The old man’s favorite spot was at the far end of his property. A rocky hill, rising to about a hundred feet, with a lone Oak Tree growing dead center of the cropping. His Ford pickup struggled up the hill, but it had been with him longer than anything else in his life, so he and the machine were one. His blood was as thick as the thirty-weight oil in the engine, and his joints creaked about as much as the old truck’s sockets. His cowdog, Buster, sat beside him, licking his paw, a complement to the cactus he’d stepped on earlier that day.

He parked with the rear of the truck facing the setting sun, lowered the tailgate, and reached into his old Coleman cooler for an ice-cold Lone Star beer, then sat on the tailgate, contemplating the future of a seventy-five-year-old man married to a fifty-five-year-old peroxide blonde with a bad attitude about ranch life. She was a Texan alright, but a city girl that didn’t know a heifer from a bull. He warned her many times before the wedding at the dance hall: it wasn’t like those Hallmark movies, but she was all caught up in the ” I’m gonna change this feller, refine this man into a proper Texas rancher.” Bullshit stinking thinking that had caused so many fights in the kitchen, the back porch, and even at the dance hall over the last two years. Folks in town whispered that Tammy Wynette song every time they passed her in the H.E.B. Gossip didn’t bother him; his buddies at the feed store admired his courage, now slipping into the area of stupidity for marrying such a floozy of a gal. Buster finally pulled the cactus thorn from his paw and begged for a sip of beer. His daily treat.

As the evening sun sank behind the peak, it began looking more like a mountain; the four Lone Stars helped his imagination. Somewhere along the ridge, he saw a row of Indians on ponies headed back to their camp at the base of the tall hill. Coyotes began their opera, and this evening they were better than most, even adding some harmony to their howl.

Beer, age, and a slight tinge of Dementia gave him a vivid imagination these days. The old pickup looked like a fancy-assed new King Ranch rig, Buster looked like a pup, and his body felt twenty years younger. Yeah, yeah, he drank too much beer. He was old, so what the hell did it matter? The sand in his clock was about to run out, so why not go out happy, or not know it at all. Beer, feed bills, ranch hands, cows, and bullshit — the mainstay of ranch life — was an everyday confrontation at the house. Four or six bottles of Lone Star made life bearable after a day of stretching barbed wire, chasing cows, and dealing with Mexican ranch hands since dawn. Supper was usually something mushy, tasting like Velveeta cheese, and he’d listen to the local gossip at the grocery store or Wal-Mart, so his appetite was lost to the wind, and he was losing weight and getting mighty pale, cause he knew he had a tiger by the tail. Old Buck knew the score and wrote the perfect song for a man’s life in his older years. His rifle was a permanent fixture, resting on the gun rack in his pickup. It was always loaded, clean, and ready for its job. He knew that one day, after too many beers and a sad-ass pity party, he and Buster would not return home. A final plan gives a man something to hang onto, even if he has to explain it to the Lord, and that would be the worst of it.