Little Joe

by Sandra Neil Wallace

  “There’s plenty of cuttability here in the rib, too.” The judge ran his hand down Little Joe’s back toward the loin, then below it. “And his hindquarters are longer than most. It may be his first entry, but this young boy and his bull calf are the best in the class.”

  The judge handed Eli the blue ribbon. Eli felt the silky softness of the prize before sticking it in his back pocket, just like he’d seen others do. Then he led Little Joe out of the ring and tried not to smile too big. Everyone Eli’d competed against patted him on the back and even the ones who didn’t.

  “You fattened him up just right, son,” Pa said. “He’s sure to get top dollar at the sale.” Pa put a hand on Eli’s shoulder, drew him closer and smiled proudly.

  It was the first time Eli’d seen Pa smile that way. A well of happiness Eli had never known gushed up and made his ears tingle. He’d pleased Pa that much.

  Eli guided Little Joe down the shed row, noticing things he hadn’t before. The steady hum of a ceiling fan, cooling a dozing steer. The speckled coat of a tiny calf all glowy from getting a bath. And the smell of manure. He liked the smell of manure. “Told you we’d win the blue ribbon,” he whispered to Little Joe, keeping his lips near the calf’s ear a bit longer.

  When Eli and Little Joe reached their tiny stall, Keller was there.

  “Got a spot to hang your ribbon,” Keller said, pulling the blue ribbon out of Eli’s back pocket. “Right here.” Keller had hammered in a nail. He hooked the blue ribbon around it.

  “How’d you do?” Eli asked.

  “Dropped some candy in the ring by mistake,” Keller said. “Strawberry wouldn’t stop eating. The judge didn’t even get a look at her.” He took his show cane by the butt end and tried balancing it in his left palm. It toppled into the straw. “I’m selling her in fifteen minutes at the hog sale,” he said. “That’s the best part. Getting all that money. Sleeping in tomorrow morning. You’ll see.”

  Keller picked up his cane and walked away. “As soon as she’s sold,” he yelled back, “I’m getting me a double order of curly fries with gravy.”

  Eli rummaged through the straw to find Little Joe an apple slice. A sparrow dived down to peck at a chunk but quickly darted up to its nest as soon as Eli stooped over.

  “It’s a good hour till the sale,” Pa said, bringing over a tub of water for Little Joe. “We can walk around the fair for a bit.”

  Eli waited until he couldn’t feel the warmth of Little Joe’s breath between his fingers anymore and the calf had dipped down for a drink of water.

  He didn’t know the sun had been shining. It caught the edges of the Ferris wheel whenever the wind gusted beneath a car and rattled it slightly.

  “What do you feel like eating?” Pa kept looking over at Eli and grinning. “I know Ma packed lunch, but you can have whatever you want. You earned it.”

  Eli eyed a row of candy apples glistening cherry red behind a glass counter and caught a whiff from the fryer at the Bloomin’ Onion. He’d imagined for months what it might be like to win the blue ribbon and what he’d do right after. He’d planned on riding the Cliff Hanger. Eli’d figured he might be tall enough to make it through this time. He’d do that first on an empty stomach, then he’d ask Pa about getting an order of elephant ears with cinnamon sugar. Or a waffle ice cream sandwich. Not the skinny ones at the Methodist booth that only cost a dollar—the ones with thick slabs of vanilla ice cream dripping out the middle that cost more.

  But now that Eli had won the blue ribbon for real, he didn’t want either. This wasn’t supposed to be how it turned out at all. He was supposed to be happy. He’d finally made Pa proud. Pleasing Pa was just about the best thing Eli figured he could ever do. And he’d won the blue ribbon. He’d really won it! But he hadn’t won it by himself. He’d won it with Little Joe. His calf. And in an hour Little Joe wouldn’t be his anymore. He’d belong to someone else.

  “That’s what Hannah likes, ain’t it?” Pa pointed to a little glass animal gleaming in the sun at a booth by the grandstand.

  “I think so.” Eli watched the curly-tipped mane sparkle blue and then pink in the light. Pa knows about unicorns? He actually noticed one in a line of cluttered glass?

  “How much for that unicorn?” Pa asked the vendor. The glassmaker was snoozing behind the booth and came to, following Pa’s fingers to the top row.

  “That’s a gladiator on a horse,” the man grumbled.

  “Got any unicorns?” Pa asked.

  “You like make-believe creatures, do you? How about a dragon with a long, pointy tail?” The man reached for a dragon by its jagged end.

  “It’s got a horn coming out of its forehead,” Pa explained.

  “I know what a unicorn looks like,” the man scoffed. “I can make this horse into one,” he said, showing Pa a steed rearing up on his hind legs. “But it’ll cost you twenty bucks. Horns that long aren’t easy to fire. It’ll take me two minutes.”

  “We’ll wait,” Pa said, handing the man some money.

  Maybe Pa noticed more than Eli’d given him credit for. He’d found a tiny stem of lobelia in a fifty-acre field. And he was getting Hannah a gift for no reason. Maybe Pa hadn’t forgotten what it was like to raise a calf.

  The man put the unicorn on a bed of fluffy cotton and handed the box to Pa.

  “I know about Shamrock.” There. Eli’d finally said it.

  Pa looked as if he’d had the wind knocked out of him. “That was a long time ago,” he said. He tucked the box with the unicorn into his breast pocket.

  “Not too long,” Eli told him. “Grandpa says you never forget your first show animal.”

  Pa scratched behind his shirt collar.

  “So you still remember, Pa? About Shamrock?”

  “Some.”

  “But the hurt’s all gone?” Eli stopped and looked up at Pa’s face, searching for something they had in common. Searching for any sign of the feelings he had in himself.

  Pa reached down, took Eli’s hand and squeezed. “Better get back to the show barn,” he said. “We don’t want to be late for the sale.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Sold!

  Eli tightened his hold on the show halter and pulled Little Joe closer.

  “Just make sure to leave his water bucket full.”

  “Huh?” Eli didn’t know what Pa meant.

  “Once he’s sold, son. Leave water, a bale of hay and you’re done. Now let’s get this bull calf sold.”

  Eli blinked at the big blue ribbon Pa’d put on Little Joe’s halter, moving whenever Little Joe breathed. He’d done everything right so far, Little Joe had. And Eli’d shown them he had the Stegner touch, too. But Eli wished it was still morning. And there was no blue ribbon. Before Little Joe wouldn’t go in. Before Little Joe got so big.

  “Now in the ring … Eli Stegner and Little Joe, Junior Champion, bull calf division,” the auctioneer hollered. “Eat him or breed him … he’s the Junior Champion … Little Joe.”

  Eli’s shirt collar felt stiff. His new boots weren’t even worn in yet, and he felt a blister coming on. But Little Joe didn’t look bothered at all as he entered the show ring to be sold.

  “Boy, that’s some carcass. About a year’s worth of barbecuing, I’d imagine!” someone bellowed from the front row.

  “Why’d you have to get so big?” Eli whispered, looking at Little Joe from the corner of his eye. “I’ve got an apple in my pocket,” he said. “Why don’t you sniff around for it? Rear up or something.”

  Around and around they walked as the auctioneer cackled out numbers. It was just Eli and Little Joe now, being swallowed up by the lights and the sawdust that smelled like medicine.

  Little Joe nudged Eli’s arm and tried to lick his hand. “You’re supposed to be afraid of me,” he told the calf, tugging tighter on the lead chain.

  Eli looked up to find something familiar—someone—and caught a flash of white. It came from a belt buckle in the middle row. Eli swung Little Joe away. He knew
it was Ned Kinderhoff standing there, bidding on his calf.

  Eli took his gaze higher and spotted Grandpa in the high row, smiling and waving his hat. Eli wished he could feel happy like Grandpa. But he found it hard to breathe and looked down at his boots.

  “Sold!” yelled the auctioneer. The crowd gasped at the high number.

  Eli felt the blood rush to his ears and block out the noise. He loosened his hold on Little Joe and stood there for a moment with his eyes closed, burning. A drop of sweat trickled down his forehead and onto his upper lip.

  “Time to get out of the ring, boy,” Eli heard the ring man say. “Time to go.”

  Grandpa was waiting outside the gate.

  “It’s all over, Grandpa,” Eli murmured, giving him the lead strap.

  “I know, son, I know. Now we can go home.”

  With his hands free, Eli thought about apple season and supposed that Old Gert would get a few extra with Little Joe gone. And he’d have more time for climbing those crooked trees instead of picking them clean. That’s how a real farmer would think. A real farmer would be getting curly fries by now with extra gravy.

  It was strange letting go and wanting to hold on. Little Joe was still behind him. Eli could feel it. He wanted to look back, but he couldn’t. The tears were too close. If he were Fancy, he’d turn around and kick and buck and moo and do just about anything to keep his calf near. But Eli wasn’t Fancy; he was a farmer. He wiped his face with his palm. Don’t stop caring just because it hurts, Grandpa had said. How could he ever stop caring for Little Joe? He could still smell him on his fingers.

  “Ready to load up, son?” Grandpa asked.

  Eli didn’t understand.

  “Little Joe’s got an apple orchard to eat over at my farm. I’d imagine he’s starving.”

  “But …”

  “I’ve been thinking ’bout getting back into it … keep the rhythm of life going,” Grandpa said. “There’s not a young bull finer than Little Joe. He’s worth every bit the money I paid for him.”

  Eli didn’t know what to say.

  “Now don’t think I’m gonna need another one next year,” Grandpa added.

  “Oh no.”

  “But Little Joe … he’s not a bull you want to part with.”

  “Uh-huh” was all Eli could say. For he’d already grabbed hold of the halter and was feeding the apples in his pocket to Little Joe.

  Acknowledgments

  Sometimes the best stories come to you in the middle of the night and all you can do is get up and write what you’ve been told. That’s how it was with Little Joe. I scribbled down the first few paragraphs, which still stand in their original form, but I needed help with the rest. I found the perfect guides.

  First and foremost, Nancy Hinkel, my editor—Little Joe would not have become a novel had it not been for Nancy, who read the story in picture-book form and knew it could be more. Associate editor Rebecca Bullene, for her watchful eye on all things ethical, rural, and deeply rooted in the soil. Heather Smith Thomas’s book A Guide to Raising Beef Cattle, which became my beef bible and a riveting nightly read to this day, along with the Angus Journal. Clearfield Farms, run by the Rickards, my Cherry Ridge neighbors, whose chickens, barn cats and newborn Anguses made this story real. Their cattle stared me down in the pasture outside my window each day as I wrote this story. Keith O’Grady, our other neighbor, thank you for seeing the world as you did growing up, and for your bouquets of poison ivy. Ed Pruss, of Penn State’s agricultural office in Wayne County, for setting me straight on every question I asked about beef and farming, as did veterinarian Richard Trayes and farmers Beth Troop, Dave Nogan, Jess Scull and Diana Beisner. Highlights for Children science editor Andy Boyles, and Mark Baldwin of the Roger Tory Peterson Institute, for making the Big Night chapter come to life. And finally, Little Joe’s highest form would not have been achieved without the support of my husband, Rich Wallace, who knew the voice as well as I, and saw that it never faltered. He eagerly read each new chapter and never stopped seeing the wonder of it, making daily walks with me to the cows.

  About the Author

  After fifteen years as a network TV announcer, Toronto native Sandra Neil Wallace moved to rural Pennsylvania. When she woke up to a mischievous group of runaway Holsteins on her porch twirling pumpkins with their candy-pink tongues, Wallace’s curiosity was piqued. A trip to the county fair deepened that interest. Befriending a nine-year-old boy eager to show her his Angus calf, Wallace watched him tearfully flee into the midway after his show animal had been sold. That night she began to write Little Joe, her first novel.

  Sandra Neil Wallace now lives in New Hampshire with her husband, novelist Rich Wallace, and Lucy, who’s a lot like Eli’s dog, Tater.

  THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2010 by Sandra Neil Wallace

  Illustrations copyright © 2010 by Mark Elliott

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to Storey Publishing, LLC, for permission to reprint the endpaper illustration by Elayne Sears, copyright © by Elayne Sears.

  Visit us on the Web! www.randomhouse.com/kids

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at www.randomhouse.com/teachers

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Wallace, Sandra Neil.

  Little Joe / by Sandra Neil Wallace. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Nine-year-old Eli raises his first bull calf and looks forward

  to showing it at the county fair.

  eISBN: 978-0-375-89707-8

  [1. Bulls—Fiction. 2. Farm life—Fiction. 3. Country life—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.W15879Li 2010

  [Fic]—dc20

  2009042362

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

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