One late summer afternoon, we help our friends tag their cattle, heifers the color of wet sand. The men holler, clack bells, reveal war calls they’d let die generations ago. Quicker than I had imagined, the oldest man has new life again, spirited by the fight in the largest girl. The women sit with the children. The damp grass, such a vivid green, it will ruin you. My sadness just can’t land. Ranching doesn’t come naturally to me. I gender the men’s behavior. My friend, who owns the land, holds a cool, pail-of-milk expression. I try my best persuasion on the cows. “You’re so pretty.” I was a bad man in my own right. “Everything is going to be okay.” The cows back up against the old fence. You think someone won’t take your body, but they do anyway. You just want to get out of the gate. You can see the pasture. You want the confines to scare you free. You want out, to move your grace along careful hills, under the clouds that form dragons that fly so far from this world. A warm mist of rain hushes down. The big girl glistens, a fierce holy body. The last to give up her fight. I turn my back, and the men want cold beer. She charges the gate, slows after her escape, and looks back to confirm we aren’t running after her.