Chapter 61 Stir Crazy
“Sounds like you didn’t suffer too profound a head trauma. That’s a lot of detail. Hold on a second. Janet!” he stepped away from the bed, calling to the nurse at the desk in the hall. She came to the door as quickly as she was able. “Tell Sergio that he can bring those other two visitors in now.” He stepped back to talk to Evan. “I think we can probably release you this afternoon to go home and rest. I did say rest, right?” He looked around at the other cowboys in the room, who all nodded their heads in agreement. “Write another book or something, but stay off a horse for a few days until you know that you won’t be blacking out while you’re riding.”
“I’ve got my stuff gathered to go stay with him for a few days,” Casey put in.
“We just have a few head of cattle to move over the next few days,” Bob added. “We have all of the riders up there right now. We can get along fine without him, and Casey is gonna stay up there with him for a few weeks.”
“Sounds like you already have it planned out,” Doctor Akers said.
Their conversation was interrupted by the arrival of Evan’s “other two visitors”. It was completely against hospital policy to have pets in the room, but Sam and Lucy were something of celebrities, and Doctor Akers was a fan, so he allowed them to come in. They both leaped easily onto Evan’s bed and eagerly licked him as he greeted his two best friends. The way that his face brightened up left no doubt in the minds of those present just exactly how important these two were to his happiness. Everyone else in the room was forgotten as the two faithful companions took their place of honor beside and on top of him.
“Good morning,” Evan greeted Casey as he hopped through the door of the barn on his crutches with his foot, still in a cast, covered in a heavy wool sock, and reached for a bridle. Casey had just caught his horse and was about to saddle up. He had been staying in Evan’s bunk house and doing the riding for the pool for the week following Evan’s release from the hospital.
“What are you doing?” Casey asked. He didn’t feel like it was his place to try to play wet nurse for Evan, but he was pretty sure that Evan shouldn’t be riding just yet. He was just about to catch Cherry. He saw Evan toss something into the tack room and took a look at what it was before Evan returned. Evan had made a stirrup that was wider and would allow him to put his foot, which was in a cast, in the stirrup. He intended to go with Casey. What could he say? How do you give your hero a scolding? He smiled as his chest swelled with pride. Evan was game. He wasn’t sure that it was going to work, but he was game.
“I can’t sit on my ass any longer,” Evan said by way of explanation. Casey didn’t ask, but he knew that the question was on his mind. He wasn’t sure if the stirrup was going to work, and he wasn’t sure how long he would be able to take it. He knew that if he wasn’t careful, his bones wouldn’t set correctly and he would have trouble with his ankle for the rest of his life. He reasoned that sitting around the house and feeling worthless was worse than all of the ankle trouble that might come. The worst part about sitting around the house was his wandering mind, which wouldn’t stop thinking about Alexandra and Grace. He thought that he had put Grace into his distant past, but with the new pain of losing Alexandra, every failure in that relationship, real or imagined, was brought up to be looked at in vivid detail side by side. In short, he was going out of his mind. He had attempted to write, but it just wasn’t there.
“I don’t know, Evan,” Casey said. “That’s pretty clever and all, but how long can you take the weight?”
“Casey,” he said. His blue eyes penetrated those of Casey. “I’m going crazy in the house. I gotta try. I may not last from here to the road, but I gotta try.”
“I understand,” Casey said. “I’ll help you.”
He finished saddling his horse and saw Evan struggling with how to saddle his horse and work his crutches at the same time. He had gotten the saddle blanket on, but was at a loss for carrying the saddle, even for picking it up. Casey stepped around him, scooped up the saddle, and swung it up onto Cherry’s back. He positioned it and then went to the other side to check that all of the straps and cinches had fallen in place. Before he could come back to the near side, Evan already had the cinch in his hand and was slipping the latigo into the ring while he balanced on his crutches.
“Always tighten your own cinch,” he grinned. It wasn’t a lack of trust; it was the certainty of knowing how tight your cinch was. Besides, it was an old cowboy idiom that he had probably passed along a hundred times. Its meaning went far beyond the literal, and Casey understood the reason behind both immediately.
Casey watched Evan’s expert fingers as he finished saddling his horse and handed the stirrup to him so that he could put it in place. Evan quickly unbuckled the stirrup strap, slipped the old stirrup off, put his new one in place, and then rebuckled the strap, making it a couple of notches longer than the other. He had thought this out. Not only was the cast thicker, but if the stirrup was longer, Evan wouldn’t put as much weight on that side. A range rider didn’t sit on his butt in the saddle, but stood in his stirrups, because the quick turns of a cow horse and the uneven ground required that he was always adjusting and moving with the animal. Sitting on his butt would be the surest way for Evan to be off balance. He was going to have to figure out how to negotiate things with one foot.
The next challenge was getting Evan in the saddle. Casey wasn’t sure how he was going to accomplish the feat, but he was curious, so he followed him. Evan led Cherry to the tailgate of the pickup. Bob, Ryan, and Casey had all insisted that they keep the pickup at the homestead since the accident. Evan protested because he didn’t want to bother anybody with having to come get it when it was time for him to come down from camp for the winter. His protest fell on deaf ears, and he was glad that they had, because this was the best way that he had come up with for getting on Cherry. He positioned Cherry at the corner of the tailgate with his right side nearest. He wouldn’t have been able to do what he did with a younger horse, but Cherry would stand until Jesus returned if he had a bridle on and the reins were dropped to the ground.