The Good Oak

Ten: Hamar

ten I hamar For the next couple of hours, Aitatxi taught me both Basque and shepherding. "Eguzkia," Aitatxi said as he pointed up at the sun. I repeated the word. "A-goos-key-uh." "Come gau-night," Aitatxi said. "Eguzkia, he trade places with wife, illargia-moon." "Ill-r-g-doesn't Basque have any easy words?" ttBa." "Great." In English, Aitatxi told me how "we" needed to keep the sheep close together. "So sheeps, they one big ball of wool," Aitatxi said. The dogs pretty much took care of this by constantly circling the flock. Aitatxi's job, and now mine, was to make sure none of the sheep broke away from the flock and wandered off into the desert. "Sheeps, they go every way baina right way you let them," Aitatxi said. Aitatxi told me about the danger of "jumping" cholla cactus that grew like small, gnarled trees over the sand. "Sheeps, they get in cactus we big time trouble. Thorns, they like nshhooks. I hate those." "Hate, that big word," I said. "Really two words-hat with the e." "Ba, gaixua, and in desert, I no like both." Aitatxi pointed with his walking stick at some black vultures circling in the distance. "Black bird, they smell death. We no want them fly overgure ardiak-our sheeps." Whenever a sheep ran off from the main flock, Aitatxi would tell me what to say to Atarrabi and Mikelats to get it back. I tried to say the words just like Aitatxi did, but sometimes it was like my mouth was full of marbles. When that happened, the dogs turned toward me with raised ears and say-what? looks on their faces. "Berriz, " Aitatxi would say to me, and with his help I'd repeat the words and get the dogs going. Even though I suspected I was tricked into learning both shepherding and Basque by Aitatxi, I didn't mind. I liked the feeling of being in control for a change. And when I got the words Aitatxi told me right and the dogs did exactly what I wanted, he would say, "Untxa" and I'd nnd myself unable to stop grinning. There was another reason I liked saying the Basque words Aitatxi taught me. Even though most of the words came out sounding nothing like Aitatxi's, some, like "haugi hunat"come here, and "guazen fite"-go quickly, rolled off my tongue as if I'd said them a hundred times. It was like remembering something I didn't know I knew-or someone. I heard my mother's voice as I spoke the same words she must have said to me as a baby. And while I still couldn't put together a solid picture of my mother in my head, at least now I knew what she sounded like. 70 The desert in front of us remained brown, with the only really green patches coming from some bushes with tiny, shiny leaves. The hotter it got, the greener the bushes looked. And while the sheep nibbled at any plant that poked up through the sand, including the cholla, they stayed away from the shiny bushes. I found out why when I pulled off a handful of leaves from one of the bushes. The leaves stuck to my fingers like they were coated in honey. But when 1 raised the leaves to my nose, it wasn't sweet honey 1smelled but something like garlic dipped in vinegar. I sneezed. 1 wiped the leaves off on my pants, but even when they were gone the smell hung on my skin. "It creosote," Aitatxi said, and told me that after a rain the whole desert smelled of the plant. "Only no soflera-strong. Only tickle nose, make clear head. Good when you got cold." 1 questioned Aitatxi about everything we passed and soon learned that what he knew about the desert was limited to things that he could use and things that caused him problems. Everything else Aitatxi dismissed with a shrug and "I no like." Quail were good to eat. Hawks were just big birds that flew by. Coyotes were Deabrua's-the devil's children and had to be watched for. Jackrabbits tasted like "bottom of shoe" and made the "txakurrak forget about sheeps." And snakes, rattlers especially, were all "thing you no want a wake up in bedroll next you." As the day wore...