The Pay at the Sale Barn Cafe

Travis worked calves in the spring and fixed water gaps in the summer and drove a feed truck in the winter when the wind blew so hard it rocked the cab.

He doctored pinkeye. He pulled calves at two in the morning in a sleet storm. He never once asked to leave early for anything but the births of our two kids.

I met him at the vet clinic in Hereford where I still work the front desk.

He came in carrying a border collie pup that had been kicked by a horse. He was so worried about that dog that he forgot to give me his last name.

We got married at First Baptist two years later. Don and his wife, Jean, came to the wedding.

Don gave Travis a saddle blanket and shook his hand and said, “You’ve got a good one, Casey. Don’t let him get away from me.”

The afternoon Travis got hurt, I was at the clinic, and Mike called me from the pens.

He said, “Casey, he’s okay, but you need to meet us at the hospital in Amarillo. His arm’s bad.” I could hear Travis in the background telling him not to scare me.

It was fifty miles. I made it in forty minutes, which I will not defend.

Emma was at school and Jake was at my mother’s, and I called my mother from the truck and asked her to get Emma too, and to tell her Daddy was fine.

Travis had broken both bones in his forearm. The surgeon put in a plate and six screws the next morning.

He came out of it groggy and gray and the first thing he said to me was, “Did Emma get to go trick-or-treating?”

She had not. She had stayed at my mother’s in her costume, a pink cowgirl with a felt hat two sizes too big, and fallen asleep on the couch with her plastic pumpkin empty in her lap. My mother sent me a picture of it.

I showed Travis the picture, and he looked at it for a long time and then turned his face toward the wall.

I held his good hand. That was the only time in eleven years I saw him cry about anything to do with that ranch.

Don came to the hospital that night. He stood at the end of the bed in his felt hat and tan canvas jacket and said, “You’ll be fine, son. Don’t you worry about a thing.” Then he patted the blanket over Travis’s foot and left.

Here is what you need to know about the money. Don Hollister did not carry workers’ compensation insurance.

In Texas a private employer does not have to, and a lot of ranchers do not. Travis knew that when he took the job. Most hands do.

So the hospital bill went on our insurance, which comes through my job at the clinic. Our deductible was three thousand dollars. We met it in one night, and then some, and we still had twenty percent of everything after.

We had about four thousand dollars in savings when Travis got hurt.

By the time the bills from the surgeon and the anesthesia people and the hospital started coming, it was under a thousand, and we had not even started physical therapy.

Our mortgage was eleven hundred and forty dollars a month on a small brick house on two acres east of town. It was due on the first.