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up Ole Sonny and drove over with Daddy to Ashland, at a place Daddy had leased. I was cinching up my horse when Daddy said, “Come on.”
    “I’ll be there in just a minute.”
    I loped up beside Daddy and he said, “Don’t talk back to me, young lady.”
    “Okay,” I replied, and we loped around and found some of the cattle.
    “You see them over there?” he said. “Go get them and bring them to the gate.” Which I did.
    By the time I rode back to where Daddy was, he and Pake were into a serious cussing match. I don’t know what sparked it, but they were angry.
    “You dough-bellied son of a bitch,” Pake said. “You can’t rope ’cause you’re too fat.”
    “Why are you even trying to rope?” Daddy fired back. “You can’t rope.”
    I rode up beside Jim Clark and said, “I got chewed out just for saying, ‘I’ll be there in just a minute.’ ” I rode back to the house with Jim and never went back to gather cattle with Daddy again.
    The next time Daddy had to gather, he said, “Reba, you gonna go help?”
    “You gonna holler at me?” I asked.
    “Probably,” he answered.
    “Nope,” I said.

    I ’VE BEEN ASKED IF I RESENTED THE WAY DADDY WHIPPED US kids. I don’t. That’s just the way he was.
    What I did resent were the times I had to work cattle with the men, then go in about 11:30 A.M. to cook dinner, which is what we called the noon meal. We cooked it, the men ate it, we cleaned up the mess, then returned to work with the men. What’s wrong with this picture?
    Me having to cook stopped when I was eleven. It was noon one day, and Mama was at work. I don’t remember where Alice was, but if she had been there, Daddy would have sent her. Instead, he told me, “Reba, you go on up to the house and fix dinner.”
    I looked in the cabinets and found a can of green beans. And lima beans. And pork ’n’ beans.
    I honestly didn’t realize that everything I opened was a variety of beans.
    “Reba, are you partial to beans?” Daddy asked when he and the rest of the family came inside. Pake, who still tells the story to tease me, says, “Can you imagine a damn cattle outfit with no meat?”
    Daddy wanted some meat and potatoes, food that would “stick to his ribs.” Instead, they all got a vegetarian meal years before that kind of eating became popular. I don’t remember Daddy ever sending me to the house to cook again.

    W HEN WE WERE GROWING UP I USED TO REGRET THAT DADDY never told us that he loved us. It bothered me that he never gave us kids Christmas presents, except one year when he gave Pake a pocketknife. But Mama took care of that like I found out later a lot of mamas do. Daddy was just too busy.
    After messing with yearlings from daylight until after dark, Daddy would just lie on the couch and then he’d go to bed, to the quiet. On the rare occasions when he was rested and he felt good, we’d pile on him on the couch and wrestle. Sometimes, he even took us swimming in the pond on the top of the mountain after we’d been working cattle all day. I remember there was a creek just right for swimming up past Grandpap’s house almost to Uncle Keno’s, Grandpap’s brother. We’d take a watermelon and throw it in to get cold while we swam. Then we’d cut it open and eat it. It was a lot of fun. Lots of great memories.
    I think my Daddy never learned how to show love like a lot of people because of his upbringing and him being an only child. Back in 1987, when he had triple-bypass surgery, I went to see him in intensive care. He had tubes sticking out from all over him and was still groggy from the heavy medication.
    I just sat by his bedside, thinking back on those tough days on the ranch and understanding how rough it must be for Daddy to see those years of hard living catch up with him. Work was his whole life. “You can’t mess around,” he used to tell us. “If you’re in business, you tend to business first.” I realized then how much like him I am.
    Squeezing his hand,