Things went down for Gail – fast. Everyone saw it, she was no longer the working ranch woman who never seemed to get dirty driving hay equipment, castrating calves, rounding up cattle from horseback on the range. Impossibly, her jeans always looked clean, her blouse freshly pressed, her cowboy hat immaculate. Now, she didn’t bathe, her hair was ratty, her clothes filthy and frayed. At night, she wandered. Sometimes she unscrewed the valves on other ranchers’ irrigation systems, releasing torrents of water that flooded pastures, barns and roads. Other times, she opened neighboring ranchers’ pasture gates. The ranchers woke to find their horses gone, then spent the morning searching, catching them munching grass on other ranchers’ lawns or wandering on the paved roads, lucky not to have been flattened by one of the semis that sped through the valley at all hours.
A rancher who knew Gail’s daughter Lucy’s number called her and she rushed from her home in Mississippi to the ranch. When she opened the kitchen door, she was stunned by the chaos of dirty dishes, clothes, bills, books, newspapers, empty wine bottles in every room. Fortunately, there was space available in the tiny nursing home in the tiny nearby town.
Her father, Bill, had it more together. He stayed at home on the ranch, but he wasn’t happy. A few days after Lucy left, Bill burst into the nursing home armed with a pistol, declaring, “Gail’s coming home.”
One of the terrified staff called the sheriff, who had known Bill since kindergarten.
“C’mon Bill, you know this ain’t right. Let’s get you into your truck, it’s time to go home.”
The sheriff followed Bill home and walked him to the house.
As soon as the sheriff’s headlights faded from view, Bill drove back into town, where he positioned himself across the street from the nursing home, holding a rifle in his crooked elbow. For hours, he stood there, staring at the nursing home.
The sheriff was called again. This time, the sheriff left Bill’s pickup in town and personally drove him home in his cruiser.
Lucy put Bill into the nursing home too. The first night, the security guard caught Bill and Gail climbing the fence in the back of the home, trying to escape. Demented but not paralyzed. They’d done hard labor on the ranch their whole lives, they were physically capable of doing what they wanted to do. The security guard coaxed them down and led them back to their rooms.
The next day, the nursing home put a lock on its back door.
By Evalyn Baron
On August 17, 2025
I was touched by this piece….its tight swift construction, the inevitable path the two took together/ apart…the power of live…it reached me on a deeper level than I expected! Good work!
Ev