Are You Sitting Down? (2 page)

Travis

“What happened to your goat?”

Mom had asked me to stop at Four Points Grocery on the way
home to Dogwood
to pick up her ham.
She’d left it there two days ago to be smoked.
It was a service Mr. Greer, the owner and sole employee for as long as I could remember, o
f
fered during the holiday season.

“What
’d ya
say?
You
Lorraine
’s boy, ain’t cha?”
Mr. Greer was hard of hearing.

“Yes sir, I am.
I asked what happened to your
goat.
”

“I got her ham ready.
Be right back.”

Mr. Greer lived in a small farm house behind the gr
o
cery in a grove of trees surrounded by an old rickety fence.
He kept a black pygmy goat tied to the fence during the warmer months.
As a child, I always looked for the goat when we drove by g
o
ing to and from school.
Sometimes
Mom would stop in for a fill up or just for a bag of ice.
I’d sit in the car and
through the window I’d
watch the goat nibble shoots of grass as far away as his leash would let him.

Four Points Grocery was the only convenience store from here to
the town of
Ruby Dregs
, which was only five miles away.
To the few hundred people who lived in
Dogwood
and kept Mr. Greer in business, they preferred not having to “go to town” just for a dozen eggs or to buy a stamp.
Veterans played checkers in the corner atop a pickle barrel.
Mr. Greer still sold penny candy
and cold drinks in glass bottles.

The highway had been paved and painted with a dotted line years ago, but you almost expected to see horse drawn wagons in his parking lot.
It was as if someone had put a glass dome over the place to preserve it just the way it was.
It was the way it’d always been.
Although there was snow on the ground now and the goat was probably keeping warm in Mr. Greer’s barn, I was sincerely interested in that
grass-eating
childhood lan
d
mark of mine.

“Here’s
that
ham,” Mr. Greer said returning from the back
room
.
“What else did you need?”

The cowbell on the door clanged behind me.
I turned to see some local farmer coming in
, clad head to toe in camo
u
flage
.
He knocked his snow-caked boots against the threshold.

“Jeb, I got that goat all wrapped up for ya.
Right there on the counter,” Mr. Greer
called out
.

Jeb didn’t say a word.
The floorboards creaked beneath his pot belly weight.
He picked up the mound of white butcher p
a
per wrapped in twine,
laid
two wrinkl
ed
twenty dollar bills on the counter, and walked back out into the snow.

“Was that your little black goat
?”
I asked wide-eyed and confused.

“Sy?
Naw, old Sy died bout two summers ago.
Laid him to rest
on that hill where he always liked to graze
.
Lots of folks miss him. They put a big write-up about it in the paper.”

“I’m sorry.
I would have liked to have read that.”
I made a mental note to ask my mom about the article.
It seemed trite, but I was somehow interested in the life of that goat that had grazed serenely in the distance of the gas station for so many years.

“
Old Sy was twenty years old.
Goat dat old no good for eatin
’
.
Meat too tough. Jeb there is an ole goat farmer
.
He
knows
.
That goat he brought in sure was tender.
You like
Billy
goat, boy?”

“
No, sir.
Only if they are in
a
petting zoo.”

Mr. Greer
laughed
a toothless
chuckle that was more like a whistle
.

“That’s a purty ham y
a
Momma got there.
You like ham?”

“Not really.”

“
Turkey
?”

“Now you’re talking, but we ha
ve
that at Thanksgiving.
We always have h
am for Christmas.”

“Ah, I got a turkey
you’d like
.
Deep fried.
How bout that?”

“No, that’s okay
.
Thank you
,” I said.

Mr. Greer was already fishing a sample out and handing it to me
on a
paper
napkin.
I took the white meat from his ca
l
lused fingers.
The turkey’s
encrusted skin melted in my mouth like butter
.
The dry meat and kick of spices
reminded me why I liked Thanksgiving better
.
I couldn’t resist.
I paid Mr. Greer for smoking
the
ham and then bought the turkey as well.
B
e
tween Jeb and me, Mr. Greer had made eighty dollars.
Something told me his modest living made him feel like a rich man that day.
After all, the man still sold pickled eggs
for a nickel
out of large five gallon jars of brine.

He helped me to the car with the
turkey and ham
a
l
though I told him he didn’t have to
.
I wish
ed
him a
Merry Christmas, and then offered
my
hand so that he wouldn’t fall on the slushy pavement
while going back inside
.
He smelled strongly of t
o
bacco and whiskey
. H
e always did.
He stood at the door of the grocery
with a heavy
dentureless
frown on his face
and watched me like a parent
who was
sad to see
his
loved ones go
when the holidays were over
.

I looked up the hill and was sad to see one of my faint childhood memories replaced with a wooden cross and some faded silk flowers
half buried in the snow
that I hadn’t seen there before
.
It’s odd how our eyes trick us sometimes because we are so accustomed to seeing the same things in the same places everyday; and when it’s been so long and they suddenly aren’t there anymore, it’s hard to see what replaced them.
The sound of a car pulling up behind me broke my thought.
I turned to make sure I was
not in
their way.

“Merry Christmas, Travis,” the driver called out the window
as it rolled down
.

I recognized the
wispy falsetto
voice immediately.
It was Justin’s father.

“Merry Christmas, Mr. Black,” I said leaning down to
his
window to speak to him as he put the car in park.

“When did you get into town?”
h
e asked.

“I actually just arrived.
I haven’t even been home yet.
Mom called and asked me to pick up
the
ham on the way in
.”

He glanced over at my car out of the corner of his eye.
The wrapped gifts in the passenger seat assured him I wasn’t lying.
Something deep inside him wanted to find Justin sitting there.
I longed for the same sometimes.

“
Nobody smokes ‘em like old Greer, eh?
I s
ee
your mother
each
week at
church
.
Lorraine
looks good,” he said looking back up at me.

“She’s doing very well, sir.
What about Mrs. Black?”

“She has her ups and downs.
Some days are better than others.
Tomorrow won’t be a good one
. T
he holidays never are.
You should stop in and see her.
Visit with us a while.”

“I just might do that.”
This was
a
lie.

I had not seen the Blacks since Justin’s funeral.
They
had
made it a point to tell me several times that they didn’t hold me responsible for not getting Justin back to them soon enough.
In the hospital that day, on the phone,
at the funeral home,
even in a birthday card the following year, they co
n
stantly reminded me it wasn’t my fault.