“What the hell’s eating your dad?” Billy said to the brothers, right off.

It was four-thirty and hotter than ever, although there was a forecast of rain for tomorrow. It was so hot in the truck that Hugh-Jay drove with his work gloves on the steering wheel to keep from burning his hands. It was too hot for the air-conditioning to kick in before they reached town, so he had the windows rolled down while the AC worked its way up to tepid. He cranked its fan up high, so that between that noise and the sound of the tires, and the hot wind whipping in through the windows, the three of them had to raise their voices to hear one another. From their faces to the back of their necks and on down their clothing, they were filthy from the cattle work. Their boots and their jeans stank of cow shit, a smell they barely noticed after a lifetime of breathing it.

“You are,” Chase joked from the backseat. “You’re eating him.”

They’d all gone through the county schools together. Billy had dropped out of high school on his third stab at a junior year, the same year Belle Linder was a senior, Chase was a sophomore, Bobby was still in middle school, and Hugh-Jay was at Kansas State University.

Keeping his gaze on the two-lane county highway ahead of them, Hugh-Jay said more seriously, “I think you know, Billy.”

Billy looked mulish upon hearing that. “I don’t know!” He reached under the seat and a beer can magically appeared in his hand when he sat up again.

“Where’d that come from?” Hugh-Jay asked, glancing over.

“Do you have another one?” Chase stuck in.

Billy smirked. “Brought it with me.”

Hugh-Jay had given him a ride out to the ranch for the day’s work.

Billy popped the top. The smell of beer filled the cab of the truck.

“How can you drink that hot stuff?” Hugh-Jay asked him.

Billy took a drink, then wiped off his mouth with his filthy shirtsleeve and shrugged. “A beer’s a beer, right, Chase?”

In the backseat, too hot to talk anymore, Chase didn’t answer.

“Dad said you mistreated an animal,” Hugh-Jay continued, refusing to be sidetracked. “You know how he feels about that.”

“It was a cow, for Christ’s sake, Jay. A fucking cow. She was jamming up the pen. Nobody could get past her, somebody had to get her to move. All I did was give her a couple of pokes and a kick. You never kicked a cow?” He turned around toward the back. “You never did, Chase?”

“Not like you.” Chase lolled his head back on the seat and stared at the ceiling.

“I didn’t hurt her none! She was just a cow.”

“And not your wife, you mean,” Chase drawled loudly, still staring up.

There was an instant’s loaded silence, and then Billy yelled, “What?” This time he turned all the way around to face the brother in the backseat. “What’d you say, Chase?”

Hugh-Jay shot his younger brother a glance in the rearview mirror.

Chase kept staring at the ceiling of the truck. “I happen to know the sheriff’s been out to see you a couple of times, because some people think you’ve been hurting your wife. You use a cattle prod on Val, too, Billy?”

“Screw you, Chase Linder. You people are unbelievable! I never hurt Val!”

At the wheel, Hugh-Jay said nothing, but his hands tightened on it.

“I never,” Billy muttered, before he chugged at his warm beer.

They covered several hundred yards in silence.

Hugh-Jay finally spoke. “You might want to apologize to Dad.”

“For what? I told you, I didn’t do nothin’!”

“You might want to work at our ranch again.”

Billy threw him an incredulous look. “Your dad’s not gonna kick me off for that.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure. That kind of thing’s important to him.”

“Fuckin’ cow.”

“You know he doesn’t like that kind of language.”

Billy muttered the offending word under his breath.

They drove in silence then, until Billy suddenly flung his beer can out his window, aiming at a bison bull as they drove past the herd. The can didn’t go five feet, and fell into a culvert.

Hugh-Jay braked the truck so fast that Billy jolted forward, putting out his hands to keep from flying into the dashboard, since he didn’t have his seat belt on. In the backseat, Chase nearly slid off the seat. “What the hell?” Billy exclaimed. He and Chase were flung back into their seats again when Hugh-Jay threw the truck into reverse and gunned it.

He made a hard stop again and turned toward his surprised passengers.

“Get out and pick it up, Billy.”

“What?”

“Pick up the beer can, Billy. What’s wrong with you that you’d do that?”

“What is wrong with you people that you care about shit like that?”

“Pick it up or I’ll pull you out and leave you on the side of this road.”

Billy flung open the door, got out, picked up the can, and threw it so hard into the open bed of the truck in back that when it hit the metal it sounded like gunfire that turned into machine-gun fire as it rattled around. When he got back in, slamming the door behind him, Hugh-Jay asked him, “Was that can empty?”

“You think I’d throw a beer away?”

Billy sulked in the passenger’s seat for the remainder of the drive.

Chase eyed the backs of both of their heads and then closed his eyes.

As the speed limit dropped on the approach to Rose, Hugh-Jay slowed to twenty miles an hour. They rolled past grain elevators, a convenience store, a Pizza Hut, a Chinese restaurant, an abandoned train station, and the Leafy Green Truck Stop with its attached café. He turned right onto Main Street, which took them down a four-lane corridor of modest frame and brick homes and then through the three-block downtown with its sprinkling of small enterprises. They passed Rose’s three-room public library, the two-room City Hall, the senior citizen center, an art gallery that was open only by appointment, the former bank where Hugh-Jay and Chase’s sister Belle were creating a history museum, and Bailey’s Bar & Grill, which was a tavern and the only place in town where a person could get served a decent steak, along with a beer or mixed drinks. As they passed other vehicles on the street, Hugh-Jay raised a gloved hand to greet their drivers, who performed the same friendly courtesy to him. His own home would have taken him north onto a block of big houses, but he turned south to get to Billy’s poorer neighborhood, where it sometimes seemed as if there were more old cars in the front yards than grass.

When Hugh-Jay parked in front of the small white house where Billy lived with Valentine and their son, he said, “You want cash for today?”

“Yeah.” Billy’s tone was sullen.

Hugh-Jay pulled out his wallet and counted out enough bills to equal the hourly minimum wage. Ordinarily, and without anybody in the family knowing, he would have added an extra ten, but on this day he didn’t do it. He handed the cash to Billy, who took it with an angry, disappointed grab, and said, “You think I’m ever going to see any more of this, Hugh-Jay?”

“I don’t know. Whatever you did, maybe you won’t do it again.”

Billy threw himself out of the truck, slammed the door, and yelled through the open window, “Didn’t fuckin’ do nothing wrong the first time!” Then he grabbed the rim of the open window, glared into the backseat and said, “Don’t think I’m going to forget what you said, Chase.”

Chase opened his eyes halfway. “You’re not supposed to forget it.”

As the brothers drove off, Hugh-Jay said, “Why’d you say that to him?”

“About beating Val? ’Cause it’s true.”

“You know that for sure?”

“Pretty sure.”

“I don’t think pretty sure is good enough for an accusation like that.”

“Well, that’s your problem.”

Hugh-Jay glanced back, surprised at the acid in Chase’s tone. Instead of pursuing it, however, he said, “Do you think Dad overreacted today?”

“No. I think he ought to have stopped hiring Billy a long time ago.”