty and the easy way she talked about her feelings and desires made him feel less like a man than he was comfortable with.
Ty heard the clang of number 026 kicking at the machine. She always got antsy at the end of her milking, ready to be released to the field.
“Time’s up, Boss,” Carlos called. Ty scratched out the note to call the vet and tossed the notebook back on his desk.
Out in the barn Carlos was halfway through unhooking the cows from the machines. Ty started at the far end of the line, releasing udders and dabbing on a thin coat of Bag Balm to prevent irritation.
When they finished the line, the cows shuffled into the field to graze for their breakfast. Walker opened the gate to allow the next forty into the milking parlor, then he, Carlos, and Ty went through the line, dipping the udders into antiseptic, hooking them into the milking machines, and checking each cow for potential problems.
While they waited the few minutes it took to milk the group, Carlos poured a cup from the Mr. Coffee sitting on top of a plastic barrel and leaned against the wall next to Ty. “So, Ollie’s. Think that’d work?”
Ty glanced sideways at Carlos, judging his seriousness. “Man, no. Don’t take her there. I was kidding.”
“Why? They have a great catfish plate.”
“Sure they do. But do you really want to take Gloria to a backwoods diner for an anniversary dinner? When you’re already trying to climb out of a hole?” Ty shook his head.
“Well, what do you suggest, Mr. Romance? There’s not much else around here.”
“We’re twenty miles from beachside dining at sunset. Start there.”
Carlos gulped his coffee and grunted. “This stuff is terrible.” He tossed the half-empty cup into the trash barrel, but it bounced and sent coffee up the wall. He muttered a string of obscenities under his breath and grabbed a rag to wipe down the wall. “You been married, what, ten years?”
“Eight.” Ty leaned over and felt number 080’s udder. Just another minute or so to go.
“I’ve been married fif—sixteen years. How’d you get so smart about women?”
“Good luck, I guess.”
“Nah. You probably just give Betsy whatever she wants.” When Ty didn’t correct him, Carlos chuckled. “So, what Betsy wants, she gets. I see who wears the pants around here.”
Ty looked at his friend. “You’re an idiot.” He grabbed the damp rag and wiped some coffee Carlos had missed.
When the second group of forty was done, they began the process over again and Ty took a
