you miss him.”
“We all do,” she said. “It’s been extra hard on Ray.”
“Yeah?” I turned off the camera; this seemed...private.
Her tone turned melancholy. “One second he’s getting recruited to play football at Emerson Academy and the next he’s quitting all his extra curriculars to help run the ranch. He would have dropped out of school if Mom had let him.”
My eyes trailed to the man hard at work ahead of us, leading his siblings. I hadn’t known he’d been recruited for football. All I knew was his dad had died shortly after he started freshman year. How had we been at the same school, in the same class, and remained practically strangers? Our school wasn’t that big. It was like we’d been on parallel tracks all this time, but now our realities were crashing us together.
As we walked the cattle back to the pens by their barn, I couldn’t get the thought of Ray and all I didn’t know about him out of my mind. This picture of production agriculture didn’t align with what my parents had been advertising against. I had more questions than answers, and I had to figure out how to learn more. I wanted to know more about this way of life, but mostly, I wanted to know more about Ray Sadler.
Nineteen
I got off the horse and filmed as they brought the cattle to the corrals. Dust rose in the air around me from the animals’ slow, clomping footsteps. Ray and his siblings hollered from time to time, encouraging the cattle to go smoothly into the pen, but the cattle didn’t look scared. They seemed content to follow the others in and start chowing down on the feeders full of hay and grain. Even though they were in smaller pens instead of the pasture, they didn’t look sad or disgusted. Just interested in more food.
I climbed up the fence and angled my camera to get the perfect vantage point of the action. Ray and his siblings had it down, working as a team until every last cow was in the corral and had an opportunity to drink some water and eat from the troughs full of food. I watched him and his brother and sister in awe. I’d never carried this much responsibility in my life. My parents didn’t even want me living in a college dorm with a roommate, and here they were caring for a herd of cattle—their family’s livelihood.
Up here on the fence, away from the horse’s warmth, it was much colder. I pulled my hat further over my ears, wishing for central heat, or at least a reprieve from the frigid wind that had been blasting me for hours.
With all the cattle in the pen, Ray climbed up the fence and sat next to me.
I trained the camera on his rugged face. “How was it, cowboy?”
He gave me a tired smirk. “Fine.”
“Tell the people what you just did.”
As usual, he kept it short. “I did what I had to do.”
With an exasperated smile, I turned the camera off. “You’re supposed to give the people what they want.”
“Which is?”
More of your smile, I didn’t say. “Well, I want a nap,” I said instead.
He chuckled while I rolled my eyes.
“Seriously,” I said. “If you want people to actually know what you do out here, you need to be a little more open.”
With a sigh, he spun his finger in the air. “Start rolling.”
I turned my camera on him, and he tipped his cap and started in a southern drawl, “Well, ya see, darlin’, us country bumpkins just chase them thar cattle ‘round for fun.”
I rolled my eyes at him, and he became more serious.
“The heifers—that’s a word for young female cows—are going to start calving in February, and we wanted to move them closer to the house. Today they’re here for a break and so we can make sure they’re okay after the move, but then we’ll let them into the pasture by the house. That will keep them close so we can make sure they, and their babies, are okay.”
I swallowed and turned off the camera. “Better.” This side of Ray was different. Him, worrying about helpless, defenseless animals? Wanting them close so he could watch them better? Speaking with so much emotion and knowledge about their needs? It caught me off guard.
“What now?” he asked.
“I don’t think we have time for editing, but maybe a few questions?” I definitely wasn’t stalling to hear him talk some more. Nope, not at all. Not