Paid in firewood

My first year out of residency, I worked for an old doctor in Tucson who still made house calls to the ranches south of town. He was sixty-eight, he drove a green Ford with no air conditioning, and he handed me the keys the week I arrived. “You drive,” he said. “I’ll sleep. You’ll learn the roads.”

Our patients paid in whatever they had. Cash when there was cash. Eggs. A side of beef once, which did not fit in the truck. One rancher near Arivaca paid for three years of visits in mesquite firewood, stacked neatly behind the clinic every October. The old doctor burned it in the clinic stove all winter and called it the warmest money he ever made.