Mezcal
I focus on the trail, avoiding the slippery spots, using my outstretched hand rather than my face to break through the cobwebs. A sound cuts through the noise of my breathing, one that I haven’t heard in decades. I stop to give it my full attention. It is lonely, soulful, ugly. It hangs in the air as memories wash over me, creating a longing for a soft muzzle, a flicking ear, and a whiskery chin. The sound…was a heehaw.
Mezcal. I add him to the list of things from my childhood that I didn’t realize were strange. Over the years of my upbringing in central New York, we had a menagerie of animals ranging from goats to pheasants, pigs to peacocks. I never thought much about the ever-changing roster in our barn. It was part of the background of my childhood: bike rides, playing The Dukes of Hazzard, mucking in the stream, and the animals in the barn. When a horse trailer arrived to deliver a donkey, I was indifferent. Granted, the fact that there was a small group of friends and neighbors gathered should have been a clue, but I was more put out at having to pause my playing than I was curious about what was happening.
The metal trailer thundered as the beast inside kicked its walls. It shuddered as murderous noises, shrieks, and wails echoed in its dark depths. Through the window, my father managed to loop a rope around the beast’s neck. He shouted at us to back up as he swung open the trailer gate, gripping the rope lead tightly. The devil himself burst from that trailer, rearing, kicking, his eyes wild with terror, his nostrils flaring in anger. My father dug his heels into the ground, holding on to the lead for dear life. Gritting his teeth, he wrestled the bucking animal into the paddock, where it attacked a wooden milking stool, pinning it to the ground with his forelimbs, biting it with his long, protruding teeth. What fresh hell had just been bestowed on us? Why had my father brought this hideous creature into our pastoral existence? This animal was terrifying. Cujo reincarnate. I would never go in the barn again.
The donkey, christened Mezcal, could jump clear over any fence. He kicked through boards in his stall. He reared when anyone approached. He was wild. Literally. He had come from a herd of wild donkeys in the Grand Canyon. In order to manage the herd size, the Bureau of Land Management rounded up donkeys and put them up for adoption. My father had adopted this one. I don’t know why. I never asked. Somehow, pre-internet, word had travelled clear across the country that this donkey needed a home. The donkey begged to differ.
Over the following weeks I watched from the shadows as my father worked to acclimate Mezcal. He got a halter on him, then trained him on a lead. Once, prematurely, he tried to ride him. Only once. But after a time, he was able to approach him and pet him. I tentatively began to visit the creature, patiently waiting for him to come to my outstretched hand, occasionally holding a carrot as enticement. His eyes held challenge, resentment, boredom. Time passed, and I was able to brush my fingers against his muzzle; the softest muzzle I had ever felt. He enjoyed having his chin tickled, his bottom lip quivering and flapping. I stroked his long ears, soft as down.
Eventually, Mezcal could be harnessed. He could pull a cart, or dead trees from the woods, or to my utter glee, a child on cross country skis. He roamed the pasture with the horses, though to them he was always an outsider. He came to the barn during evening chores, and he looked forward to visits from my grandfather, who could win over any animal. At mealtimes, he would heehaw. Haaaaaaaaw-heehaw-heeahaw-heehaw. The sharp sound echoed and could be heard from at least a mile away. I heard it from my grandmother’s house down the road, from my bike as I rode off with my friends, from the bridge while we peered over the railing at the water. It soon sounded like home to me.
I now visited Mezcal regularly. Gone was the vicious beast that had burst forth from the trailer. What had emerged instead was a creature with an intelligence born of two lives, one wild and rugged, one solitary and tame. He would heehaw in greeting when I got off the school bus, or anytime a car pulled in the driveway. We’d stand forehead to forehead, me stroking each side of his neck. He would rest his chin on my shoulder, the weight of him bearing down on me. I would ask him for a kiss, and he would graze his soft muzzle across my cheek. He was my friend.
After several years, my father bought Mezcal a mate, and soon there was a baby. I can say with complete confidence that there is nothing cuter than a baby donkey. They are all spindly legs, huge eyes, and enormous ears. Our Spanish foreign exchange student named the baby Pepita Burrita, and she was perfection, but Mezcal was still my favorite. He held me with his gaze, spoke to me with his eyes. His gentle presence was comforting, as was his raucous greeting.
Mezcal’s mate and Pepita Burrita were sold. I went off to college then moved away. I could always count on that heehaw to greet me when I returned home. Then, on one visit, it was missing. I worried something had happened, but it was nothing so dramatic. My father had decided to send Mezcal to a farm where he would be with other donkeys to live out his remaining years. I was struck by how much this bothered me. Ours was the only home he’d known since being ripped away from his birthplace. He’d given us so much and I felt we owed it to him to keep him until the end. But the decision wasn’t mine. I did like the idea that he would be in good company. I only wish I’d known the last time I would hear his call and feel his whiskery kiss. I wish I’d said goodbye, so that one day, while out for a run, the sound that cut through the woods would be less haunting. Nevertheless, I smile with remembrance. And longing.