He still sends me a bill

There's one large animal vet for this whole side of the island and that's it, so when you call him you take whatever day he gives you and you say thank you. Gil Medeiros. Comes up from Waimea in a white F-250 with the aluminum box on the back, drawers and drawers of stuff, cleaner in there than my kitchen.

I run sixty head on a lease my grandmother's people had before I was born. My name's on it with my two brothers. They live Oahu and they get plenty ideas about grass they haven't stood in since 2009.

He comes every three or four weeks. Preg check in the fall, and the rest of the year it's whatever's wrong. The chute, my uncle welded it out of pipe around 1984 and it still works if you know where to hit it. I run the head gate, Gil does the arm. The dog sits up on the Mule and watches like she's the one paying for this.

First time he stayed was seven years ago in March. Had a heifer down by the second gate, the one past the old flume, calf turned wrong, eleven at night and raining. Forty minutes he drove, that time of night. He knelt in it. Knee's been junk since I was twenty-nine. I held the light. It went until almost three and the calf came out dead anyway. Cow's still out there. Tag 41. Mean as ever.

We washed off at the spigot by the tank and I told him no way he's driving Mamalahoa like that. Made coffee. He sat on the bench by the door and took his boots off without me saying anything about the floor.

We slept about two hours. Not right away.

In the morning the truck was still in the yard and I stood at the window with my cup.

Eleven days later the envelope came. Carbon copy, Waimea postmark. His handwriting is bad. Emergency farm call, after hours. Mileage, thirty-eight each way. Dystocia, manual correction. Oxytocin. Down in the corner where he writes his notes, look at 41's eye next visit.

I wrote the check at the table and took it down to the box on the highway that same afternoon.

That's how it's gone. Seven years in March. He comes up and we work. Some nights he drives back down to Waimea. Some nights the truck's there when I go out to feed. Then ten days, twelve days, the envelope.

His girl's at UH Hilo, second year, so Saturdays he's down that way. Other times he's here and we eat whatever's in the fridge. He put the golf on one night and was asleep in my father's chair by eight thirty and I let him go until ten. Nobody comes up my road except the propane guy on Tuesdays. Gil don't come Tuesdays anymore.

Wayne, he calls Sundays. Lease is up in June. The state wants the hui re-formed and everybody signs or nobody signs, and if it's nobody the cattle have to be off by August. Wayne and Boyd want their piece as money instead of grass. Fifty-eight thousand for the two of them. He says the number every time. The other way is it goes to auction. Some guy with a consultant bidding on my grandmother's fence line.

He ends the same every time. Sell out, come Oahu, get on with the county. They got benefits. I tell him I'm thinking about it. Been thinking about it two years.

One Sunday he called while Gil was here. I let it go to the machine and then I called him back from out in the yard by the water tank, and I stood out there the whole time.

Aunty June at the store in Paauilo has known me since small kid time. I go in for ice mostly, and Primo. She's bagging and she goes, easy as anything, eh boy, whose white truck that is up your road.

I said the vet.

She said long time he stay, yeah. Counted my change out slow. Then she asked how my mother's knee is doing.

I drove home the long way, past the Kalopa turnoff.

Baby luau in Honokaa a couple weeks after that. I take the metal folding chairs now, against the wall. A white plastic one went out from under me at a graduation party in Ookala and everybody was real nice about it.

Gil came up in May for the bangs tags. We finished around four and he was rinsing the sleeves out at the spigot and he said, not looking at me, that he's got money sitting there doing nothing and June is coming.

I laughed and said no need.

He said okay. Put the sleeves in the bin and drove down. I stood at the gate a while with the chain in my hand.

Next bill came and the after hours line wasn't on it, everything else was. Seventy dollars.

I called him and told him he missed something. He said he'd get it next time. Said it flat.

Next month it was back on there. Been on there since.

Wayne wants an answer end of the month. I got one guy in Waimea who'll take eleven of the older cows and that's nowhere near fifty-eight thousand, and I already know I'm selling them anyway, so.

The envelopes are in a Longs bag in the drawer under the phone. Seven years of them. Taxes only want three back.

He's due Thursday for the two heifers by the pipeline gate. The pin on that gate went missing last year and it's wire now.