"My grandma says it different," June said. "Come take it from me. That's what she says to everybody. Every single customer. Thirty-two years. I thought at first it was, like, a dare. Like she was saying, try and get it. But it's not. I figured it out on Sunday when the little girl got the cup. It's an invitation. She's saying, come on. Come here. It's for you. It's always for you. You just have to come up and take it out of her hand." June swallowed. "Nobody's grabbing anything. That's the trick. That's the whole thing."
Shelby looked at her for a long time. The generator thudded. Out on the concourse somebody was calling for a lost boy named Kyle over the loudspeakers, Kyle, your mother is waiting for you at the Information Booth.
"His name's Domino," Shelby said finally. "Because of the spot. I picked him out when he was a calf. I've had him since November. I walk him every night after supper, down our lane to the mailbox and back. He follows me like a dog. He'll put his head on your shoulder." She stubbed the cigarette out on the side of the bucket, carefully, like she was sorry for it. "Sale's tomorrow at ten. In the Livestock Pavilion. Then they put him on a truck."
"I know," June said. "I'm from a farm."
"Yeah," Shelby said. "I guess you are."
June waited. Shelby didn't say whether she would do it. June didn't ask. After a while she went back to the stand, and Wendell looked at her face and didn't ask either.
* * *
She went to the sale.
She didn't tell anyone she was going. She told her mother she was going to the bathroom and walked fast through the morning crowds to the Livestock Pavilion, which was round and old, with tiered wooden benches climbing up all the way around a sawdust ring, and on the benches there were maybe two hundred people, farmers and parents and men from the packing houses and the bank with their numbered cards. An auctioneer chanted so fast it sounded like a machine, and one kid after another led a steer in a circle while the numbers went up, and a hammer banged, and the next one came in.
June sat at the very top, by herself.
Shelby came in eleventh. She had Domino on a halter, black and shining, the white blaze on his face brushed bright. She walked him in a slow circle, and set him up square with the show stick, and stood at his head, and smiled. It was a perfect smile, the smile of a girl in a pageant. June could see from all the way at the top that it had nothing behind it.
Rollie Kruse sat on the third bench with his arms folded across his belt buckle.
The bidding went slow. Ninety-two cents a pound. Ninety-four. Ninety-five. Ninety-six. The auctioneer chanted and pleaded and joked. Ninety-seven. That was all. The hammer came down. Domino was sold.