Distinctly Montana Magazine

62 D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA N A M A G A Z I N E • S U M M E R 2 0 2 3 I t's a feeling I've experienced many times since—standing before a boss, a teacher, or a wife utterly, woefully unpre- pared for whatever they've called on me to do. Whatever task I've forgotten in the ill-fated hopes that it'll disappear if I only sublimate it reappears with a vengeance. It manifests like a fist in my stomach. Oh no, I think; you're in for it now, Gary. You've forgotten your anniversary, Aunt's birthday, or buddy's interven- tion. The first time I can remember feeling that heady mixture of shame and terror was on a rainy late Spring day in fourth grade, when my teacher Mrs. Harvey announced that it was time for us to do our book reports. Uh oh. Book reports? I vaguely remember having been assigned something to read and talk about in front of the class. What was it? Mrs. Harvey told us that we would be going in the alpha- betical order of our last names. I tried to think of everyone with a name after mine. Darrel Smith? Vivian Thom- as? Little Bobby Weatherly? Good thing for me that most of the class were Andersons, Joneses, and Nelsons. That gave me time to remember what the book was and fabricate a convincingly vague description of what the book was probably about. I fidgeted nervously through descriptions of Mr. Popper's Pen- guins and Sword in the Stone, Farmer Boy and The Story of Ferdi- nand, trying all the while to remember what I had been supposed to read. I could almost picture the cover of the thing from when I had glanced at it for about five seconds before tossing it under my bed and running outside to catch frogs or something. I seemed to remember a couple of red stripes, and it was a short title. Was there an image on the cover? The suggestion of a silhouette? Still, I might have had an ace up my sleeve, I figured. There was no way in God's purple mountain majesty that the teacher had read every book on which we were supposed to report. To do such a thing would take years, maybe even decades. Twenty or so kids, and each book about 200 pages mean that for her to read them all, she'd have to plow through something like (I struggled to do the math, trying to definitively nail down the number of zeroes) 40,000 pages! I smiled. Now I knew I had her. No one could read that many pages. In fact, I thought as little Paul Buckley told us what hap- pened in something called Five Children & It, she probably hasn't read any of these books at all! If I were the teacher, I real- OLD BROKE RANCHER BY GARY SHELTON The Old Broke Rancher DELIVERS HIS BOOK REPORT

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