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ketchup you forgot to shake. But he didn’t want to tell that to Keller either.
    Keller nudged a panting pig with the tip of his boot.
    “What’ll happen to your hogs when you’re away?”
    “They could lose a little weight. Specially Black Raspberry.”
    The Sour Patch pig looked over at Keller and burped up some pepperoni pizza.
    “Won’t your ma and pa feed them?” Eli hadn’t seen them around much.
    Keller took a clump of gravel and threw it at the horse barn. The panting pig just stood there hyperventilating, watching the stones hit the barn door.
    “What’s wrong with this one?” Eli asked.
    “Candy bloat. Haven’t been selling as much as I’d like and the expiration date passed on some. Can’t sell old candy, so I gave it to the hogs instead. He’ll burp it out.” Keller scratched the pig’s prickly ears, then took a bucket and filled it with water.
    “It’s contagious, you know—scours.” Keller brought the water bucket to the panting pig. “Don’t get too close to that calf of yours or you’ll get the runs, too.”

Chapter Four
Don’t Let Go!

    “Nobody’s gonna be changing Little Joe,” Grandpa said.
    Eli poked his head under the bull calf to make sure. He smiled. Keller’d been wrong.
    “He’s the spittin’ image of his sire, Apple Wood.” Grandpa patted the top of Little Joe’s shoulder. “And his grandsire, too. Sweet Cider made it all the way to the State Fair.”
    Eli liked finding Grandpa in the barn whenever he came home from school, even though he wasn’t sure Pa did. But Pa never told stories like Grandpa. Or treated the barn like family. Eli knew how Grandpa’s own pa had built the barn by hand, hauling bluestone for the foundation behind a stubborn ox with horns as wide as a tractor.How the smell of the plank walls was like family and how you never washed your chore coat so the animals would smell that you were family, too.
    Spider hopped into the hay manger. She dug deep and found Little Joe a mouse. It tried to wriggle free, but Spider kept it under her paw, waiting for Little Joe to notice. Little Joe sniffed at the mouse, then Spider chased it up the stanchion wall.
    “Calmest thousand-pound bull you’d ever seen, Sweet Cider was,” Grandpa said. “And so meaty and thick in the brisket, see.” Grandpa poked at the dimpled spot below Little Joe’s chest. The sudden move made the bull calf take a step back. “But when Sweet Cider walked into that show ring—seemed like he was floating, he was so light on his feet. Know how I know?” Grandpa took off his glasses and wiped them across his green Dickies coat. “’Cause I was there. Watchin’ your pa all in his whites, fussin’ with his milking cap in the dairy barn, waiting for his class. Got me so nervous I headed to the show ring and watched the beef show. I’d seen plenty of bulls at dairy shows—dairy bulls are downright nasty, I tell you. They could kill a man. But these beef bulls … calm as kittens.”
    Eli stretched down to stroke Spider and tried to imagine Pa in a milking cap, vanilla white and starchy. He wondered which cow Pa’d taken to the State Fair. “Whatnumber was that, Grandpa?” he asked. “The milker Pa took to the State Fair?”
    Grandpa snorted at the cold wind. “It was Old Gertie’s ma—Hattie.” He picked off a piece of hay from the manger. “Just because you part with an animal or it might end up on your dinner plate don’t mean you can’t be nice to it … give ’em a name.” Grandpa tossed the hay bit into the bedding. “That’s where me and your pa disagree.”
    Little Joe sniffed Eli’s hands for any treats, then butted Fancy’s udder to get the milk to flow.
    “Yes sir, nature sure is something.” Grandpa bent down and eyed Little Joe. The calf’s curly black lashes were shut tight while he suckled. “It knows Little Joe’s drinking milk, not nibblin’ on grass. And it sends that milk straight to the fourth stomach—no detours—so he gets the