Michael the Basque

Michael the Basque


It was mostly my fault that Cowboy Kevin and I were rolling sheep wire off a cliff and into Mazzoni's draw on the morning of the Fourth of July. A couple of months earlier, when Kevin rattled through the front gate of Real Acres looking for a job working with the stout gray Hannoverian horses he had spotted from the highway, I'd not mentioned that there were a hundred head of ewes up in the hills, that the bosswoman had given each of them a name, that she dyed them pink during deer season, and that she had been reading pamphlets about maximizing forage through pasture rotation. If I’d come clean about the sheep, the chances were pretty good that Kevin would’ve rolled on down the road and I'd been fencing alone.
We were lugging rolls of four-foot field fencing on our nation’s birthday because the other option was to be down around the main ranch house helping the boss and her perpetual guests prepare for the gala party that was to be thrown that afternoon. Kevin was a buckaroo, good with horse flesh, wore his pants tucked into his boots, and didn't take kindly to stirring marinade or folding paper napkins. I'd seen a couple of holidays come and go on Real Acres. Risking a hernia was easier than listening to ten performance artists trying to invent the ultimate wine cooler. Besides, I had done my part for the arts by manufacturing gallons of The Potato Salad the night before.
Kevin’s boon companion was a three-year-old pet raven named Bro that he'd incubated and hatched under a goose-necked lamp in a bunkhouse somewhere in the Musselshell country of central Montana. Bro was a full-fledged bird and could fly as well as a wild raven, but seldom needed to take wing, preferring instead to ride on Kevin's right shoulder. Kevin's shirt pockets were always full of sunflower seeds and Bro helped himself. They both dipped Copenhagen.
By mid-afternoon we had tired of watching rolls of wire bouncing down through the boulder patch, and were sitting in the shade discussing the fact that we hadn't died young afterall, when the big triangle dinner bell on the ranch house porch called us to make an appearance at the party. Kevin, Bro and I hopped in the work truck and granny-geared down off the precipice.
In keeping with the bosswoman's theme of the week, the guest of honor at this party was Michael the Basque, a seventy-year-old retired sheepherder who was a living library of sheep information. ("No be fraid sheep. We be lucky. Sheep no can bite.") I had partied with Michael the Basque before, and warned Kevin to go light on Michael's "sheepy punch," which did bite, being composed of equal parts of Wild Turkey, orange juice and lime Koolaid.
Michael was a good, honest, generous person, but, like all of us, he packed around a couple of minor personality flaws. One shortcoming was in his choice of dogs. He kept Chihuahuas, bred the critters, and was always accompanied by an entourage of six or eight of the yappy, asthmatic, hairless, little chunks of stew meat. You made no sudden moves in Michael's presence, for fear of either being ankle-bit or squishing one of the pack.
Michael's other quirk might have evolved from his having been born on the French side of the Pyrenees. When he was half-full of sheepy punch and there was a human female within forty acres, Michael the Basque transformed into Michael the Cute, but Crude.
At this particular gathering there were three gallons of sheepy punch, five types of guacamole, hillocks of mutton kabob, the spud salad, pasta in several permutations, and rice-o-rama, all garnished with a first-rate assortment of human females. Michael fired up his act. I had seen it before.
The first installment involved going behind his truck and rearranging his clothing so that a stick and a glove took the place of his left arm and hand. Then he began a whirling dance, singing the French national anthem and accompanying himself on air fiddle. At the apex of emotion in the song, when the French nation was surviving all turmoil, Michael stopped whirling, stood in front of three women in his audience, and out of his green gabardine pants fly came his left index finger, which then conducted the rest of the song. Ah, that wacky sheepherder humor. Kevin and Bro turned their backs to the stage.
The second act involved a pantomimed sheep castration wherein Michael, with the assistance of his dogs, jumped a phantom lamb, flipped it over, cut the scrotum with an imaginary knife, then stretched out the testicles, bit the chord in two with his Medicare teeth, and came up smiling, with his tongue pushing a big lump in his cheek.
At this performance, though, things backfired a little on Michael. Just as he stood up with the pretend sheep oyster in his mouth, wide-eyed and checking for hardening nipples in his audience, Bro crapped down the back of Kevin's shirt. This hit a hidden nerve in Michael the Basque's stomach. He gagged had and sprayed second-hand sheepy punch all over the food table. The domino effect set in, and half the guests began to wretch. Bro took advantage of the confusion to take to the wing and attack the Chihuahuas.
That pretty much ended the party. By the time the bosslady had sorted out the mess, Michael the Basque was passed out in the front yard, his dogs were locked in the chicken coop, the guests were in their cars and headed out of the ranch, and Kevin had packed his duffelbag, drawn his wages, and split for Montana. Last I heard, he and Bro were working at an auction yard somewhere near Helena. I ended up finishing the cross fence by myself.