Love in Bloom. Arlene James

      He backed the truck out and headed for the barn. Two minutes later they were walking along a graveled path. Tate closed a gate at the back of the barn then went into a small room just inside the building.

      “Open the stall doors. We have an automatic feed and water system for the horses that I can activate in here. We’ll have to feed the cattle up front by hand after I drive in the horses.”

      Isabella showed Lily how to slide the gates open. They would have to quickly roll them closed again after the horses were inside. Once the automatic feed system started dumping grain into the bins, Tate grabbed a rope and walked out to one of the corrals. Soon hooves thundered through the barn. Isabella hopped up on a post and advised Lily to climb up behind her. Perhaps a dozen different horses swung into six stalls and dropped their noses into feed bins. Isabella plopped down to the straw strewn floor and started whisking the gates closed. Lily followed suit. Tate jogged up, coiling his rope, and helped finish the job.

      He slung the rope over one shoulder and returned to the small room at the back of the building, reappearing a few moments later with a laden wheelbarrow. The girls followed him to a pen at the front of the barn. While Isabella and, belatedly, Lily, dumped feed into a bucket, Tate crawled over a fence and dropped a loop over the head of a good-size calf, which he then snugged to a post.

      “Sugar, bring me the kit,” he said, running a hand down the calf’s flank to its belly. Isabella picked up a black zippered bag and handed it to Lily, who then carried it over to Tate. “Grab his tail,” he instructed, “but watch those back legs and don’t get yourself kicked.”

      “Uh. Okay.”

      He glanced up in surprise at Lily then shot his daughter a speaking glance before turning his attention back to the calf. “Pull on his tail. Just stay well back while I doctor him.”

      Lily looked at Isabella, who nodded encouragingly, and grabbed hold of the swishing tail, stepping back and leaning away from the animal. It jerked and bawled, but Lily held on, reasoning that if Isabella could manage such a feat then she surely could. Crouching down next to the animal, Tate crooned a steady stream of encouraging words as he unzipped the kit, prepared a syringe and then irrigated a wound on the calf’s underside, explaining his actions as he went along. The animal didn’t really put up much of a fight. Apparently it had been through this process several times already. Tate ended by giving the ungrateful beast an injection, then he waved Lily away, released the calf’s head and chuckled as it trotted to the bucket to feed.

      He and Lily walked to the fence. After helping her climb over, he passed the medical kit to Isabella and easily vaulted the fence himself. Lily and Isabella sat in the truck while Tate tossed bales of hay into the back before driving around to the corral in front. He cut the wire on the bales, and the three of them tossed the hay into the corral to feed the few head of cattle penned there for one reason or another.

      They scrubbed their hands at a spigot beside the barn, using a bar of soap inside a net hanging by a chain, and ate their burgers sitting on the tailgate of the truck while the sky darkened and the stars began to pop out.

      She said a quick, silent prayer of thanks for the meal, as was her habit, and took a bite. Now this, Lily thought, breathing deeply of the loamy smells of earth and animals and growing things, is more like it. While nothing at all like what she had imagined, this was somehow what she had been seeking when she’d filled out her grant application back in Boston. Strangely she finally felt that she was getting to know Bygones and Kansas. Or maybe it was that she was getting to know Tate and Isabella.

      “Grandma and Grandpa will be here with the fireworks soon,” Tate observed, after chugging the last of his water and recapping the bottle.

      “Time to strain the berry tea!” Isabella announced excitedly.

      They climbed into the truck and drove to the house. This time Tate pulled into the neatly organized garage and everyone got out. Isabella led the way, chattering all the while about the special tea that had been steeping all day.

      “It’s a berry special recipe,” she joked. “It come down in the family. We get the berries as soon as they’re dark enough. They grow practically on the ground, so you got to watch where you’re stepping, and when we get enough I boil ’em up with the leaves. Daddy helps me. And we cook the sugar in until you can’t even see it anymore. When it’s not hot, we put it in the fridge, and then after a long time, I pour it through a piece of material. What is it, Daddy?”

      “Cheesecloth.”

      “Oh, yeah. I don’t know why it’s called that, ’cause we don’t make cheese. We’re making tea, blue tea for Red, White and Blue Day! It’s tadition.”