Theodore Spencer was born the second of two children on April 12, 1955 in a small town in Western Tennessee.  His father was a cattle rancher on the same family ranch his father was born on to, and his father’s father was born on to, and his father’s father’s father settled way back in the day.  Theodore’s mother and older brother both worked the ranch, and Theodore joined them from the moment he was able to.  He’d wake up every morning at 4:30 and start his chores, breaking for school, and come back to the ranch to finish his chores.  His father was a mean man, and he terrorized the family.  Theodore was convinced the only way to ease his father’s temper was to simply work harder - so that’s what he did.  Only his dad could never be pleased, and there was always something wrong with the way Theodore and his brother did their chores.  In his head, he was trying to teach his boys how to be the best ranchers they could be.  As soon as Theodore graduated high school in 1973 he enlisted in the Army to get away from his abusive father.  While Theodore loved ranching, he also had lots of guns sitting around on that ranch and as his father got even more temperamental with old age, he wanted to run away from his thoughts of turning one of those guns on his old man during his fits.
Theodore was sent to Vietnam, and he served his country with the same work ethic his father’s belt instilled in him.  Six months into his deployment overseas, he got shot in the shoulder and was sent home with a purple heart.  Only Theodore decided he wasn’t going to go home.  The young man became quite close with a fellow soldier and combat medic who lived in a similarly small town in Kentucky by the name of West Point.  The friend, a young man named Larry Jeffords, was similarly shipped back to the states after receiving a gunshot wound and Theodore decided to go stay with him instead of going back to his family ranch.  Larry’s family let Theodore stay on their couch for a time until he found a ranch to work on just on the outskirts of town run by a middle aged man named Frank Peterson and his wife Margaret.  The two had only one child and a sizeable herd, so they needed the help.  Theodore worked the ranch every bit as hard as he had worked his family ranch, and he loved the work same as before.  He had aspirations of owning his own ranch one day where he could raise his own family, but until that day came he loved the Peterson land.  During this time, Larry Jeffords went to school to become a vet and Theodore moved into a small cabin on the Peterson’s land.  Theo had always been a stern and stoic individual, and war only hardened that demeanor.  He was often perceived as humourless due to his lack of laughter, but those who knew him well were aware of his wit.
After about six months back in the States, he met a pretty young lady named Claire.  She had just graduated high school from her own small town in Missouri and decided she wanted to explore the country.  Poor girl only made it one state over though, because she ran into the handsome ranch hand in the local bar one evening and decided to stay in West Point another night to spend more time with the boy.  Another night became two, which then became three, and before long it was apparent she had no intention of continuing on her exploratory journey, and Theodore had no intention of letting her.  The two began dating, and when Claire told Theodore she was pregnant, he asked her to marry him.  Claire’s family did not approve, and she had to beg them to come to the wedding.  It was a small ceremony.  The two had a son they named James, and after two months of staying home with him and learning how to help with the ranch from Theo, Claire went back to school with hopes of getting a degree in education, wanting to be a teacher.  Five months into school, she unexpectedly got pregnant again.  A determined woman, she continued going to classes while pregnant and working the ranch when she’d get back.  Luckily, the kids due date coincided with the beginning of Summer break so she was able to have him and stay with him for a couple months without taking time off school.  They named their second son Carter.
    From a very young age, Theo encouraged the natural competitive attitude that arose between James and Carter.  Claire managed to finish her schooling without getting pregnant again, receiving her degree in education.  She started teaching at the local elementary school just in time to get a year of experience before James started at her school.  With the extra income, the family was able to move out of the cabin on the Peterson land and into a nice house in town, still close enough for Theo to be at the ranch early in the morning.  The bigger house had more rooms, which encouraged Claire to express her desire to try for a girl.  Theo was happy to oblige her.  Unfortunately, the two did not get their wish.  Their third child, Tom, came into the world nine months later.  He was a large baby, which excited Theo who had instant hopes of him being a football star.  They decided they didn’t have enough money to try for a girl again, as the three kids was already a lot of pressure.  However, it wouldn’t be too many more years before James could start helping at the ranch and could help Theo get more of the Peterson’s herd to market which would increase his paycheck.  Additionally, the Peterson child seemed to show no desire for ranching.  While causing great tension for Frank, this did give Theo hopes of taking over the ranch when the Peterson’s got too old to run it, albeit he knew that wouldn’t be for many more years.  Theo also suspected Frank wouldn’t stop working that ranch until his body was cold in its land.
    Two more years passed, and Theo began teaching the nine year old James about ranching, bringing Carter along not two months later due to his incessant requests that he was old enough to learn too.  Theo was highly critical of the two young boys, always pointing out what they did wrong and never what they did right.  Similarly to Theo’s own reaction to his father’s criticisms, this just made the boys work harder.  Yet dissimilarly, Theo’s critical demeanor never turned physical.  Claire and Theo decided to try again for a girl, both deciding that it would be their last attempt.  Luckily for them, they got their wish and nine months later their daughter Jessica was born.  The older boys continued learning to ranch, helping out before and after school not unlike Theo’s own childhood.  Once Tom turned nine, he came along and his brothers and dad showed him the ropes.  He learned fast and was happy to help the family, but he hated waking up every morning before school and he didn’t have the same love for the work as his brothers seemed to.  Of course, he’d never say as much.  He didn’t end up having the big bulky physique his father had hoped for.  He was a very tall kid, but lanky.  James and Carter entered high school and both played football.  Much to Carter’s chagrin, James was significantly better than he was, quickly becoming the school’s star quarterback.  The two older boys got into lots of trouble at high school, and occasionally missed their chores to go drink with friends.  Theo couldn’t be bothered to care about his kids drinking, they were teenagers after all, but missing chores was not something that could be allowed in the Spencer household.  When a pregnant heifer went into labor and died when James was supposed to be watching her, Theo gave him his first proper hiding.  He made a point to never spank the kids as boys due to his own father’s treatment of him, yet it was often threatened.  Carter and James made sure their troublemaking didn’t coincide with their chores from that point on.
    During this time, Claire found out she was pregnant again.  The family was barely making enough money to scrape by as it was and this revelation caused a lot of anxiety.  When she gave birth to her daughter Ellen, she could barely spend a month at home with her before having to go back to work.  She additionally picked up a part time job working at a bar in town during nights.  Claire was a pretty woman, and she got good tips.  Theo just worked the boys that much harder.  Jessica being barely old enough to take care of herself and Tom not being old enough to get as much quality work done as James and Carter, Tom found himself taking care of Jessica and the baby quite a bit.  In many houses, a nine year old boy would need a babysitter but in the Spencer household nine year old Tom was the one doing the babysitting.  He’d never dream to tell his dad, but he didn’t mind it.  Even if he knew it was ‘woman’s work’ he liked the baby, and playing with Jessica was more fun than sweating his ass off on the ranch.
Tom found himself eagerly awaiting his 11th birthday.  It had become a Spencer family tradition that on 11th birthday of one of the Spencer boys, Theo takes them on their first hunting trip.  When the time came, Theo woke him up bright and early and gave Tom an old Weatherby hunting rifle.  It was one of the only times Tom can remember where it was just the two of them, no James or Carter.  While it was an educational trip and Theo was critical as always while educating the boy, Tom had an amazing time and he was thrilled to be able to accompany his dad and older brothers whenever they’d go hunting in the future.  Tom never upgraded to a better hunting rifle, as the Weatherby was both reliable and had sentimental value to him.
Tom was about 12 when James announced he was going to college on a football scholarship to study agriculture and hopefully make it to the pros.  James knew the odds of this were slim, but he also knew they were existent and he felt he had to try.  Theo was pissed.  Sure, the boy could go to college, but not now - they needed him on the ranch.  In what Theo viewed as an act of disloyalty, James went off to college.  This caused Carter to double down, working twice as hard in an effort to both outshine his brother and prove to his dad that he would never leave.
When Tom got to high school, he decided to act on his shame.  He’d constantly look up basketball games on his computer after his dad was asleep, knowing that he’d get angry it wasn’t football.  Tom liked football well enough, but basketball was /his/ sport.  He knew if he could get on the basketball team and his dad could watch him play, he’d see that it was just as badass as football was.  Tom did make the team.  He told his dad, and sure enough his dad was pissed he wasn’t playing football.  He refused to go to any of his games for his whole freshman year, although Claire went whenever she could.  His sophomore year, Claire convinced Theo to try something new (Something seemingly only Claire could do) and to go watch his son in a fucking basketball game.  So Theo did his research, learning enough about the game to criticise every play Tom made.  Jessica was old enough to look after Ellie and the house, so Tom went back to the ranch.  He was a decent rancher, yet it was hard to compete with his brothers.  Theo would constantly compare his work to there’s, irritated that it wasn’t up to par.  At the same time, he’d compare James and Carter’s works to each others and above all, to his own.  Tom loved his father a good deal all the same.  He knew he was about as stubborn as they came, highly critical, very stern, and with a bit of temper but he respected the man deeply.  He loved his work ethic, his loyalty to his family, his amazing ability to improvise, and his obvious intellect and passion for ranching.  Yet still, he found himself to be more of a mama’s boy.
Luckily, Tom stopped getting the brunt of his dad’s criticism when James came back from school.  Theo had followed his college football career closely, never neglecting to tell the young man exactly where he went wrong.  Sure enough, James college football career certainly wasn’t abysmal and he was decent enough to be a bit of a celebrity by small town standards, but he also wasn’t good enough to go pro.  So he came back home to continue working the ranch with his newfound knowledge on agriculture and ranching.  At first, Theo criticized all of James new knowledge at ranching.  Sure, his schooling gave him some fancy ideas, but they weren’t practical.  There was a lot of tension between the two, as Theo interpreted his disloyal son now came back thinking he was better than his old man.  The two eventually learned to work together again, and started to rebuild their relationship, but this wouldn’t be for a couple years.
    Still, the attention stayed off Tom when Claire had a troubling announcement.  The family was still struggling to stay above ground when she told Theo she was pregnant again.  Theo being about as stubborn as they came did the only thing he could do.  Worked harder.  The man worked nineteen hour days to take on a herd they didn’t have the manpower to tend.  Claire worked even more night shifts after classes.  She took a brief break to birth their youngest son, Robert.  They all ended up calling him by his nickname Bubba.  James, Carter, and Tom all doubled down as well, and Jessica tended house and took care of Ellie and the baby.  Tom would wake up 4:30 every morning, work the ranch, go to school, and come back to work the ranch some more.  He ended up dropping basketball his senior year so he could spend more time helping out on the ranch.  He became a better rancher during this time, and Theo acknowledged the sacrifice he made for the family.  The acknowledgement felt good.
    The family needed a miracle.  Unfortunately, miracles often come at another's expense.  Frank Peterson had a heart attack which rendered him unable to work.  He told Theo that he’d sign him over the ranch under the condition that he and his wife could live out the rest of their days on the land.  Now that it was the Spencer’s land, they were taking home much more profit from the herd.  Unfortunately, losing Frank meant losing a worker and they had to take on a ranch hand to help ease the load.  Claire also stopped working at the bar and instead worked the ranch in the mornings before school and in the afternoons afterwards, before grading homework and preparing lesson plans at night.  Tom graduated high school, and he came to a realization.  He didn’t want to be a rancher.  He and his mom went out to lunch, and Tom broke the news to her.  Claire knew it was coming, mother’s intuition.  They both knew how Theo would take it.  If he was to live on /his/ ranch, and it was his ranch now, he was going to be ranching.  Claire gave him enough money to start out on his own in anticipation of Theo’s reaction.  But before anything, Tom had to get a job.  He took the first thing he could find, a job working as a cook in a local restaurant.  He sure as hell wasn’t going to tell his dad he was a cook.  But he did tell him he didn’t want to be a rancher forever, and he was going to go off to find his own path.  Theo reacted as expected, and told him that he wasn’t going to have a damn freeloader living on his land.  So Tom left the family, getting a studio apartment in town.
    And as expected, Theo calmed down with time.  Tom would visit the ranch multiple days a week, and as Theo really started to get used to the new reality, he’d even sleep there from time to time.  He didn’t mind the work as a chef, but he didn’t love it either.  Tom wasn’t the most handsome man in the world, but he was tall and by God he was charming.  He had a way of speaking that made you feel like you were the most important thing on God’s green Earth, and he could carry on a conversation like nobody’s business.  A very laid back young man, he had a quick wit like his father, a gregarious personality, and an infectious smile.  It made it easy for him to attract women.  He had lots of girlfriends, none of them serious.  Tom loved dating.  He enjoyed getting to know people, getting to learn about who they were and what made them tick.  He loved figuring out how people fit into the town, and given the small size of the town Tom had a lot of fun thinking to himself about how they all added or took away from the congruence of the community.  He didn’t love getting too intimate with people though.  Whenever someone got to know him too well, he always felt like they were critical of him.  Can you imagine why?
    When he turned 21 he applied for a job in the bar his mom worked at.  He got the job, and he instantly fell in love with the work.  In another life, Tom would’ve made a great sociologist.  He really enjoyed navigating the different types of people who came into the bar.  He had an affinity for remembering names and personal information.  Tom would try to fit together the inner workings of their small town like a puzzle.  He’d try to keep up with what families were feuding, who was doing what, who was hooking up, it was almost like a game to him.  And he was good at the game.  It didn’t take long for Tom to develop a system for ensuring there were no fights in his bar.  Tom’s the kind of tough guy who doesn’t have to tell you how tough he is.  He seldom raises his voice, but he also doesn’t have to.  He may be slim, but he’s a very tall man and when he lowers his voice just an octave and tells you to stop dicking around, you tend to listen.  More often that not, he’d encourage them to go outside.  Tom has nothing against a fistfight, he’s been in more than his fair share of scuffles himself, just not inside his bar and not anything that’d leave more than scratches and bruises.  If they didn’t listen, he take the bat out.  That’d usually whip folk into shape.  And for the few fights that just wouldn’t break up, he’d take the shotgun out from underneath the bar and rack the shell into place.  Just the sound of a shell racking into place seemed to be enough to silence even the most rowdy fight.
    Tom was quite fond of his routine.  He got a nicer apartment just next to the bar.  He’d spend the day at the ranch, sometimes helping his dad and brothers out with the ranching, sometimes chatting it up with Bubba and the girls.  He had lunch with his mom every Wednesday.  And he’d work tend the bar during the evenings and into the nights.  Often, there’d be a patron from earlier in the night waiting to sleep over after his shift ended.  This kept up for three years until somebody interrupted his routine.
    Tom was now managing the place himself even though he’d only been there three years.  The owner had worked with his mom for years before Tom started there, and the man could see clear as day that Tom had a way with the line of work.  So when he retired, he had Tom manage the place while still technically owning the establishment himself.  Originally, this made many of Tom’s coworkers resentful as some of them had been working there many years longer than he had.  Yet they eventually all came around, Tom was a hard guy to be angry at.  It was an average Friday night shift at the bar.  It had reached the lull in the evening where the Friday night buzz had died down a bit and Tom could take a load off from mixing drinks and spend a bit of time wiping the counter and chatting with patrons.  He remembers the moment well.  He was idly chatting with a regular barfly, Hank.  The man was clearly an alcoholic, but a functional one and Tom didn’t have any moral qualms about feeding the man’s addiction.  He was a grown man who knew how to take care of himself, and everybody had their own shit they need to cope with and their own ways of coping with it.  Hank was on about some story he’d told Tom 20 times over where he single handedly killed 37 Viet Cong overseas using nothing but his Bowie knife and in one, his teeth.  The story was obviously bullshit, and each time he told it the details got just that much more ridiculous, but Tom had nothing against indulging the man.  Good Hearted Woman by Waylon Jenning was playing.  Tom always loved country music, and his time tending bar had made him more passionate about it.  As manager, he’d constantly get bands and singers to play on the little stage in the corner of the bar and occasionally ran line dancing nights.  She caught his eye the second she walked into the door, and suddenly Tom wasn’t hearing a word Hank was saying.  Hank took note of this, and his eyes moved to where Tom was looking.  He recalls Hank’s long gray beard twitching as a smile overtook his face and he said “Dibs.”  Tom promptly told him to fuck off as he put another beer in front of the man and declared that it was on the house.  Hank made some joke about how if he knew all it took to get free booze was calling dibs on a pretty woman, he’d do it more often.
Tom wasn’t listening, he walked over to the girl, asked what he could get her.  Evan Williams, neat.  He’d never forget that order.  Tom made some comment about how not many ladies come in ordering their bourbon neat.  That was his in, and the two began chatting.  He got her name, Elizabeth.  Everytime he was pulled away from her to get a patron another round felt like a lifetime.  He knew he’d have recognized her if she was from around town, but they also didn’t have many outsiders pouring through West Point, especially in those days.  He was intrigued.  After talking for a time he found out she was a recent college graduate from Furman University, another rarity in the small town of West Point.  Not only was she a college graduate, but it was in sociology, which tom had never even heard of.  Something impractical.  It turned out her parents lived in Louisville and she was driving over to go back home.  She couldn’t afford her own place after finishing college and was struggling to find any work that even remotely related to her area of study, so she was going to go back home to live with her parents until she could figure out her next step.  Yet, she felt great trepidation about doing so.  Her parents were rather well-off financially and supported her through college, and she was done feeling like she was mooching off other people.  After driving all day and finally only being an hour from home, she realized she needed a night before going to face them.  It’s not that she didn’t think they’d be supportive, she just wanted another night to herself.  So she pulled off the highway and rented a run down room in West Point’s motel and went out for a drink.
The two hit it off, talking until closing time.  When it was time for the bar to shut down for the night, she stayed and chatted with Tom while the man cleaned up the place.  Tom knew he wanted to ask for her number, but he felt much more nerves than he usually did in doing so.  All the same, he built up his courage and asked, and she gave it to him.  She went back to her motel room and Tom went back to his apartment.  The next day she went home and Tom, wanting to play it cool, tried to wait as long as he could before calling.
He lasted less than forty eight hours before he gave her a call.  She answered on the first ring.  They talked for a spell before Tom worked up the nerve to ask her on a date.  Being less than an hour’s drive from Louisville, Tom dipped into his savings and got into his beat up old pickup to drive over and take her out to a fancy restaurant.  Her family had money, so it felt like the thing to do.  Tom instantly felt out of his element.  Everyone in Louisville had nice trucks, even some sedans, and Tom was driving a beat up old rustbucket of a Ford that didn’t start one in every ten times.  He was in the nicest outfit he had, but it seemed out of touch in the fancy restaurant he took her too, and while he was trying to enjoy himself he couldn’t help but fret about how much the bill would set him back.  His conversation was more stiff than usual, unusual for the expert conversationalist.  He felt like she was so far out of his league, he was half expecting it was some kind of game show.  Like there’d be cameras revealing that they filmed the pilot of “pretty girl and the redneck” or some shit.
Elizabeth sensed this.  The two had a nice meal, a pleasant enough date, but Tom was feeling like he blew his shot.  After dinner Elizabeth told him that she had a good time, but she’d like to show him what she’d rather be doing.  She had him drive her back to her house and filled the bed of his truck with pillows and blankets.  They drove deep into unincorporated Hardin county at her instruction, until they could hear the flow of the Ohio river.  She then asked him to the bed of his truck, and the two lay there looking at the stars and talking.  There was no light pollution and no moon, so it seemed more stars than sky.  The two talked until four in the morning about everything and anything.
Their courting continued and Tom hung on to every second of it.  Tom was a humble man and he didn’t like bragging much, so he often kept to himself how important he thought the role of a bartender was in a small town environment.  How he felt they could bring people together and mend relationships.  About how he felt he had to know everything about everyone and their families to help keep the peace, and figure out how everybody contributed to their town in their own way.  But he liked sharing things with Lizzy, so he told her how he felt about his job.  Seeing the relations between Tom’s analysis of the job and her own study of sociology, she gave him some academic sociological articles to read.  Tom did, and afterwards when asked what he thought he told her that he pretty much had figured most of that stuff already in his life, and all he really learned were academic terms to give to concepts he already put together.  This got Elizabeth laughing as she told him that was what she felt college more or less was, at least in the social sciences.  Giving you fancy words to describe shit you already figured out.  It wasn’t long before Tom introduced Elizabeth to his family.  They all got along well enough, with Theo insisting that she was too good for his son.  Tom agreed.
After a year or so of courting, Tom took her down to the bend of the Ohio river where they went on their first date and he proposed to her.  She said yes.  Luckily for the Spencer’s, tradition dictates the bride’s father pays for the wedding.  The two had a big ceremony and it was a very pleasant celebration of their love.  Tom was never happier in his life.
About a year later, Ellie broke some news to the Spencer family.  Small town USA seemed to be dying, and this fact was causing Theodore Spencer a lot of anxiety.  The population of West Point seemed to be decreasing more and more every year with many old time friends migrating to the cities as jobs seemed to be harder to find.  He got a sense of security though in knowing that his children, the next generation of West Point, were staying put and working hard.  That’s why it hit him so hard to hear that not only was Ellie going to college, but she was doing so all the way across the country in the state of Oregon.  He felt betrayed.  Theodore had a tendency to yell at the girls less than he did with his sons, but he let loose on Ellie, telling her that if she left she shouldn’t bother coming back.  Claire was supportive, and in fact was the one helping her apply to schools and scholarships.  When Theo learned this, he felt betrayed by his wife too.  The man slept on the couch for a week of his own volition.  Eventually as she started packing her bags, the man settled down some.  He even gave his daughter a hug before she left for school, although he refused to go with her to Oregon to see her off.  He did tell her that there was a bed for her if she came home for Christmas, although he grumbled the words so quietly they were hard to make out.  Claire and Ellie set off on a discount flight with Spirit airlines at 3:02 in the morning to help her settle in her dorm.  Tom surprised her by waking up that early to drive the two to the airport.  He said his goodbyes to his sister and saw her off.
After about a year and a half of wonderful marriage, Tom told Lizzy he wanted to try for a child.  Elizabeth wanted a kid with Tom too, but she wasn’t sure the two were ready.  She suggested the two get a dog and see if they could keep him alive, then after some time with that they’d try for a kid.  The two went down to the pound and looked around.  Lizzy had her eye on a small mutt but Tom wanted a bigger dog.  Eventually, the two settled on a young German Shepherd, that looked to be about a year and a half.  The two figured he was likely born around the time the two were married.  They took him home and named him Buddy.  They’d come to just call him Bud.
Bud did not behave.  If you were to ask Tom now, he’d tell you that he smelled what was coming and was trying to warn the two.  The dog barked all the time, day and night.  The two did what they could to train him, but he just didn’t seem to settle down.  After a week of this, it had gotten to the point where he and Lizzy had started to consider sending him back to the pound.  The neighbors were starting to complain, after all.  Additionally, Elizabeth had been feeling quite ill and had a pain in her chest that was making it tough for her to deal with the dog.  Tom would spend the nights sitting near the dog.  Bud got tense when Tom would try to pet him, but seemed to calm down when Tom was in his sight.  So Tom would just sit near the dog for hours, just talking to him like he was a human being.  Bud didn’t understand a damn word being said, but it stopped the barking some.  Elizabeth, not wanting to worry Tom, went to the doctor one morning without letting him know.  She was given some tests, and informed she had breast cancer.
She came home and sat Tom down and broke the news.  Tom instantly went into problem solving mode.  First thing they did was go get a second opinion.  They concurred with the first, it was cancer.  So they started on treatment.  Tom was sure she was going to be beat it, there wasn’t even a doubt in his mind.  At first, Lizzy thought so too.  Oddly, Bud calmed down some after she started treatment, which furthered Tom’s theory that the dog smelled something was amiss and was trying to warn the two.  Buddy started to warm up to the two after that.  He even started sleeping on the foot of their bed.  Tom started to bring him on walks, and when Lizzy started the radiation Bud would cuddle with her when Tom had to go to work.  When she started chemotherapy, Lizzy stopped eating.  She had no appetite, and nothing seemed to relieve her pain.  Medical marijuana was illegal in Kentucky and the sentencing for it was disproportionately high, but Tom had done shitloads of research and he knew it would help her.  At the very least, it’d help her eat and cut some of the pain.  It wasn’t too hard to get if you knew people, and Tom knew lots of people.  He got one of his patrons to give him a supplier, and he brought home marijuana for Liz.  The two smoked it together when Tom didn’t have to work, and anytime Lizzy had a craving Tom would rush out to go get her whatever she was willing to eat.  She started to improve at one point, and Tom started to feel hopeful that the nightmare was ending.  It was unspeakably difficult for Tom to see his wife in this much pain.  Unfortunately, not one month later it came back with a vengeance.  They gave her surgeries, more chemo, everything under the sun.  Her parents helped pay for it.  It didn’t seem to matter, nothing was working.  Lizzy kept her spirits up as best she could.  Eventually, she didn’t really talk as much anymore, she was too tired.  So Tom just sat with her for hours and hours on end, silently, just holding her hand.  During one of those nights, she told Tom that she didn’t want to die in a hospital.
Tom, still in denial, assured her that she wouldn’t die at all.  Lizzy rose her voice, which was surprising as she could hardly speak at all.  She made Tom promise that he wouldn’t let her die in a hospital bed.  Tears forming, Tom did.  Within a week, he pushed the promise from his mind.  She’d beat this, he knew she would.  One month later, the doctor’s told Tom the opposite.  That he should consider putting her in hospice.
Tom went to the bar and had a drink.  Then another, and another after that.  He went to pour himself another, but he dropped the bottle.  He looked down and realized his hands were shaking.  He felt himself choke, which he then thought was odd as he hadn’t eaten anything.  And it was during that thought that the tears came, and along with them the screams.  He curled into a ball on the floor and sobbed.
He pulled himself together and came home.  Tom had done immense amounts of research on cancer and various treatments until the man felt he knew as much as the fucking doctors he kept taking her too.  Tonight he switched his research to how to help somebody terminal pass comfortably in their home.  He stayed up reading and researching until the sun rose, reading shitloads of literature about how to help somebody confront their own mortality and keep them comfortable as possible.  He set up the apartment in a manner that would be best for her to pass in.  He felt numb doing it, as if he was watching somebody else read the literature and move the furniture.  He got her more weed.  The two of them talked about everything and anything, just like that night of their first date.  Only this time, Lizzy did more listening than talking.  At the end of the night, she smiled and thanked him.  Assured him that she loved him.  Two weeks later, she died holding Tom’s hand with Bud curled up at her feet.  Tom tucked her body tight in the blankets and called the proper people to make arrangements.  He kissed her forehead one last time before they took her away.
The funeral was hard.  Tom felt it was more for her parents than for him.  They were upset that they weren’t there when she passed, even though they had seen her not two days prior.  Tom felt numb the whole time.  He was pleasantly surprised to see that Ellie had flown in for the funeral.  He later learned she paid for the ticket with her own money.  All the same, he didn’t say much to her or to anyone.  He gave a eulogy that he put together, it was fairly well written.  He didn’t show emotion whilst delivering it.  He didn’t feel much of anything.  At the end of the funeral, something changed that.  Theo, who hadn’t said a word to him since her passing, went up to Tom and wrapped him in a hug.  It was the first time he could remember his father hugging him since he was a very small boy.  Tom started to cry, and instead of insisting he hold it together, Theo simply hugged him tighter.
Tom went back to his apartment.  It smelled of weed and death.  He went and laid in the spot where she died.  Bud curled up at his feet.  He stayed there for about 20 hours before his body started to demand water.  He listened, and got up to get some.  Claire came by soon after along with lots of his favorite foods.  He ate, making idle small talk, forcing himself to give his mother the occasional smile so she’d think he was okay.  He certainly didn’t feel okay.  James and Carter stopped by once or twice, Jessica brought Bubba over fairly often, and Claire was there as often as Tom let her.  Theo would stop by every so often too, asking him to come home to the ranch.  After a week, the visits slowed and after a couple weeks they seemed to stop altogether.
The grief hit Tom hard and it didn’t seem to let up.  One of the other employees took over as manager of the bar whilst Lizzy was sick and Tom told him to keep the job.  He didn’t start working shifts again until a month after his wife died.  During that time Bud was the only thing that got him out of the house.  He’d take him on long walks deep into the backcountry.  Sometimes he’d leave at sunup and wouldn’t come back until the stars were out.  Some days he’d only take him on a brief walk around the block.  Either way, it was the only thing that really got him out of the house.  After a time, he started focusing his efforts on training Bud.  He researched dogs and how to train them with the same focus and intensity he researched cancer, and hospice after that.  He learned everything he could and spent hours upon hours enacting his research teaching Bud all sorts of neat tricks, some practical and some just for show.  After a time, he started going back to work shifts at the bar.  His heart wasn’t in it, but he was facing eviction and he needed to start bringing in income.  Bud didn’t like being alone, and Tom talked to the owner of the bar who agreed Bud could come to work with Tom so long as he stayed on the side of the bar where the alcohol wasn’t.  Bud was stimulated at first, but it wasn’t long before he relaxed in the environment, laying on the ground in the corner while Tom worked.  While Tom was a gregarious man, Bud was a more reserved dog and wasn’t overly affectionate to strangers.  Tom didn’t try to change this behavior, it was simply who Bud was and Tom was always more than happy to befriend someone different that him.  Buddy tolerated attention from drunk patrons, but he didn’t often return it.  When hunting season came, Tom took Bud with him and trained him to fetch birds and small game he shot.
About 9 months after his wife passed, Tom was not feeling any better.  He knew he was creeping up on that one year mark where people start to expect you to feel okay again.  He didn’t.  He still felt overwhelmed with grief and anguish.  And when Bud got sick, it triggered memories of his wife.  Tom panicked.  To Tom, Bud was his kin and one of the only things keeping him together and he instantly assumed the dog had cancer.  If you recall, Larry Jeffords was Theo’s war buddy who Theo stayed with when returning to the states.  The man had completed veterinary school and had worked as the Peterson’s vet, and now the Spencer’s, checking in on their herd and helping make sure they were all in good shape.  He had also become something of an uncle to the Spencer children, as well as one of the only men they’ve ever seen make their father laugh.  When Bud was sick, Tom called Larry and Larry told him to bring him over.  Tom did, and it was quite clear he was very concerned.  Larry checked him out and told him it was just heartworm and he’d be fine with a dose of medication.  He offered it to Tom for free, but Tom knew his dad would be beyond furious if he accepted charity of any kind, especially from Larry.  So Tom paid and thanked Larry.
Larry had lost his wife some years earlier to complications with Diabetes.  The man attended Liz’s funeral but hadn’t talked much to Tom.  Now it was just the two of them and Bud and Larry decided he had some things to say.  He told Tom a lot of things he had realized about his own experiences with grief.  He also told Tom that the pain doesn’t really go away.  You learn to live with it, but it’s always lingering.  It was one of the only talks Tom had with somebody about his wife’s death that actually helped him.  He expressed his gratitude to Larry for both the check up and the talk and he drove Bud home.  The dog recovered well with the prescribed treatment.
The one year anniversary of his wife came and went, and Tom came to a realization.  Everything about the apartment reminded him of her, and no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t get the lingering smell of weed and death out.  Everything in West Point, hell everything in Kentucky reminded him of her.  He didn’t want to forget her, that was the last thing he wanted, but he didn’t think he could go on if he couldn’t ever get her out of his head.  At this point, the population of West Point was continuing to shrink at a rather rapid pace and he knew his dad wouldn’t understand why he felt he had to go.  But Tom did know he had to leave.  Maybe not for long, maybe only for a few months, but he had to go somewhere he could get a fresh start and rebuild his life.  Learn to live with the grief.  He always wanted to see the ocean and he still wanted to be with kin, so Ellie came to mind.  He went to the ranch and broke the news, framing it like he was going to keep an eye on Ellie and make sure she was getting on okay even though the truth was he needed to give himself some space from Kentucky.  Theo gave a standard cranky answer, but he had been mellowing out some as he’s been getting older and the backlash, while present, wasn’t over the top.  He took the rest of his savings, packed up his possessions in his old pickup, and hit the road with Bud.
Tom took his time driving across the country.  He’d never gotten the opportunity to travel much and he used the experience to see the country, sleeping in his truck with Bud along the way to save some money.  It was difficult as he kept wanting to share what he was seeing with Liz, but there were times where he was having such a fun experience he could keep a smile on his face.  He found it interesting to meet new people from new places and see new sights.  Eventually he made his way to Astoria.  He got a job at a bar a town over.  He hated it.  It was a bar that featured in craft beers, no hard liquor, and it was frequented by people best described as hipsters.  Tom could get along with anybody, but it wasn’t his crowd.  He managed to find a dilapidated old wood building in Astoria with a neon sign declaring it was “Freddie’s Place.”  Tom entered, curious what he’d see.  He found six patrons, all of who he could recognize as regulars, and a tough looking woman with half of her head shaved and the other half having hair down to her shoulders.  Tom sat at the bar.  She introduced herself as Dianne and the two spoke.  She told him that Frankie’s place used to be quite the popular establishment until Frankie decided he didn’t give half a shit about the place.  He was a wealthy man who about fifteen years back decided it’d be fun to open up a bar.  Just one year in, he decided everyone who goes to bars are fucking assholes he doesn’t want anything to do with and he stopped providing upkeep for the place.  He’d throw enough money to keep it running, supplying booze and a skeletal staff, and would take what little profits came out.  It was barely enough to keep the place alive.
Tom saw a project.  He started chatting more with Dianne about the place and eventually asked for Frankie’s number.  He called the man saying he had a “business proposition.”  Frankie agreed to meet with him.  He was a cantankerous, balding old man who immediately started acting like he was meeting Tom as a personal favor.  Tom, who had enough experience with cantankerous old men to last five lifetimes, was hardly intimidated.  He told Frankie that if he provided the money for the materials, Tom would supply the labor himself to totally renovate the bar and turn it into a hit destination in town.  He told Frankie that he believed he could make him a huge profit.  Frankie would still be the owner, but Tom would manage the place and hire on a bigger staff once enough money started coming in to cover it.  Frankie was intrigued by the boldness of the proposal and called Tom’s reference, the owner of the old bar he managed.  With a glowing recommendation from his former boss, Frankie took him up on the offer.  The old man had plenty of money anyways, so what did he have to lose?
Tom already picked up on plenty of construction from working the ranch most his life.  And between his wife’s cancer, preparing her for death, and training Bud he had become quite the adept researcher.  Anything he didn’t already know how to do he researched.  Having spent as much time as he has doing manual labor, he picked up anything he didn’t already know fairly quickly.  He helped repair the old building while still retaining it’s retro wooden look.  He built a stage for bands and performers to play at.  He fixed up the bar and gave it a fancy finish.  He even convinced Frankie to invest in a nice sound system, a couple TVs, some pool tables, darts, and an oven in the back.  Tom quickly realized he had a way of getting Frankie to cave.  To most he seemed like a cranky old man, but compared to Theo the man was about as soft as they came.  All during this time, he would take turns with Dianne tending the bar.  Eventually, she started helping with the labor.  It was all finished within six months, and Tom made the “grand re-opening” event plenty of attention.  He even got Ellie to hand posters out to the older students at the college.  It was packed.  The flow of customers stayed consistently, and it wasn’t long before Frankie earned back every cent he invested.  Tom hired on more bartenders, a quieter man named Reggie and a young man who looked barely 21 named Andy.  Now that the bar was a hit destination in town and not an embarrassing mess, Frankie actually came and worked the occasional shift.  Although when he was there, it was more to brag to random patrons about how /he/ owned the place and he was a rather poor bartender.  Tom wasn’t going to say anything though, he already pushed his luck enough with the old man.  Besides, he only came in once a week or so.  Tom bought a shotgun and a bat to put under the bar and he managed to convince Frankie to let him bring Bud to work, same as he did at his other bar, so long as he stayed on the side of the bar where the food and beverages weren’t.  Tom put together events and music and within a year of him introducing himself to Frankie he had turned the dilapidated old buildings into a fresh, hip bar he enjoyed working at.  Tom got himself a decent enough apartment in town, found a dog park Bud liked, and even got an open invitation to use Reggie’s hunting cabin in Eastern Oregon whenever he wanted.  Bud liked the Pacific ocean almost as much as Tom did, even if it was damn cold.  He began to befriend some of the bar’s patrons and his coworkers, and he spent time with Ellie whenever he could.  He was starting to make a life for himself, one where he was learning to live with his grief.  Still, he’s very sad a lot of the time.