Free Stars Always Shine by Rick Rivera

that Salvador lived in was what the county referred to as a “non-permitted dwelling” marked as uninhabitable due to new sewage regulations. Like Salvador, the help house was illegal.
    “Where do you plan on putting them?” Mitch asked.
    “I was going to put them in one of the smaller pastures,” Mickey answered. “They don’t need too much space for right now. The guy I bought them from said that we should probably give them all a bolus too. You know what that is?”
    Mitch thought for a few moments before answering. She was starting to regret that she had lied about Manfredi’s letter of recommendation and the other two mendacious documents. Once a lie was produced in one place, it could come back in a different form in another. And it became harder to justify and convince while still sorting through the dirty laundry of falsehoods that often mixed with delicate garments of truth. Jacqueline and Mickey apparently had not read Mitch’s portion of the resume, Mitch thought, that said she had managed a dairy operation in Colorado. Maybe they forgot, she guessed. And then she told Mickey and Jacqueline all about what a bolus was.
    “Now, that depends. Basically a bolus is just a big pill. But there are different types of boluses. Are you giving them a bolus for scours or deworming or what? Do you have a balling gun? Also, with all due respect, I suggest that you might consider putting your calves in one of the larger pastures, preferably one that has a holding pen contiguous to it. That way you can bolus each calf individually, unloading it from the trailer to the holding pen and then setting it loose in the pasture.”
    Mitch caught herself and realized from the day of the interview that Jacqueline and Mickey did not like her omniscient answers and advice. She added carefully, “I realize you folks are primarily horse people. I do know a little about cattle. I can help if you want.”
    Jacqueline declined as an impressed Mickey accepted Mitch’s offer.
    “Let me drive down to one of the pastures to get things in position,” Mickey said, his voice rich with excitement. “Jacqueline, would you fetch my rope?”
    The six calves were unloaded into a large pasture. Mickey drove the pickup with the stock trailer hitched to it out of the way, and he, Jacqueline, and Mitch watched as the calves inspected their new arrangement. These were Holstein heifers, dairy stock, and probably culls, as most dairies wouldn’t let go of a good potential milker. Mitch wondered why Mickey would purchase these calves for beef rather than the more desirable and better meat-producing, black-bodied and white-faced or Angus bull calf. But Mitch was also starting to grow accustomed to the pattern of ranch business the way the Kittles conducted it.
    Mickey swung his rope over his head a few times and aimed the lasso at a fence post. After missing repeatedly, he declared he was ready. Mitch was concerned that the cattle had been released from the trailer into the open pasture all at once instead of situating the trailer close to one of the holding pens and cutting one calf out at a time, as she assumed would be done. She was interested to see how Mickey’s method would work. Perhaps there was a new way of administering medication, she thought, as she realized that she had not worked with cattle for over fifteen years.
    Mickey instructed Jacqueline and Mitch to help him track down one of the now free-ranging calves. Once they were close enough, he would lasso the animal and they could drag it to the holding pen where they could restrain it and stuff a bolus down its throat.
    They stalked the first randomly chosen creature all the way to the far end of the pasture until it was cornered. On the way, the calf periodically stopped, ate some grass, and would lope away a little until it felt safe from its pursuers. Then it ran into a corner and would have to burst through a phalanx made up of Jacqueline yelling “yaa! yaa!”, Mitch approaching