The Ranch

South Texas drive by night with beer in hand. We were free for a moment, country radio in our brains and in our jeep. Stop to get eggs and more beer. Huge bags of grapefruits for five dollars, tall as me. Back roads, four wheel drive through the mud to a place with taxidermy on the walls and cows on the range. Night one baking cookies in underwear after a dinner of veggie corndogs and mustard. Sleeping in, Austin the next day, back to the ranch. Friends come bearing bread and beer and music. One climbs to the top of a windmill, ladder tetering beneath his feet, rungs missing. Day rides in the mule to find firewood turning into escapades that could get a bull riled up to fight for his seventy women. We go back to find the truck stuck in the mud by the fire pit, growling and spinning to get out but so thick in it that not even four men could save it. Girls take off in search of cows and sunsets. When they return the boys are still at it. Get the old trackter out of the barn, figure out how to drive it. The trackter takes one push to get the truck out. There is much rejoicing. Fire built, twilight lovers run off to the woods. More beer, more fire, more mud. With the early morning comes a flight to the east coast. Close up, move out. For that moment,, the West was ours.