Free Dairy Queen by Catherine Gilbert Murdock

time trying to find paint that was still, you know, liquid, and then because the barn was still too damp to paint we went running. It was cooler today at least, so it didn't feel so awful.
    "I hope it's okay," Brian offered at one point, "me bringing the power washer over, after you told me not to and all."
    "Sure. It was great."
    "Jimmy said it would be okay. I was..." He grinned sheepishly. "I was complaining, you know, about how you wouldn't listen to anything I said about stuff like power washing. And Jimmy said not to take it personally because you didn't know anything about machinery less than forty years old. You probably didn't know what a power washer was."
    I guess I could have gotten mad, but it was pretty funny. I grinned back.
    Just then Mom passed us in her Caravan, looking a little surprised to see us out there on the road jogging away. I tried to figure out something to say about
that
but I couldn't come up with anything. Bringing up something stupid like the Vikings draft picks probably wouldn't work, seeing as Brian follows Green Bay. We couldn't really talk about training because it'd be like talking about breathing or something—we were already talking it to death. Maybe I could ask how truck sales were going? No, that would be the stupidest thing of all—
    "You know," Brian said all of a sudden, spooking me, "I like running with you."
    "Oh."
    "When you don't feel like talking, you don't talk. That's pretty cool."
    We ran the rest of the way without saying anything else, me wondering the whole time if he'd said that not talking in general was cool, or that I was.
    ***
    "So," Mom said at dinner in her fake casual way, "you're running with Brian?"
    "Uh-huh." I polished off a couple pints of water.
    "What's he doing running?" Mom asked.
    "Training for football." Which was true.
    "How come you're running with him?"
    "Because he doesn't run fast enough." Which was also true.
    "Well, that's awfully thoughtful of you," said Mom.
    Whew. I didn't have to lie. I'm not too good at lying. And Mom, well, I don't know if she thought I was some kind of Good Samaritan or she was just too tired to bring it up, but she didn't mention that F or my English papers or anything like that. So that was good too.
    I didn't realize until I was in bed that night that I hadn't thought one bit all day about being a cow, I guess because I'd been so busy. And I didn't think about it in bed either if you want to know the truth, because about three seconds after remembering the cow stuff I was asleep. You know that expression "fall asleep"? That's what it felt like. Like I was a plank that someone let go of and I just fell smack into this dark warm place where I didn't think or move all night, and that was just about the best thing ever.

11. Training
    Brian and I sort of settled into a schedule. He'd show up after breakfast and head into the barn with me, doing weights or sit-ups and jumps and stuff while I painted. Then he'd paint too while we waited for Dad and Curtis to leave for PT or food shopping or whatever, and then we'd really go to work.
    The problem was that the weather was too good. Every day came up blue-sky sunny, and you could see on the Weather Channel—which Dad keeps on all day because weather's so important to farming—that it was going to be blue-sky sunny for days. So because there wasn't any rain to worry about, Dad announced on Wednesday morning that it was time to mow the clover. Which meant
me
mow the clover. Which meant me mowing and then kicking it the next morning so the other side dries, and rolling it the
next
morning so the dew burns off, and then baling and bringing all the bales in just like hay. It was basically the rest of my week. Super.
    Coming back from mowing, though, I passed the heifer field and that gave me an idea, and then once I got to the yard that idea got even better because there was Curtis coming out of the house in his good shirt and everything to go to the dentist. He