drove the pickup to the back of the barn, unhooked the stock trailer, and then drove back to the house, took the money out of his wallet, and got out.
“What the hell did you do with that cow?” Moses yelled.
J.B. just handed his brother the money and went into the house.
Moses stared at the wad of money, then counted it in disbelief. Eight hundred and twenty-three dollars.
“Lord, lord,” Moses muttered.
He looked down at his old work shoes, then up at where they lived. It was falling down around them. He looked back down at the money again, and then followed J.B. into the trailer.
“Well?” J.B. asked.
Moses opened a cabinet and pulled out the round oatmeal box that they used for a bank, and put the money inside, then put it back in the cabinet without saying a word.
“I already fed the chickens, and I got a call from a man up near Savannah who wants some windows hung tomorrow. We need to be there by 8:00 a.m.”
“All right,” J.B. said. “What’s he paying?”
“I told him we’d do it for three hundred,” Moses said.
“How many are we hanging?” J.B. asked.
“I reckon he said five of them. They’re regular-size windows and all on the ground floor.”
J.B. nodded.
“All right, then.”
They stood for a minute looking at each other, and knew they’d both crossed a line that would have shamed their mama. But then they weren’t too happy with her, either. If it wasn’t for her, they wouldn’t be in this shape, so they let the guilt slide.
They went to bed after the sun went down, Moses in his room, J.B. in his across the hall. But neither one of them could sleep. J.B. had sold something that didn’t belong to him, and Moses had abetted the crime by taking the money from the sale.
It was a fitful night for both of them, and when the alarm went off at 5:00 a.m., they were up without complaint.
They came home that evening with two hundred and fifty-one dollars to add to their stash. They’d had to buy their own lunches and put gas in the truck coming and going, but it was money honestly earned.
It was another month before the brothers crossed the line again, but this time it was easier. They saw three steers out grazing in a bar ditch, and when they drove up on them, the steers turned and ran ahead of the pickup.
“You need to stop, or they’ll run all the way to our place,” Moses said.
“Yeah, they probably will,” J.B. said, and kept driving, and the steers kept running up that gravel road all the way to their homeplace. But when J.B. parked at the trailer, the steers finally stopped running.
Neither brother commented, but they both walked down to the barn. One opened the gate to the corral, and the other herded the steers inside. They began grazing on the overgrowth in the corral.
“You feed the chickens. I’ll start supper,” Moses said, and that’s how the evening went.
They ate sausage patties and fried potatoes until they were gone, then cleaned up the kitchen together.
“How long do you reckon we oughta keep them steers?” J.B. asked.
Moses shrugged. “Someone might show up looking for them tomorrow.”
J.B. nodded. “Yeah, we’ll wait and see.”
“Right. We’ll wait and see,” Moses said.
* * *
They kept them four days, then hauled them to a different auction house in a different county and came home with more money than they’d ever had at once.
After that, their consciences no longer bothered them like they had before, and they began looking for easy marks.
It was Moses who remembered that the Talbot property butted up to Old Man Bailey’s place, and it was Moses who also knew the old man was in a nursing home.
They scouted the place out one day, just to see if they could see any cattle in the Talbot pasture, and saw nice ones that would bring a good price.
Before, they’d just been availing themselves of wandering cattle, so this was their first venture into outright rustling. They were going onto other people’s property, cutting fences, and stealing livestock.
“If we get ourselves a good load, then we won’t have to do this anymore,” Moses said.
“What do you mean?” J.B. asked.
“Well, with what we already have, and what we’ll get from a big haul, we’ll be sittin’ pretty come winter when the work dries up,” Moses explained.
“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” J.B. said. “When do you want to do it?”