The Dream Life of Astronauts by Patrick Ryan

brighter than it really was. I watched her wipe the knife on a dish towel between slices. With her back to me, she said, “You know he’s just getting used to everything.”
    “What’s to get used to?” I asked.
    Instead of answering, she said, “It seems like you two would get along fine. Just seems like you naturally would.”
    I heard the blade connecting with the plate. “We’re not family.”
    “But you could be. You’ve both lost people, and you’re both here now.” She set the knife down in the sink.
    “Doesn’t matter to me.”
    “Well, it should.” She gathered up two plates in each hand and motioned for me to get the remaining one.
    Pound cake was a far shot better than no-surprise orange pie, but I was done being around all of them for the night. I told her I’d have mine tomorrow.
    Then I was down the hall and outside, crossing the gravel, crawling up the ladder to my loft in the barn. I’d never talked to the Beals about my dad, and they’d never really asked—at least, not a question as direct as Ike’s. I always assumed Mr. Merrick had given the Beals the story on both my parents, which meant that at some point my mom must have given Mr. Merrick the story on my dad. That was enough for anyone to know, wasn’t it? It should have been, if it wasn’t.
    —
    W hen I walked out of the barn the next afternoon, there were at least a dozen cows milling around the house. A few of them were sitting in the shade of the oak tree. One of them had its face up to the dining room window.
    I ran toward the gate that separated the driveway from the field and before I got there I could see it was wide open. A cow on the other side tried her footing on the cattle guard, jumped over it, and walked toward the house like she had a bone to pick with someone inside. Ike was sitting cross-legged in the grass next to the fence.
    “Did you open this gate?” I asked.
    “No,” he said. “The old man left it open when he drove his car into town.”
    “Then why the hell didn’t you close it?”
    He pointed at the metal grill set into the trench across the driveway. “Gary told me those things are supposed to keep them from getting across.”
    I grabbed the gate and shoved it closed. “Any moron can see they don’t work. You could have closed the gate and saved us a lot of trouble. It’s going to take hours to get these cows back out to the field.”
    I was angrier than I needed to be, but I couldn’t help it. He stood up and looked toward the house, then started running.
    “Get back here, you jackass!” I hollered.
    The screen door slammed behind him.
    When you have a dozen cows in one open area and you need to get them to another open area, it’s not exactly a breeze. Not without a dog, or another person. You clap at two cows, and one of them walks in the opposite direction you want it to. You get three lined up to move and two of them drift away, like canoes. It didn’t take all afternoon to get them back out to the field, but it took a chunk of it. By the time I went in for lunch there wasn’t any, just the stale slice of pound cake from the night before. I waved a fly off of it and carried it out to the barn.
    The stall I’d cleared for Mr. Merrick’s feed was empty, but looked like the dirtiest thing I’d ever seen. I swept it, then swept it again. There was always more dirt. By the time I had it in somewhat better shape, my nose and eyes felt clogged with grit. I was heading out to wash up at the hose when Gary walked in. I started past him, but he stepped in front of me.
    “Don’t call him any more names,” he said.
    I told him to get out of the way, but he took hold of my forearm.
    “Leave him alone.”
    “I’m in a bad mood, so you ought to just watch it.”
    “Sh-
shit
,” he said—the first time I’d ever heard him swear. “You’ve been in a b-bad mood since the day I met you.”
    I stared hard into his eyes, put my hand on top of his and squeezed it, then lifted it off my arm.