Brave

He had always been around cowboys. His father had been a cowboy as had his father before him. He had spent hours and hours in the saddle beside his dad on hot days, cold days, wet days, and dry days, and every kind of day in between since he could remember. He was the oldest of three children, with two little sisters. He and his father would work on their ranch and from time to time work on neighboring ranches during big works. His dad had even let him skip school for a week a couple of times in the Spring to go out with the wagon on the big ranch down the road a few miles that neighbored them on the West sharing a fence line about three miles in length. When he was about nine, his father began to let him rope, first dragging calves to the fire for branding and then at small youth ropings, leading to team roping with his father at some jackpots that were close by. They never traveled too far but in their own little piece of West Texas, they were pretty good. He couldn't imagine how life could be any better than it was.

In one day, actually, one instant, his life changed forever. While stacking hay in the barn one hot Summer afternoon, unusually sultry for West Texas, his dad collapsed and fell off the stack of hay to the barn floor. A friend who was there working with them helped him get his dad in the truck and as his mother called an ambulance from the house phone, they sped up the county road hoping to cut some time off the trip and meet the medical personnel on the way. As the county road met the highway that headed west to Lubbock, they met and transferred him into the ambulance. By the time his mom got the girls together and picked him up, and they arrived in Lubbock at the hospital, it was virtually too late. His dad had had a massive stroke and was all but brain dead. Even if he hadn't been, the fall off the stack of hay had broken his neck and if he were able to recover from the stroke he would be paralyzed for life. Though devastating at the time, his death two days later was, in reality, a blessing. He knew there was no way his dad could have survived being an invalid the rest of his life.

His mother had grown up in the city and had met his dad in college. She was a city girl that had learned to thrive as a mother and wife on a ranch far enough from a town of any size that trips there were a month or two apart most of the time. Now she would have to figure out how she would get by. The ranch was in debt, drought had crippled this piece of country, and cattle prices were as low as they had been in years. It would take everything they had and possibly more to just break even and then there was the question of where they would live and how they would make a living. They had enough friends eager to lend a hand that gathering and dispersing the cattle and other ranch assets was quickly and easily, if not painfully, done. He plead and plead with his mother not to sell out and leave but to no avail. In reality, there was no way a twelve year old boy with a mother and two little sisters could keep a ranch of this size afloat even if the bank believed they could, which the bank did not. Once all was said and done, there was just about enough money left over after selling nearly everything but their few clothes, some toys, and the family car, to buy gas to get to Dallas where his grandparents lived. As if in prison, at least to him, that is where he would live for the next few years. He dreamed of the times he spent with his dad horseback and cried himself to sleep for weeks, maybe even months. Over time the transition from ranch cowboy roping with his dad, to junior high football and baseball player made life a little more bearable. He participated in school events, they joined the church his mother grew up in and there were activities there that lead him to good friends and even more changes in his life. By the time he went off to college and studied business, the memories of the ranch and his young desire to be just like his father had wained.

While he was away at college, his mother met and married a high school sweetheart whose wife had also died a few years earlier from cancer. He had never had children and so he had been overjoyed at finding a new life with another lovely woman and her two sweet daughters. It was a long time before he or the new husband really got along very well because it was just such a big change and though the new husband tried his best and was a very understanding and kind man, the stubbornness in the young man made it hard. Over time, they became great friends because the young man could see how much the man loved and took care of his mom and sisters.

He met the love of his life while he was in college and they were married three weeks after they graduated. They moved to her hometown in the Texas hill country where he began working at the bank where her father was majority share holder and president. She taught school for a while but after a couple of years they had a child, a little girl, and she stayed home to raise her. From time to time, he would help people with their cattle or other livestock, as a representative of the bank or because they were friends from church who needed a helping hand. He felt a longing sometimes to go back to that life but, unfortunately, there were always more reasons not to do so than he could convince himself there were to do so. He could always hear the voices in his head saying it had been too long, it would be too hard, or asking himself, "What would your wife and her family say?" So, though the longing in his heart was strong, the voices in his head were stronger and he resisted. His sisters went off to college as well, married, had children and lived far enough away that he rarely saw them again save for the two funerals of his mother and stepdad that eventually came and went. He and his wife never had another child though they tried and prayed and prayed and tried. They grew to be content with the beautiful little girl that had grown now to be a beautiful young woman. She studied abroad in France during college and upon graduation went back there and married a Frenchman. Now he had become the president of the bank, his retired father-in-law was a widower and not in great health either. As time passed, so did his father-in-law, and his daughter could not even make the trip back for the funeral. For several years, he and the love of his life had lived out the seasons together just at the edge of town on her family home place in quiet comfort. They were not rich but they were well enough off that they wanted for nothing. He would soon retire a little bit younger than most so they could travel and have some fun while they were still young enough to enjoy life. He had purchased an older, gentle horse he kept on the acreage in back of the house and from time to time, though not more than once or twice a month, he would ride. As he road up and down the bar ditches along the county road leaving town from his home, he would daydream about the times as a child he would ride all day with his father. His ability to ride a horse came back like riding a bicycle and he even entertained the idea of picking up a rope again, just for the fun of it. His wife discouraged it because she was not too keen on the horse in the first place because she longed to travel. Travel they did, for a while, even going to see their daughter in France once. She came back to see them a couple of times over the years but they knew she didn't belong in the hill country of Texas any more than they belonged in France.

When his wife became ill and the doctors gave little hope for recovery, he was slower to give in. He sold his remaining shares in the bank. He sold his horse, his truck and trailer, the home place and the acreage in an attempt to pay the massive medical bills that piled up in spite of their insurance policies to buy her as much time as possible with no success. She died in her sleep in the small apartment they had rented near the cancer center in Houston where they tried to treat her for over two years. Now, his wife gone, his small fortune gone, all but bare necessities gone, and after dwindling down to what was a meager retirement check each month, he found himself all alone.

He packed all he had into his car and began to drive. He didn't know where but it didn't really matter to him, he just drove and drove until he was tired of driving and stopped for the night. Then he drove and drove again until the country started looking strangely familiar. He drove into a small town he hadn't been to since the day he left with his mother, two sisters, and everything they owned in the back of a Ford station wagon at twelve years old. He walked into the feed store and began to strike up a conversation with the owner who turned out to be a guy he went to school with as a boy. HIs family owned a lot of land and cattle and several businesses in the small town and after a short visit, it became as clear to him as crystal what he would do. After his friend closed up the store, they went to the cafe to eat supper and caught up on what life had dealt them both in the long years since he had left this place behind. He followed as his friend led him to the ranch just a few miles out of town and soon he was moved into the bunkhouse that was only used by day hands during the big works. The very next day he began a new life. A new life that in some ways wasn't new at all. He would be given a string of older gentle horses to ride as he wished. He would be able to work with the crew on the big works and help look after the old home place for his friend's aging parents that, though they still lived in the big house, were both very old and had twenty-four hour live-in nurses.

In return for feeding the horses, mowing the grass and running errands for the old folks from time to time, he would live in the bunk house and be paid a small wage. The first day he rode out with the crew in his new boots, hat, and spurs on a company horse in an old saddle left there years ago by a hand that had long since forgotten its existence, he felt like the king of the world. In a rush and a whirl, the memories of riding out on the morning with his father came over him. He was overwhelmed and moved beyond words as he listened to the sound of spur and hoof in the breaking of daylight. Like a little kid in a candy store he was giddy with excitement and though most people his age were settling into retirement, he was starting life over again.

He lived out his years on the ranch, in that very bunkhouse. He cared for the place until he was physically unable to and the family let him stay there until the day he died. He rode thousands of miles over that country with hundreds of cowboys all on good horses. He became a hero and an icon to the boys and young men that shared the bunkhouse with him during the big works and when they laid him to rest in the small family cemetery there on the ranch, his daughter and her Frenchman husband were in awe of the crowd that wept at his passing. The family put a nice headstone at his grave with the statue of a horse on the top that, along with his name, and the dates of his birth and death, read, "He came to us desperate, but he lived among us brave."