“You’re pretty good.”

“I like them high and inside.” After cocking the bat against the cage, Lil started toward the field. “We’ve got a game next Saturday. You could come.”

Some dumbass boondockie ball game. Would be, he thought, a lot better than nothing. “Maybe.”

“Do you get to go to real games? Like at Yankee Stadium?”

“Sure. My father’s got season tickets, box seats, right behind the third-base line.”

“No way!”

It felt good-a little-to impress her. And it didn’t suck to have somebody, even a farm girl, to talk ball with. Plus she could handle the ball and the bat, and that was a serious plus.

Still, Coop only shrugged, then watched Lil slip through the lines of barbed wire without mishap. He didn’t complain when she turned and held the lines wider for him.

“We watch on TV, or listen on the radio. And once we went all the way down to Omaha to watch a game. But I’ve never been to a major-league ballpark.”

And that reminded him just where he was. “You’re a million miles from one. From anything.”

“Dad says one day we’ll take a vacation and go back east. Maybe to Fenway Park because he’s a Red Sox fan.” She found a ball, stuck it in her back pocket. “He likes to root for the underdog.”

“My father says it’s smarter to root for a winner.”

“Everybody else does, mostly, so somebody has to root for the underdog.” She beamed a smile at him, fluttered long lashes over dark brown eyes. “That’s going to be New York this year.”

He grinned before he realized it. “So you say.”

He picked up a ball, tossed it hand to hand as they worked their way toward the trees. “What do you do with all these cows, anyway?”

“Beef cattle. We raise them, then sell them. People eat them. I bet even people in New York like steak.”

He thought that was gross, just the idea that the cow staring at him now would be on somebody’s plate-maybe even his-one day.