Goat (3 page)

Boy or girl? I say.

That doesn’t matter now does it? the fox says. I’m a fox and you’re talking to a fox here in this field. Does it really matter if I’m a boy or a girl?

No, you’re right, I say, I was just curious and then I think about asking the fox how to leave, how to get out, and then I do.

Leave? the fox says. Why would you want to leave? This is a great field. You know how fast I am, right?

No, I don’t know how fast you are.

Yeah, very fast, I’m very fast. You should see it, these dogs, they think they can get me with their noses and yelps, those yelps like something dying, but they’re dumb, I mean come on, what do they think, they can come in here where I live, on my place, my dirt, this is mine, you know I own it?

I nod.

They run around yelping and think I’ll be scared. You wanna see my teeth?

Yeah. The fox turns the black lips up, these small sharp white teeth lining the dark gums, drops the lips back down.

Nice huh? the fox says.

Yeah.

Go on, the fox says, let me see your teeth and I pull my gums up. Those aren’t too bad, the fox says. Wanna hear my growl?

Yeah, I say. The fox growls this low grumbling sound that comes deep from the throat. Yeah, I say, that’s nice a good growl and the teeth, those are quite impressive.

I know, the fox says, I come from a long line of good teeth and growls. You got a good growl, I mean one you use for special occasions?

No, I say, I don’t really have a growl at all.

Of course you do, the fox says, try.

Okay, I say. I start to bring the growl from deep inside my chest.

Not bad, not bad, the fox says. That’s not a bad growl you’ve got there, keep practicing, you don’t just get a great growl overnight. Some of us are born with them and it doesn’t take much but even when you’re born with one you can always push it further, you can always make it better.

This place, I say, I need to leave and the fox just looks at me.

Really? the fox says.

I have to, I say, and then I push up with my hands and settle on my knees. I raise one leg, place a foot out in front and the fox rises, tenses, jerks and is gone.

AT THE BACK of the field, I duck into woods again, and inside a clearing where the trees part, pine straw like dark hair on the ground, there’s a bulldozer, there alone, trees standing like columns at its back. Yellow. Black script. Says Caterpillar along the sides. Treads filled with dirt. Long arm raised, bent toward the front glass of the driver’s seat. The shovel at the end of the arm curled, soil spilling through its fingers. I stare for a long time at the machine and then I climb the sides and open the glass door. Drop into the seat. Run my hands beneath the steering wheel looking for keys. I find them in the ignition. A hat that says Peterbilt beside the gearshift. I bend down and take the hat. Torn. Sweat-stained. Pull it down onto my head. A red cigarette pack on the floorboard. Pall Mall. I bend to get the crumpled pack, bring it close to my face but it’s empty. I throw it back onto the floorboard and look straight ahead at the fogged glass, the woods tangled and thick, the moon pale white over everything and now I know that I will drive the bulldozer from the woods, that I will plow trees and shacks aside, that I will drop the long arm down and pull trees, roots dripping with dirt, I will lay them down and carve a path with the engine rattling and the exhaust rising in tufts behind me and I will fall out with the blood and the dirt caked and the thorns choking my legs and there will be a crowd gathered and they will stare like I am a ghost, like I have risen from the soil, like I am Lazarus stumbling from the grave with the dirt falling from his mouth. I will ride out and the crowd gathered will shake their heads, he was dead, they’ll say, he was dead, and I will look them over and not say anything, I will show them my face, I will show them my torn body, I will leave them with the memory of my blood.

But the engine will not start. I turn the keys, fumble with the gears and then I’m beating the glass in front of me, slamming my fists against the fogged pane, I’m screaming against these woods and this darkness that will not let me go.

WHEN I COME out of the woods, it’s the same as when I went into them. Just after the trees end, there’s a ditch beside a road. I drop into the tall grass. Look out over the edge. The same stones laid bare and knotted close. I know it’s part of the same road, that it’s the same stones that tore my face, that it’s the only road that I’ll find because covered in dirt and blood and stumbling through field and woods I found nothing.

——

I CHOOSE A direction. Move to my right.

I stay in the ditch beside the road and when headlights appear behind me I fall back down into the grass.

But the car is white. It moves by slowly, swerves a bit farther down the road. And my body will not move. I push hair away from my face and wait until everything is quiet.

ON THE WINDOWPANE the image of the television colored blue and red and white and green and black and pink in bars from when the station went quiet. I press my face against the glass. Inside the television lights a pale face and bare stomach, a gleaming scalp, one hand dropped over the side of a chair, a cigarette smoldering in an ashtray that sits on the lap, a bottle and glass on the table beside the chair. The bald man does not stir when I put my fist against the window. I begin softly but then I’m pounding the glass. He does not move, he only breathes and lets the color light his face.

I open the driver’s side door of a car in the yard and grasp for keys in the ignition. Beneath seats, under sun visors. I blow the horn. I wait and when nothing happens I get out of the car because I know I can’t stay in one place for too long.

I move along the road, stay near the woods, and when I see a light from a house ahead of me, I run toward it.

I FALL DOWN in the front yard of a small house. One light burning on the porch. Insects like sparks around the light. I take the steps and lay my fists against the red wooden door and I hear nothing, and I bring my fists down again, say please this is my last chance please, press my face against the cold wood and then there is the shuffling of feet across a floor and the door pulling open, the chain attached, the light overhead burning a woman’s eyes all bleary and cracked around the edges.

What? she says. Who are you? And then she sees my blood, looks me up and down and then I’m mumbling
please.

Hold on, she says, just wait. The door shutting, lock clicking, feet shuffling over the floor again and then a man with the same red cracked eyes.

What do you want? he says.

Please, I say, hold a hand to my face and for the first time I see my hands clearly, dried red and brown, soil beneath my fingernails and the cuts standing open like smiles. Please, I say and the man opens the door a bit more. He’s standing there in blue boxer shorts, a white T-shirt, his hair standing up on top, pressed down on the sides, he puts a hand softly against his wife’s chest, he’s still looking at me, he nudges her back and she’s there in her nightgown with the arms crossed and he comes out onto the porch, shuts the screen door behind him.

Son, he says, what is this, son?

Stole my car, I say, it was them. Point down the road from where I came.

Who? he says.

Them, I say, I don’t know, it was them. He looks me over and his eyes squint and he sits me down on a porch swing and then I’m crying. Thank you, I say, and he puts a hand on my shoulder.

I’ll get a phone, he says and then he’s back in the house letting the door fall quietly shut behind him and I’m sitting there in the swing with my arms drawn across my chest and my face turned down to the porch and the light at my feet.

THE WOMAN SITS beside me on the porch swing. The chains whine.

Police are on the way, son, she says. Your dad.

I nod. She’s smoking a cigarette and I want one.

Can I have a cigarette? I say.

It’ll hurt, she says. I nod, she shakes one from the pack (Winstons), I raise my hand but she pushes it back down, takes the cigarette between her teeth, brings the lighter up, the flame red against her face. She pulls, lets the smoke bleed from her mouth, takes the cigarette, turns it around and presses the filter softly against my lips.

The smoke traces my cheeks, runs into my eyes. The smoke rises up into the porch lights, hovers there and is gone.

MY FATHER’S HAND on my shoulder. Standing above me. His face clenched. I look up at him, all right, I say, I’m fine, and then I laugh to show him I’m fine but he knows I’m not. He knows I won’t be fine and then Brett sits beside me on the porch swing, his hair all mashed flat and his mouth tightens and he is sobbing and touching my face, his hands against my cheeks, on my neck. It’s all right, I say, I’m okay, fine really, but he shakes his head back and forth and he keeps crying and he says no no over and over.

——

TWO POLICEMEN ASK me questions.

How many men?

Two, I say.

What did they look like?

Shadows, I say.

Did you know the men?

No, I say.

Why did you give them a ride?

Don’t know, I say.

Where is your car?

They took it, I say, and then I tell them about the bulldozer and I tell them it was the smile, it was the breath but they are ghosts, you won’t catch them I say, they’re shadows I say, poof I say, fucking gone man, you can’t even see them I say, and they nod their heads yes oh yes and then I’m laughing and then I say fuck man you guys don’t even know you can’t fucking know you can’t fucking know and I laugh I laugh and Brett is leaning against the porch railing with his arms crossed over his chest and he doesn’t say anything and my father is sitting beside me and he doesn’t say anything.

I LEAVE WITH my father and brother and inside the car my father is staring straight ahead. Brett’s in the passenger seat watching fields pass. I’m also watching fields pass. Behind those fields, over the treeline, the sun rising bloodred.

——

INSIDE THE EMERGENCY room I’m the only patient. The walls yellow. The floor polished and white.

The doctor makes me open my mouth. Shines a light into my throat. Takes his fingertips and touches my throat.

This hurt? he says. I nod.

It all hurts, I say and then he’s shining a light into my eyes and after he’s done he says nothing’s broken, that’s good, no concussion, just some cuts and bruises and then he’s swabbing my face with a cotton ball and I wince. He touches my lips with the cotton ball and then he’s at my arm drawing blood and I’m clenching a fist and watching my blood fill a glass tube dark like a bruise.

Carbon monoxide, he says, we have to check to see if you were poisoned and I nod my head and he seals the blood, wipes my forearm, stands and turns on his heels to go.

No poisoning, the doctor says, after he’s been gone awhile. Beats his thumbs against the clipboard he’s holding. You’re good as far as that goes but keep those cuts clean, that one on your face, watch it close, it was really dirty when you came in.

I nod.

Okay, I say. I will.

BRETT SITTING IN the waiting room. Chin against his fist. A poster that says Get Your Flu Shot at his back. He stands when he sees my father and me coming toward him. My father tells him I’m not poisoned and he nods, yeah, good, he says and when we go outside the air is damp and hot and it’s early but the world is already burning.

——

WHEN I GET home my mother is waiting on our couch. My youngest brother Matthew is asleep in his room. She stands up and her face tightens when she sees me and she doesn’t say anything, she leans close against me and puts her hands on the back of my head. Keeps them there for a long time.

It’s okay, Mom, I say and she swallows, doesn’t say anything, holds her hands on the back of my head and then she leads me back to my room. She sits me down on the bed. She leans down to my feet, unties my shoes and pulls them off. The bloody socks. My mother gives me a clean T-shirt and sweatpants. I take off my shirt and jeans and put them on. I lay down and my mother hands me a glass of water. A pink pill. She’s a nurse so I don’t ask what it is. I swallow the pill and my mother draws the sheets up. Looks at my neck, runs her hands along the bruises there. Sleep, she says, it’s all right. You’ll be fine. You’ll feel better. Closes my eyes with the tips of her fingers.

I WAKE AND go into the bathroom. Lay hands flat on the sides of the sink. I look in the mirror.

Around my neck the handprints wrapped like barbed wire.

Face swollen bloodred.

The dried blood, the dirt.

Near my eye a tear like a birthmark.

Eyes blank.

In the glass behind me I see my mother’s face. Arms crossed over her chest. I come out. She hands me another pink pill. I swallow it.

——

BRETT’S FACE OVER my bed. He cries. I hold my hand up and take his and then I can’t hold my eyes open anymore, it’s okay, he says, it’s okay, close your eyes.

MY FATHER COMES in and sits down at the foot of my bed. Tells me that he got a knife and rode around for three hours.

Looking for them, he says. Cut their throats. I tell him that was stupid.

Wanted to kill them, he says. Was going to kill them.

I nod.

You won’t find them, I say. You can’t.

My father tells me my mother is asleep. She doesn’t understand, he says. It’s hard for her to figure it out. I nod. He puts a hand on top of my right shin and leaves it there for a moment.

And even now I know she can’t ever know this thing, that it’s something she simply can’t do. She can’t even watch movies because they stay in her head so long.

BRETT COMES IN after my father leaves. Sits at the foot. Tells me my friend Tom got his gun and went looking for them too, said he was going to kill those fuckers. I tell Brett that was stupid. He nods.

I know, he says.

You can’t find them, I say. Tom can’t. Guns won’t work. Nothing would work. They’re not even real, they’re shadows. He nods yeah, like he understands but I know he doesn’t, he doesn’t know, he can’t know. They’re not men, I say, they’re ghosts and he’s nodding again.