Back to Bizkaia: A Basque-American Memoir

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133 “You could move back to Spain,” I quipped. “Hell no!” I chuckled. The rain beat on the windshield. The British female said, “Rerouting.” 18 “Someday, dese sheep, dey belong to you, but won’t be hundred sheep; you goin’ to have thousand or more. Dat’s how dis country is, if you work hard enough.” These words greeted me weekly as I grew up. Dad placed his limitations at a hundred sheep, the size of our herd. Given a second lifetime lived through me, Dad allowed his ambition to expand tenfold, perhaps because he had more faith in his children, or because half his life was chewed up by coming to America, working for others, gaining citizenship, and learning the language. The words came so often that I learned them as rote, and eventually my expectations aligned with his, one and the same. I saw myself a sheepherder, or as Dad described the profession, a rancher. The difference between the two was ownership. At dinner it came. “You goin’ to own one ranch someday. You mark my word.” And it followed at breakfast. “You got to learn ’bout runnin’ a ranch.” He told friends, relatives, anyone who cared to listen. At Basque festivals, he reinforced the message among a dense audience of red-sashed, beret-wearing men who, I imagined, had similar dreams for their sons. Just as I never doubted God’s Book of Names, I never doubted Dad’s rendition of my destiny. In bed at night, I pictured myself in my mind’s eye, herding, gutting, moving sprinklers, fixing fences, building barns, taking care of all of Dad’s daily chores. I had little knowledge of how a sheepherder differed from a rancher, though knowing there was a gap, I filled it with more of the same— more herding, gutting, sprinklers, fences, barns. I went with Dad to Paris Ranch near Jiggs to help shear sheep, a job Dad did on weekends for extra money, ten to fifteen dollars per head. Dad bound three legs and moved the shears along the sheep’s underbelly, and I held the fourth leg while a ranch hand supervised. “Can your boy shear sheep?” asked the chubby fellow with a bulbous belly flopping over his buckle. Dad powered off the shears. Breathing heavy, he said, “He don’ need to.” 134 “Why’s that?” asked the butter-belly. “Someday, he goin’ to own one ranch and we both goin’ to work for him.” So the pressure mounted. I fully expected a life on the range, roaming Nevada’s mountains, lambing in spring, yanking their gonads with my teeth, shearing wool, enduring summer heat, and hunkering down to pass the winter. I even expected one day to slash the throat, crack the spine, and butcher the beasts for meat. Dad’s words resonated morning and night in my head. No others squeezed in—until the third grade. Marta Moschetti, a silver-haired peach of a lady, asked in class a rather pernicious question—“What do you want to be when you grow up?” Around the room, my classmates said, “Fireman” or “Doctor” or “Nurse” or some other conventional answer. “I’m going to be a rancher,” I told her. “What does a rancher do?” Her soft voice matched a kind face of warmth. “Someone who herds sheep, lots of sheep, more than a hundred.” “Have you always wanted to be a rancher?” she asked. I thought a moment. “Yes.” “Have you ever wanted to be anything else?” I thought again. “No, just a rancher.” “I see.” “What about you?” Mrs. Moschetti pointed at Glenna, a petite auburnhaired girl in the second row. “Have you always wanted to be a nurse?” “Pretty much,” she said through a smile of discolored teeth. “I like to ride horses, so I’d do that too. Yeah, I think that’s what I want to do, is ride horses.” “And you, Stacey.” The long pointer roamed the room. “Did you always want to play the guitar?” “I think driving racecars would be a blast,” she said, trying to hide her gum. “Racecars? Quite daring,” said Mrs. Moschetti. “Please place your gum in the trash can.” “What about you, Brian?” The pointer cast about. “Did you always want to be a fireman?” “Well, that and a train engineer,” he said. People chuckled. Brian was the nose-picker whom everyone tormented to satisfy child cruelty. “That’s enough, everyone,” said Mrs. Moschetti, and we hushed instantly. Her pointer came...