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Both Fly · I Believe

0:20
SPEAKER_03: Sky, golden grass, tall sagebrush, mountains capped wide behind, chores done, coffee in the sunroom.
0:28
SPEAKER_03: He looks out across the south pasture.
0:30
SPEAKER_03: The tips of the tall sage quiver.
0:33
SPEAKER_03: The wind picks up the flags along the fence line, tugging at the screw lock chain links that hold them to the wire.
0:39
SPEAKER_03: The stars and stripes is up all the time, frayed at the edge, and the other.
0:44
SPEAKER_03: It's been up since the election.
0:46
SPEAKER_03: Inside, a catalog open on the table.
0:49
SPEAKER_03: Maybe he'll buy a new bull this year.
0:51
SPEAKER_03: He needs new jeans.
0:53
SPEAKER_03: The best bulls make small calves that grow fast, easy on the heifers, good for the pocketbook.
0:58
SPEAKER_03: Lot 42 has a two-year-old Cimental out of a high-altitude herd near Mitizi.
1:04
SPEAKER_03: Good EPDs, clean trick test.
1:06
SPEAKER_03: Should sire calves with a good frame and some thickness through the rib.
1:10
SPEAKER_03: He could go, Angus, tried and true.
1:13
SPEAKER_03: Good growth, good marbling.
1:14
SPEAKER_03: The sale barn in Billens knows what to do with a black calf.
1:18
SPEAKER_03: They're nervous bulls, though, 2,200 pounds and twitchy.
1:22
SPEAKER_03: His wife likes the Herefords, red body, white face.
1:26
SPEAKER_03: She's the one who has to move them when he's at work in town, and Herefords are calm.
1:30
SPEAKER_03: She has made this point before and she's not wrong, but the Cimental interests him.
1:35
SPEAKER_03: Supposed to be a good high-altitude cross.
1:38
SPEAKER_03: He's never tried Cementol.
1:40
SPEAKER_03: He takes a sip of coffee.
1:42
SPEAKER_03: He'll figure out the bulls later.
1:44
SPEAKER_03: The books come first.
1:46
SPEAKER_03: He closes the catalog and pulls the receipts toward him.
1:49
SPEAKER_03: The manila folder and the stack of printouts from the ranch supply account.
1:53
SPEAKER_03: He does the books every winter.
1:55
SPEAKER_03: Coffee, calculator, the table clear of everything except the numbers.
1:59
SPEAKER_03: He starts with what he knows, what he earned, what he spent, what the government says he owes and what it says it owes him.
2:07
SPEAKER_03: He's not fast, but he's careful.
2:09
SPEAKER_03: He keeps everything.
2:10
SPEAKER_03: His wife would tell you he keeps too much.
2:13
SPEAKER_03: But the numbers should tell a story that makes sense, and every year they do, more or less.
2:18
SPEAKER_03: And he files the return and writes the check or waits for the refund and keeps up with the work.
2:24
SPEAKER_03: This year the numbers don't, not the income side.
2:27
SPEAKER_03: That's fine.
2:28
SPEAKER_03: The calves sold, the cattle market was decent.
2:31
SPEAKER_03: He's not complaining about what came in, it's what went out that puzzles him.
2:49
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to I Believe, where we talk about America.
2:52
SPEAKER_00: I'm Joel Douglas, and I believe in America.
2:56
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for joining me.
2:59
SPEAKER_04: Act 1, the books.
3:03
SPEAKER_04: He pulls the ranch supply printout and starts down the column.
3:06
SPEAKER_04: Fencing wire.
3:07
SPEAKER_04: He bought 40 rolls in April, just like every spring.
3:10
SPEAKER_04: Last year it was$82 a roll.
3:13
SPEAKER_04: This year,$112.
3:15
SPEAKER_04: He looks at the number again.
3:16
SPEAKER_04: More than$100 for a roll of barbed wire.
3:19
SPEAKER_04: He writes it down, moves on.
3:21
SPEAKER_04: The wheat didn't do much this year.
3:23
SPEAKER_04: It never does much.
3:24
SPEAKER_04: But he keeps the pivot running on the acres along the creek because his father did.
3:28
SPEAKER_04: And some years it pays for itself.
3:30
SPEAKER_04: Fertilizer.
3:31
SPEAKER_04: He spreads it on the hay meadows every spring.
3:34
SPEAKER_04: It's not optional.
3:35
SPEAKER_04: You either feed the ground or the ground doesn't feed the cattle.
3:38
SPEAKER_04: Last year he paid$4.18 a ton.
3:41
SPEAKER_04: This year,$6.05.
3:42
SPEAKER_04: He doesn't know why.
3:43
SPEAKER_04: He didn't ask.
3:44
SPEAKER_04: He just paid it because it was May and the hay meadows need it.
3:47
SPEAKER_04: Diesel, up.
3:48
SPEAKER_04: Not as bad as the wire, but up.
3:50
SPEAKER_04: The bulk tank at the co-op, the same co-op his father used, the price on the board was higher every time he filled.
3:56
SPEAKER_04: Cake, protein supplement for the cows in winter.
4:00
SPEAKER_04: Soybean meal and corn and molasses pressed into blocks or poured into troughs.
4:05
SPEAKER_04: The soybean price is tangled in something he doesn't follow.
4:08
SPEAKER_04: Something about China buying from Brazil now.
4:11
SPEAKER_04: He doesn't get it.
4:12
SPEAKER_04: If there are more soybeans here, shouldn't the price go down?
4:15
SPEAKER_04: And the cake is up 12%.
4:17
SPEAKER_04: The cows don't eat less because Washington has some trade policy thing going on.
4:21
SPEAKER_04: Salt and mineral.
4:23
SPEAKER_04: Up, but not much.
4:24
SPEAKER_04: Vet supplies.
4:26
SPEAKER_04: Up.
4:26
SPEAKER_04: The squeeze chute he'd been pricing, the old one is 20 years old, and the headgate sticks.
4:31
SPEAKER_04: The base model went from 85 to 9800 between March and September.
4:36
SPEAKER_04: The better ones double that.
4:37
SPEAKER_04: He didn't buy it, he'll fix the headgate again.
4:40
SPEAKER_04: He adds the column, adds it again.
4:42
SPEAKER_04: He's careful.
4:43
SPEAKER_04: The number's right, he just doesn't like it.
4:46
SPEAKER_04: He moves on.
4:49
SPEAKER_03: The calves brought good money, nearly 410 a hundred weight.
4:53
SPEAKER_03: Last year they only brought three twenty.
4:55
SPEAKER_03: The expenses ain't the money the calves brought, not all of it.
4:59
SPEAKER_03: He's not broke, but wire is one hundred twelve, and the hydraulic chute is twenty grand.
5:04
SPEAKER_03: The space between what came in and what went out, where the bull purchase is possible, where a good squeeze chute is possible, the margin got thinner, and he doesn't know why.
5:14
SPEAKER_03: If live weight cattle prices are near record highs and he's a cattle rancher, his margins should be good.
5:20
SPEAKER_03: That's not true.
5:21
SPEAKER_03: He knows why.
5:22
SPEAKER_03: Everything costs more.
5:24
SPEAKER_03: He just doesn't know why everything costs more.
5:26
SPEAKER_03: He's heard the word tariff.
5:28
SPEAKER_03: He's not sure how it connects to fencing wire in Wyoming.
5:32
SPEAKER_03: The president says the tariffs are on China, on Europe, on countries that have been ripping America off for decades.
5:38
SPEAKER_03: That sounds right to him.
5:40
SPEAKER_03: He voted for the man, and he'd vote for him again, and he's not the kind to second guess a thing just because it costs him.
5:47
SPEAKER_03: Everything worth doing costs something, but he's looking at the numbers.
5:51
SPEAKER_03: one hundred and twelve dollars for a roll of wire that was eighty two dollars a year ago.
5:56
SPEAKER_03: He didn't buy the wire from China.
5:59
SPEAKER_03: He bought it at the ranch supply in town.
6:01
SPEAKER_03: Same place he always buys it, same wire, same clerk, different price.
6:06
SPEAKER_03: He pulls the form toward him.
6:08
SPEAKER_03: He knows taxes.
6:09
SPEAKER_03: He's paid them his whole life.
6:11
SPEAKER_03: Income tax, line by line, property tax on the ranch, self employment tax, which he doesn't love but understands.
6:19
SPEAKER_03: Sales tax on everything he buys in town.
6:21
SPEAKER_03: These are visible, they have names, they have lines on the form.
6:25
SPEAKER_03: He can argue about them if he wants to.
6:27
SPEAKER_03: He can vote for people who promise to lower them.
6:30
SPEAKER_03: He knows what he pays and who he pays it to.
6:32
SPEAKER_03: He looks at the form.
6:34
SPEAKER_03: There should be a line for what he paid this year that he didn't pay last year.
6:39
SPEAKER_03: The wire, the fertilizer, the diesel, the cake.
6:43
SPEAKER_03: Somewhere between the ranch supply store and the U.S.
6:46
SPEAKER_03: Treasury, someone added a cost to everything he buys, and he'd like to know where to put it.
6:51
SPEAKER_03: There is no line.
6:55
SPEAKER_04: He looks again.
6:56
SPEAKER_04: Schedule F farm income and expenses.
6:59
SPEAKER_04: He can deduct the wire and the fertilizer as business expenses, sure.
7:03
SPEAKER_04: He always does.
7:04
SPEAKER_04: But that's not what he's looking for.
7:07
SPEAKER_04: He's looking for the tariff tax, the one built into the price of the wire, the one that made$112 out of 82 for the wire.
7:15
SPEAKER_04: It isn't there.
7:16
SPEAKER_04: There is no line, no box, no schedule.
7:18
SPEAKER_04: He paid it.
7:19
SPEAKER_04: He has the receipt, but according to the United States government, the tax does not exist.
7:25
SPEAKER_04: The president says foreign countries are paying.
7:28
SPEAKER_04: The rancher doesn't know what schools say.
7:30
SPEAKER_04: He knows what the ranch supply store says.
7:32
SPEAKER_04: The receipt is in his hand.
7:34
SPEAKER_04: He suspects he paid the taxes and not some merchant in China.
7:37
SPEAKER_04: If someone in China paid it, why are all his expenses up so much?
7:41
SPEAKER_04: He could write a letter.
7:42
SPEAKER_04: To the IRS, to his congressman, to the president.
7:46
SPEAKER_04: He could ask, if I didn't pay this tax, who did?
7:49
SPEAKER_04: And if I did pay it, where do I file for the refund?
7:52
SPEAKER_04: He won't write the letter.
7:53
SPEAKER_04: He knows what would happen.
7:54
SPEAKER_04: The same thing that happens when he calls the Forest Service about his grazing allotment or the BLM about the lease.
8:00
SPEAKER_04: Nothing.
8:02
SPEAKER_04: A recording, a form letter.
8:05
SPEAKER_04: Silence.
8:07
SPEAKER_04: He shipped 78 steer calves in October.
8:11
SPEAKER_04: Around six weight and slick.
8:13
SPEAKER_04: They had had good feed.
8:14
SPEAKER_04: The check was north of 190,000.
8:17
SPEAKER_04: It was yellow.
8:18
SPEAKER_04: He left it on the dashboard of the truck for three days before he could get to the bank.
8:22
SPEAKER_04: For someone who lived in town, it was a lot of money.
8:25
SPEAKER_04: A winning lottery ticket, enough to buy a life.
8:27
SPEAKER_04: But the ranch is not a savings account.
8:29
SPEAKER_04: The ranch is a mouth.
8:31
SPEAKER_04: He paid the bank, he paid for the diesel and the fertilizer.
8:34
SPEAKER_04: Then he paid for the wire.
8:36
SPEAKER_04: When he finished writing the checks, the money was nearly gone.
8:39
SPEAKER_04: He went out to the barn.
8:40
SPEAKER_04: The squeeze chute was there in the shadow.
8:42
SPEAKER_04: It was the old manual one.
8:43
SPEAKER_04: Same chute his dad ran.
8:45
SPEAKER_04: He wanted the hydraulic chute, but didn't buy it.
8:48
SPEAKER_04: His shoulder hurts when he works this manual one.
8:50
SPEAKER_04: Sharp pain that did not go away.
8:53
SPEAKER_04: He would pull the handle anyway.
8:55
SPEAKER_04: The wire was tight on the posts out in the wind.
8:58
SPEAKER_04: The cattle in the fields.
8:59
SPEAKER_04: The work remained.
9:01
SPEAKER_04: He puts the receipts back in the folder, closes the form, the books are done, the numbers are the numbers.
9:07
SPEAKER_04: He'll file the form and write the check.
9:09
SPEAKER_04: Get back to the work.
9:10
SPEAKER_04: He opens the bull catalog again.
9:13
SPEAKER_04: Lot 42.
9:14
SPEAKER_04: The Cementol.
9:16
SPEAKER_04: His wife will say, Herford.
9:18
SPEAKER_04: She's probably right.
9:19
SPEAKER_04: But he's never tried Cimentol, and a man ought to try a thing before he decides against it.
9:24
SPEAKER_04: Maybe he should wait until next year, though.
9:27
SPEAKER_04: Outside the flags pull at the chain links along the fence line, the stars and stripes frayed at the edge, and the other.
9:34
SPEAKER_04: The wind is stronger now.
9:35
SPEAKER_04: It's always stronger by afternoon.
9:38
SPEAKER_04: Neither one comes down.
9:44
SPEAKER_03: Act two, the check.
9:47
SPEAKER_03: A few weeks later, a letter.
9:49
SPEAKER_03: USDA.
9:52
SPEAKER_03: He doesn't get much mail from Washington.
9:54
SPEAKER_03: The Forest Service sometimes about the grazing allotment.
9:57
SPEAKER_03: The BLM about the lease.
9:59
SPEAKER_03: Forms and fees and notices that say nothing and require a signature anyway.
10:04
SPEAKER_03: This one is different.
10:05
SPEAKER_03: It says he's eligible for a payment.
10:07
SPEAKER_03: One time relief.
10:08
SPEAKER_03: He reads it twice.
10:10
SPEAKER_03: Trade disruptions.
10:11
SPEAKER_03: The letter doesn't use simple language.
10:13
SPEAKER_03: Retaliatory tariffs from foreign nations disrupted commodity markets.
10:17
SPEAKER_03: American farmers and ranchers carried a disproportionate burden.
10:21
SPEAKER_03: The administration recognizes a sacrifice and intends this bridge assistance to ensure the continued viability of American agriculture.
10:28
SPEAKER_03: There's a number at the bottom.
10:30
SPEAKER_03: Calculated from the crop acreage he reported for the drought assessment in August.
10:34
SPEAKER_03: What they'll send if he signs and returns the form is not nothing.
10:39
SPEAKER_03: Seven thousand dollars.
10:40
SPEAKER_03: Enough to matter.
10:42
SPEAKER_03: Not enough to fix anything, but enough to notice.
10:45
SPEAKER_03: He sets a letter on the table, walks outside.
10:48
SPEAKER_03: The wind is up.
10:49
SPEAKER_03: The flags pull at the chain links.
10:51
SPEAKER_03: He stands there a while.
10:53
SPEAKER_03: The tall sage quivers.
10:57
SPEAKER_04: He wasn't raised to take government money.
10:59
SPEAKER_04: The taxpayer shouldn't have to pay him to ranch.
11:01
SPEAKER_04: His father never did.
11:03
SPEAKER_04: His grandfather never did.
11:04
SPEAKER_04: They made it or they didn't, and when they didn't, they sold cattle or sold land or borrowed from the bank and paid it back with interest.
11:11
SPEAKER_04: The bank was clean, you signed a paper, shook a hand, paid it back, or you lost the land, and either way you settled the deal.
11:19
SPEAKER_04: Some people say the government has money, but that isn't true.
11:21
SPEAKER_04: It comes from somewhere.
11:23
SPEAKER_04: From people who worked for it, people who paid taxes, people in Ohio and California and Georgia who never agreed to send a check to a rancher in Wyoming they'd never meet.
11:32
SPEAKER_04: There was no paper to sign, no hand to shake, no way to pay it back.
11:36
SPEAKER_04: You couldn't look those people in the eye.
11:38
SPEAKER_04: You'd never know their names.
11:40
SPEAKER_04: A teacher, a mechanic, a nurse.
11:42
SPEAKER_04: They worked, and some part of what they earned ended up in your mailbox, and there was no line on any form where you could make it right.
11:49
SPEAKER_04: Spending other people's money, the debt you couldn't settle, the government wasn't a partner, wasn't a friend.
11:55
SPEAKER_04: It was the maze that made you fill out forms and pay taxes and stay off the land it claimed to manage.
12:01
SPEAKER_04: A thing you dealt with and worked around and endured.
12:05
SPEAKER_04: He knows the world is different now.
12:07
SPEAKER_04: Farmers take payments, crop insurance, conservation programs, subsidies so old nobody remembers what the system looked like without them.
12:15
SPEAKER_04: He doesn't judge a man for taking what's offered, but he always thought of himself as someone who wouldn't need it.
12:21
SPEAKER_04: Trade, not aid.
12:22
SPEAKER_04: He heard a farmer say that on the radio once.
12:25
SPEAKER_04: The man was from Iowa or Nebraska, one of those soybean states that got hit when China started buying from Brazil.
12:30
SPEAKER_04: He said, I don't want a bailout, I want my customers back.
12:34
SPEAKER_04: That's how he feels.
12:35
SPEAKER_04: He didn't ask for a trade war, he didn't ask to be a casualty, he didn't ask for bridge assistance, he just wanted to sell his calves and buy his wire and do the work.
12:45
SPEAKER_03: He looks through the form name, address, operation type, bank account for direct deposit, and a signature line.
12:52
SPEAKER_03: He puts the form on the table next to the bull catalog.
12:56
SPEAKER_03: He looks at the two side by side.
12:58
SPEAKER_03: The future he wants to buy, the money that could buy it if he signs.
13:03
SPEAKER_03: Seven thousand dollars.
13:04
SPEAKER_03: That's a good chunk of a hydraulic squeeze chute, a great bull.
13:08
SPEAKER_03: That's the margin the tariffs ate.
13:10
SPEAKER_03: He thinks about where the money comes from, other people's money.
13:14
SPEAKER_03: He can't look those people in the eye, can't shake their hand, can't explain why he needs their money or promise to pay it back.
13:21
SPEAKER_03: If he signs the form, he becomes a man who took something he couldn't return from people he'll never know.
13:29
SPEAKER_04: The president is on television.
13:31
SPEAKER_04: He doesn't watch much television, but his wife had it on and he stopped in the doorway to listen.
13:36
SPEAKER_04: The president is talking about the tariffs.
13:38
SPEAKER_04: He's saying they're working, foreign countries are paying, the trade deficit is down, factories are coming back, and America is winning again.
13:45
SPEAKER_04: The president says foreign producers and middlemen pay the tariffs, not Americans.
13:50
SPEAKER_04: The president waves his hand.
13:51
SPEAKER_04: The prices Americans pay, that's not the tariffs.
13:54
SPEAKER_04: That's other things.
13:56
SPEAKER_04: Supply chain, inflation from the previous administration, corporate greed, maybe, but not the tariffs.
14:02
SPEAKER_04: China pays the tariffs.
14:04
SPEAKER_04: Europe.
14:04
SPEAKER_04: Countries that have been ripping us off for decades.
14:07
SPEAKER_04: He watches the president's face.
14:09
SPEAKER_04: The president believes what he's saying, or he at least acts like he believes, and the performance is the thing.
14:14
SPEAKER_04: The president says he didn't pay, China did.
14:17
SPEAKER_04: If that's true, why did prices go up so much?
14:20
SPEAKER_04: The receipts say he paid the tariffs at the ranch supply store.
14:23
SPEAKER_04: If that's true, where can he put the figure on his taxes?
14:26
SPEAKER_04: But they can't both be right.
15:10
SPEAKER_03: His shoulder hurts when he works the manual chute, and the hydraulic one costs twenty thousand dollars, and the yellow check is already gone.
15:17
SPEAKER_03: He could sign it, cash the check.
15:20
SPEAKER_03: Use it for the bull or the chute, or the wire next spring.
15:23
SPEAKER_03: Tell himself it's just money the government took from him through the tariffs, coming back.
15:28
SPEAKER_03: A refund, not a gift.
15:30
SPEAKER_03: But he knows that's not true.
15:32
SPEAKER_03: The tariff money went to the treasury.
15:34
SPEAKER_03: This money comes from the treasury.
15:36
SPEAKER_03: They're connected somewhere, but not in a way that makes it his.
15:40
SPEAKER_03: It's still other people's money.
15:42
SPEAKER_03: He doesn't sign it.
15:46
SPEAKER_04: Later, in bed, the wind hums against the windows.
15:49
SPEAKER_04: She's not reading.
15:50
SPEAKER_04: She's writing.
15:52
SPEAKER_04: Her notebook propped against her knees, hand moving in the small light.
15:57
SPEAKER_04: He can see the page from where he lies, but not the words.
16:00
SPEAKER_04: Just her handwriting, which he has known longer than he has known the shape of his own.
16:05
SPEAKER_04: She stops, reads something back to herself, crosses out a line, writes it again.
16:10
SPEAKER_04: He doesn't ask what it says, but he saw the word calves and he saw the word light, and he thinks she's writing about a morning he remembers but couldn't describe.
16:20
SPEAKER_04: She never worries about the money.
16:22
SPEAKER_04: That's not what she's for.
16:24
SPEAKER_04: He closes his eyes.
16:25
SPEAKER_04: The wind hums, he sleeps, dreams about wire and bulls and flags dancing.
16:34
SPEAKER_03: Act three.
16:35
SPEAKER_03: The flags.
16:38
SPEAKER_03: Morning again.
16:39
SPEAKER_03: Coffee in the sunroom.
16:41
SPEAKER_03: The light on the big horns, snow deep on the peaks, the valley starting to think about spring.
16:47
SPEAKER_03: He looks out across the south pasture, the sage, the wind, the flags on the fence line, pulling at the chain links.
16:55
SPEAKER_03: The form is still on the kitchen table, two weeks now, unsigned.
17:00
SPEAKER_03: He's thought about it every day.
17:02
SPEAKER_03: Picked up the pen twice, put it down twice.
17:05
SPEAKER_03: The signature line sits there waiting.
17:08
SPEAKER_03: $7,000 somewhere in Washington, waiting.
17:11
SPEAKER_03: The teacher and the mechanic and the nurse go about their lives, not knowing their money is addressed to him, waiting.
17:20
SPEAKER_04: It's not the money that bothers him.
17:22
SPEAKER_04: There will always be more money.
17:23
SPEAKER_04: It's the principle.
17:24
SPEAKER_04: He believes in the Republic, not just a democracy.
17:27
SPEAKER_04: He knows the difference.
17:29
SPEAKER_04: Power needs spread out.
17:30
SPEAKER_04: States matter.
17:31
SPEAKER_04: Wyoming matters, even with half a million people and three electoral votes.
17:36
SPEAKER_04: His voice is small, but it's supposed to count.
17:38
SPEAKER_04: He's heard the arguments.
17:40
SPEAKER_04: After the war, America let other countries protect their own factories, helped them rebuild, let them sell into our markets while they charged us to sell into theirs.
17:48
SPEAKER_04: That was the deal.
17:49
SPEAKER_04: Generous, strategic.
17:51
SPEAKER_04: It was supposed to be temporary.
17:53
SPEAKER_04: Temporary was a long time ago.
17:55
SPEAKER_04: Germany rebuilt.
17:57
SPEAKER_04: Japan rebuilt.
17:58
SPEAKER_04: China went from nothing to everything.
18:02
SPEAKER_04: At some point, you have to say the deal is done.
18:05
SPEAKER_04: Everyone plays by the same rules.
18:07
SPEAKER_04: Maybe the tariffs are that point.
18:09
SPEAKER_04: Maybe the president is right that America got taken advantage of and somebody finally had to stop it.
18:14
SPEAKER_04: He doesn't know.
18:15
SPEAKER_04: He's not an economist, he's a rancher who knows what wire costs.
18:19
SPEAKER_04: But he knows that when one man can set a tax by emergency order, Wyoming doesn't count.
18:24
SPEAKER_04: Congress doesn't count.
18:26
SPEAKER_04: The people he can call and vote against don't count.
18:30
SPEAKER_04: One man in Washington signs a paper and the price of wire goes up at the ranch store in Buffalo.
18:35
SPEAKER_04: And nobody he voted for stops it.
18:38
SPEAKER_04: That's not the Republic, that's something else.
18:40
SPEAKER_04: Something with a name he doesn't say out loud.
18:43
SPEAKER_04: He voted for less Washington, not more.
18:45
SPEAKER_04: For a government that did its job and left him alone.
18:49
SPEAKER_04: And his representatives let the man he voted for reach past them and set a tax no one voted on, then tell him it wasn't a tax at all.
19:19
SPEAKER_03: The wolf they brought back that kills his calves.
19:22
SPEAKER_03: The Forest Service kid who tells him how to manage grass his grandfather cleared.
19:27
SPEAKER_03: One side reaches past the Republic with a pen, the other reaches past it with paperwork.
19:32
SPEAKER_03: Neither side offers what he actually wants, a government that does its job and leaves him alone.
19:38
SPEAKER_03: Set the conditions, let the system work, stay out of the news.
19:42
SPEAKER_03: He flies the flag for the principal, not the man.
19:45
SPEAKER_03: He's betting the principal survives the men who use it.
19:48
SPEAKER_03: What he knows is this.
19:50
SPEAKER_03: The president said foreign countries would pay.
19:53
SPEAKER_03: The receipts say he paid.
19:55
SPEAKER_03: The president said there'd be no cost to Americans.
19:58
SPEAKER_03: The form on the table is the cost.
20:00
SPEAKER_03: Maybe the tariffs are right for the country.
20:03
SPEAKER_03: Maybe in ten years the factories will be back, and his grandkids will say this was the moment somebody finally did what had to be done.
20:10
SPEAKER_03: Maybe.
20:11
SPEAKER_03: But right now the wire is one hundred twelve.
20:13
SPEAKER_03: The president says he didn't pay.
20:16
SPEAKER_03: The form is other people's money.
20:18
SPEAKER_03: And whatever the tariffs are doing for the country, they're making him choose between signing a thing he doesn't believe in and watching the margin disappear.
20:25
SPEAKER_03: That's not a policy debate.
20:36
SPEAKER_04: A Herford bull, red body, white face, good EPDs, small calves, good growth, calm temperament.
20:46
SPEAKER_04: They're calm, she says.
20:47
SPEAKER_04: We don't need any more high strung on this place.
20:50
SPEAKER_04: She's talking about the bulls.
20:51
SPEAKER_04: She's also not talking about the bulls.
20:54
SPEAKER_04: He almost smiles.
20:55
SPEAKER_04: The first time in weeks, she puts something on the table.
20:58
SPEAKER_04: A check.
20:59
SPEAKER_04: I wrote another book, she says, about the ranch, us, the life, poems.
21:05
SPEAKER_04: She shrugs.
21:06
SPEAKER_04: Someone wanted to read it.
21:08
SPEAKER_04: He looks at the check, looks at the number.
21:10
SPEAKER_04: 10,000, she says.
21:12
SPEAKER_04: He looks at the form.
21:13
SPEAKER_04: Unsigned.
21:14
SPEAKER_04: $7,000 from the government, from the teacher and the mechanic and the nurse.
21:20
SPEAKER_04: 10,000 from his wife's words about the bighorns and the light and the calves and the wind.
21:25
SPEAKER_04: I want a Herford, she says.
21:27
SPEAKER_04: And that can go back.
21:29
SPEAKER_04: That's other people's money.
21:30
SPEAKER_04: She means the form.
21:32
SPEAKER_04: He picks it up, folds it, puts it back in the envelope, unsigned.
21:35
SPEAKER_04: She watches him, doesn't say anything.
21:37
SPEAKER_04: They've been married long enough.
21:39
SPEAKER_04: After a while she says, Spring's coming.
21:42
SPEAKER_04: He nods.
21:43
SPEAKER_04: Calves will start dropping soon.
21:45
SPEAKER_04: You ready?
21:46
SPEAKER_04: He looks at her.
21:47
SPEAKER_04: The woman who turned their life into words.
21:50
SPEAKER_04: She solved the problem he couldn't.
21:51
SPEAKER_04: Together thirty years and hopefully thirty more, God willing.
21:55
SPEAKER_04: The ranch is where she finds the stories, not the other way around.
21:58
SPEAKER_04: Herford, he says.
22:19
SPEAKER_04: And the other flags hole at the chain links along the fence line.
22:24
SPEAKER_04: Both fly.
22:32
SPEAKER_01: The color of your head.
22:36
SPEAKER_01: The ways will when you had the younger brother's favorite food.
22:44
SPEAKER_01: The way you watch the evening news, the freckles on your skin, the way you start your stories from the inn.
22:59
SPEAKER_01: Oh, what am I supposed to do now that it's over?
23:11
SPEAKER_01: Is there some place I can trade in?
23:15
SPEAKER_01: Always love sick information now that it's over.
23:23
SPEAKER_01: Now that it's through, tell me what am I supposed to do?
23:34
SPEAKER_02: What am I supposed to do?
23:48
SPEAKER_01: But I can never get enough.
23:52
SPEAKER_01: The things I think about win Find myself.
23:59
SPEAKER_01: Should I throw them all away?
24:04
SPEAKER_01: Save 'em for the holidays.
24:08
SPEAKER_01: You go home when you get drunk.
24:12
SPEAKER_01: Figure out you screwed up.
24:18
SPEAKER_01: What am I supposed to do?
24:22
SPEAKER_01: Now that it's over Is there some place that I can train?
24:31
SPEAKER_01: All this love's sake information Now it is over.
24:39
SPEAKER_01: Now it was true.
24:42
SPEAKER_01: What am I supposed to do?
24:49
SPEAKER_01: Tell me what I'm supposed to do What am I supposed to do?
25:06
SPEAKER_01: Now that you saw Is this somebody's sound treatment All this love, shape information now that you store Tell me what I'm that's supposed to do.