Sandra Neil Wallace

Little Joe was still behind him. Eli could feel it. He wanted to look back, but he couldn__. The tears were too close. If he were Fancy, he__ turn around and kick and buck and moo and do just about anything to keep his calf near. But Eli wasn__ Fancy; he was a farmer.

Milkers don__ spend half as long with their mothers." Eli spread his chore coat over Little Joe. "Not more than a few weeks. Sometimes one day. Maybe not even ... If you were a peeper, it__ be even worse. They don__ even get to see their mamas. They__e still jelly beans when they__e left alone to hatch.

They got a manure machine in there,_ Keller said. He went up to the barn and peeked through a hole between tow boards. __n wheels. It__ fun to ride sometimes, when you don__ care how you smell.

Pa never told stories like Grandpa. Or treated the barn like family. Eli knew how Grandpa__ own pa had built the barn by hand, hauling bluestone for the foundation behind a stubborn ox with horns as wide as a tractor. How the smell of the plank walls was like family and how you never washed your chore coat so the animals would smell that you were family, too.