Oops . . .

Once, with my friend Eric, we were flying close to the ground, just to see the land rush by, to feel the speed, I think, when we topped a ridge surprising a team of oxen yoked and quietly resting under the shade of a massive willow tree, causing the animals to spook. The oxen were huge, but had no problem taking off like rabbits, running for several hundred feet at great speed and leaping in concert over a pole enclosure —yoked and all—then dashing across a clearing leading down to a small creek that was deep enough to slow them down, thankfully, and tire them out. Soon after, they ran out of steam, stopping on the other side of the stream to have a blow, their heads hanging low, their sides inflating in an effort to breathe deep.

A minute later we were landing on said clearing, red-faced to be sure, ready to take the consequences, apologize and pay for damages if it came to that, all the time figuring the owner or whoever was in charge of the beautiful animals would be close by and fuming. Only there was nobody around. There was a road there, and while Eric went to scout the road for humans of any variety, I went to find the oxen and bring them back, which I knew how to do having practiced some on how to handle them; not enough to make them do useful work, which would take years, but enough to turn them around.

The owner was there, a hundred feet down the road, dead drunk and face down in the middle of it: he hadn’t heard or seen a thing. With Eric’s help, he manage to stand when he saw me bringing his team back, then managed to thank me for doing so, claiming that Caballero and Señorito (his oxen) were always wandering off for no reason at all.

Then while Eric helped him sit on a nearby log, I went to the helicopter and brought back a thermos full of coffee as well as a plastic cup.

In the end, we lucked out, and there were no damages, but still a rude thing to do to the poor guy, who no doubt depended on healthy, fresh oxen, not a team exhausted from racing helter-skelter through the countryside.

I know the truth is best shared—generally speaking—but neither one of us wanted to risk it, or take advantage of the poor fellow enough to enlighten him on what truly happened, thinking that he was happy enough in his condition, with his coffee. And he seemed to be. Delighted in fact. We left a few minutes later when he started to doze. By then the oxen were chewing their cud and so tired from their previous effort they didn’t budge an inch when we started her up, buckled us down, and took off.