They had called it a ranch and it had been, but one day the old man said it was impossible to run cows in such tough country where they fell off cliffs, disappeared into sinkholes... where hay couldn't grow but leafy spurge and Canadian thistle throve...The old man wangled a job delivering mail, but looked guilty fumbling bills into his neighbors' mailboxes.
Although pragmatism told Mero's old man to find another way of bringing in money and paying his bills, he feels like a hypocrite to have done so. He is shoving bills into their mailboxes, knowing that they cannot pay them, because unlike him they are still trying to rely on ranching in almost impossible terrain to provide them with a living. This feeling of awkwardness, thought, isn't going to pay his own bills, and in order to do so he gives up on ranching and the history that goes along with it. This makes him a sell-out in Mero's eyes, and also in his own.
He heard the amazement in her voice, knew she was plotting his age, figuring he had to be eighty three, a year or so older than Rollo, figuring he must be dotting around on a cane to, drooling the tiny days away; she was probably touching her own faded hair. He flexed his muscular arms, bend his knees, thought he could dodge an emu.
Age is nothing but a number; this is something that he feels very strongly, and not only is he proud of the strength he has retained despite his years, he is also a little irritated by the way in which people calculate how old he must be and judge his physical capacity accordingly. He alludes to the image of a man his age "drooling" and "dotting around on a cane". These are the images of older age that we are always given, yet he defies these. He is still muscular, strong and has terrific reflexes. The fact he feels he could dodge out of the way of an oncoming emu emphasize this.
