It was Mama’s name too. She died when Wade was nineteen, and for twenty-two years her grave had nothing but the little tin marker from the funeral home. Dad always said he’d put a real stone up when he had the money. He never had the money. Wade wanted them side by side under one granite stone before the ground settled, and the monument company wanted a deposit by Friday.

With no paycheck since March, the saddle was the only thing he had worth that much. He told the boys he’d folded the blanket the way Grandpa taught him, and put the pawn ticket in the coffee can on purpose, because that’s where Dad kept anything he meant to come back for. He’d planned to redeem it with his first check from the new job he starts Monday. He just couldn’t bring himself to tell me he couldn’t pay his share.

Tanner looked at his dad a long while, then got up and hugged him around the neck, dish towel and all. I sat down beside Owen and cried into my sleeve. Brian said the tires had waited this long and could wait a while longer. Wade said he’d pay me back the $330, and I let him, twenty dollars a payday, because Dad raised us to finish what we start.

The stone went up in June, Mama and Dad together, with a little rope coil carved between their names. The saddle hangs in Wade’s barn now on Dad’s old rack, blanket folded, corners squared. Tanner is learning to rope off it on Wade’s sorrel mare, and Owen sits up front with both hands on the horn. Every Sunday after chili, the boys rub it down with neatsfoot oil, and the kitchen smells like Grandpa’s truck. The wired stirrup is still on it. Nobody is ever buying a new one.