Black, Four Sugars

You slept maybe three hours, and every one of them was his fault.

The texts are still on your phone when the alarm goes off at five. You don't reread them. You absolutely don't reread them while you brush your teeth, and you don't reread the last one twice in the elevator, and when Nita meets you at the pens and says, "You look like a raccoon that lost a fight," you tell her it's the hotel pillows.

"Sure," Nita says. "The pillows. Did the pillows text you back?"

"Get the vacutainers."

The NBBA rulebook is two hundred and twelve pages long, and you have read every one of them on the plane. Page eighty-eight: A designated finals veterinarian may collect blood, urine or hair samples from any livestock entered in competition, at any time, for any reason.

You have that page photographed, printed and folded in your back pocket.

Wylie Atchley reads it twice when you hand it to him. His jaw works.

"This is harassment," he says.

"This is page eighty-eight."

"Purcell signed him."

"And I'm drawing blood. Both of those things can be true." You hold out your hand for the paper. "It's ten milliliters, Mr. Atchley. He won't miss it."

He doesn't give you back the paper. He crumples it in his fist and drops it in the sawdust and walks away toward his trailers, and you watch him go and feel a cold little click at the back of your mind, the one you feel when a cow's temperature reads normal but her eyes say otherwise.

"Roanne," you say.

She's already in the pen. She has Psalm's halter on and his head tied short to the rail, and she's scratching him in the soft spot behind his left horn. The bull's eyes are half closed. He leans into her hand like a giant cat.

"He likes the left side," she says. "He'll stand for you if you come in on the left."

You come in on the left. You find the tail vein, clean, slide the needle, watch the tube fill dark red. Psalm doesn't even flick an ear.

"He's a good boy," you say.

"He's the best boy." Roanne's voice is very flat. "I bottle-fed him. His mama wouldn't take him. He slept in the mudroom for two weeks and ate a pair of my boots."

You label the tube. You look at her. She's watching her father's back, all the way down the alley, until he turns the corner.

"Roanne. Is there anything you want to tell me about his leg?"

She opens her mouth.

"Mornin', Doc."

You both jump. Psalm doesn't. Psalm has heard that voice before.

Heath is leaning on the rail with two coffees. He's in a gray hoodie and a ball cap instead of the hat and the pearl snaps, and somehow that's worse. In the hat he's a billboard. In the hoodie, with his eyes still puffy from sleep and a day of stubble on that jaw, he's just the boy from your daddy's barn grown up into a man who could stop traffic.

There's no camera with him. You check.

"Corrie's crew don't get up till seven," he says. "I bribed the doorman."

Roanne ducks out of the pen and is gone before you can say her name.

"Well, that was rude," Heath says mildly, and holds out one of the coffees. "Black, four sugars."

You look at it.

"You still drink it like a crime scene, or did vet school make you a respectable person?"

You take the coffee. You take it because you are cold and tired and you need it, and not because he remembered. You drink it. It's exactly right. You hate that it's exactly right.

"About last night," Heath says.

"No."

"No as in we're not talking about it, or no as in"

"I'm working, Heath."

"Okay." He nods at the tube in your hand. "That his?"

"Yes."

"You think he's hurt."

"I know he's hurt. I've had my hands on that stifle three times in twenty-four hours, and it's worse every time." You put the tube in the cooler at your feet and snap the lid. "He came out of the arena last night short. You saw Thiago come off him. That wasn't Thiago. That was the bull's leg going out from under him."

Heath looks past you at Psalm. The bull has his nose in his hay, chewing slowly.

"I saw," he says quietly.

"Then pick another bull."

"Can't."

"Of course you can. You're Heath Jessup. You can pick a different bull and still win. You can pick a milk cow and still win."

"It ain't about winning."

"Then what is it about?"

He's quiet so long you think he's not going to answer. Psalm sighs into his hay.

"Four years ago," Heath says, "that bull stood on me. Broke me in two places. I lay in a hospital bed in this town for three weeks and watched the replay on a TV bolted to the ceiling. Over and over." He rubs his thumb along the rail. "And the thing I kept seeing was, after. After he stepped on me. He stopped. Ez was slapping him on the nose and he just stood there and looked at me. Like he was sorry."

"Bulls don't feel sorry, Heath."

"I know that." He smiles a little, not the camera smile. "You know that. I know it in my head. But I been riding bulls since I was fourteen, Ava, and I'm done after this, and I owe him an ending. I owe me an ending. Him and me, eight seconds, and I walk away on my own feet." He shrugs. "Then it's over. All of it."

You stare at him. "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard."

"Yeah," he says, and grins. "Probably."

"Heath!"

The voice is bright and Texan and coming down the alley at speed, and it belongs to the most beautiful woman you've ever seen in a barn. Platinum hair in a high ponytail. Rhinestones on the back pockets of jeans that fit like paint. A pink jacket that says SAYLOR across the shoulders in white embroidery. She's carrying a box of donuts.

"Oh, good," she says to you. "You're her. You're the vet. Ava, right?" She sets the donuts on the cooler and sticks out her hand. "Saylor Ramsour. I'm a barrel racer. I'm also, apparently, according to People magazine, Heath's secret girlfriend."

"Congratulations," you say.

"Lord, no. Don't congratulate me." She laughs, big and warm. "He's like my annoying brother. Corrie made that up last summer because it tested well. I've got a calf roper in Stephenville who'd fight anyone who believed it." She grabs a donut and points it at Heath. "You. They're looking for you. Corrie wants a sunrise shot on the roof and she's saying words like golden hour with real menace."

Heath groans. He looks at you.

"I'll see you tonight, Doc."

"I'll be in the vet bay."

"I know." He walks backward a few steps, grinning. "That's where I'll be looking."

He goes. Saylor watches him go, then turns back to you with her eyebrows up.

"Huh," she says. "Well, that's new."

"What is?"

"Him. Smiling with his whole face." She takes another bite of donut. "Have a cruller, honey. You look like you need one."

You spend the rest of the morning on bronc feet and paperwork, and you ship the blood sample overnight to a private lab in Fort Collins you trust, and at noon you're washing your hands in the vet bay sink when someone bumps into you hard enough to make you drop the soap.

Roanne. She says "Sorry, sorry," without looking at you, and she's gone out the door before you can answer.

You look down.

There's a feed-store receipt in the pocket of your barn coat that wasn't there a minute ago. Atchley Bucking Stock, Pahrump Feed & Supply, sixty bags of sweet feed.

On the back, in pencil, in a hand that's shaking:

Don't let them buck him on nine. Ask Daddy what's in the blue cooler.