Even Cowboys Carry Cell Phones

Hiding in the Cornrows

117 M e r r i l l S h a n e J o n e s Hiding in the Cornrows J osh Love and Eric Schneider are mounted up and on the lookout for movement in the tall yellow corn. “I see one now,” Josh says, but I don’t know how he can. As high as these cowboys sit up in their saddles, the corn’s even higher, and there are 140 acres of it—enough to fill more than a hundred football fields. “There’s cows in them cornrows.” That’s what Farmer John says. Farmer John, who doesn’t like reporters and isn’t really named Farmer John. He’s losing his hair, just like me, and he keeps it closely cropped as a way to limit contrast between hair and no hair, that’s my guess anyway, and he’s not fooling anyone. Farmer John lost all his cows to the corn early this afternoon, trying to load them into a horse trailer. “I’ve done it a thousand times,” he says. “Three run off before I even know it; then the rest run off.” He takes his hand up flat like a crop duster taking flight. “Airborned my four wheeler over the pivot pond after two of them.” He looks at me. “What? You a reporter?” “No,” I tell him. I just want to write this down. What the hell’s a pivot pond? But even though I tell him I’m not a reporter, he still doesn’t like damn reporters. Says he had one come up just the other day and ask him his full name. “‘I don’t know you,’” he says he told that nosy town man. “Said he needed it, had to have it, works for the paper. ‘I don’t know you.’” When I was a kid growing up in Texas, we called town men city boys—I thought I was a cowboy back then. But now I just hope Farmer John doesn’t have it in his head I’m some kind of city boy asking about full names and business I have no business asking about. For the past two hours, I’ve been walking the cornrows in my new cowboy boots, hunting cows. Up to now, Farmer John just assumed I worked with Josh and Eric—two cowboys from Loveland, Colorado, he hired to help find and round up his cows. Farmer John must have thought I was a cowboy, too; even though I don’t have Eric’s calloused workman’s hands or Josh’s long, assertive strides. But now I can feel a line of separation between these cowboys and me, thick as the crowded 118 stalks I’ve had to cross from row to row, and for the rest of the day, Farmer John’s going to think he’s more like these cowboys than I am. I put my notebook in my back pocket and throw my shirttail over it. Farmer John tells Eric about how he knows other farmers by name as far north as Billings, Montana. “Nowadays, people don’t know a neighbor just two miles down the road.” “Too many people,” Eric says. “All those Californians moving in.” I jump in with what I’ve heard a lot of people complain about. “They move in and then boost up the real estate. It’s why it’s so expensive to live in Boulder.” Eric nods, spits, says yup or something like it. Farmer John changes the subject. “I had one cow walk off twenty-six miles,” he says. “As the crow flies.” He looks at me. “She didn’t really walk as the crow flies. She had to go through my neighbors ’ properties, walk around fence lines. There was obstacles.” Farmer John thinks I’m stupid. He looks at Eric who has a goatee with neatly trimmed edges like where the pasture meets the corn. Eric has a pinch of dip centered in his bottom lip and he just kind of throws his chin up and lets the tobacco juice lob out in a stream. He looks down at Farmer John from up on his horse, would still be looking down if he was on foot, down at both of us. Farmer John continues. “She ended up twenty-six miles as the crow flies on the side of the highway, and I get a call from a neighbor. I drove the twentysix miles. Couldn’t find her...