The Goat
Beatrice was the girl, and Gilbert was her grandfather. Mama was the goat. They lived together in a small blue house in the country. Every night, Gilbert brought some rope, a knife, a bucket, and wood box out back where Mama was tethered in the mud. He milked her with the bucket and then bound her legs with rope and split her open down the middle. He sawed her meat from her legs. The only part he left intact was the head. He slopped the meat into the wood box and cooked it for dinner. Beatrice made the lentils. In the morning, Mama was back in the mud. Gilbert stared at Mama from the kitchen window and said, “Today’s the day.” He never remembered.
​
***
Beatrice was getting older. She found it hard to determine her exact birthday, but still. Time passed, she was sure, if never as clearly as she hoped. She found it harder to live with her grandfather the older she got. Gilbert was in a constant state of terror because of the goat. He never remembered butchering Mama, and therefore he thought that every day was the last day he had with his beloved pet. He never left the house. His hair grew long. His beard went white and his eyes got crusty and yellow.
​
Gilbert was a miserable specimen and Beatrice was stuck with him. She had no other family. She’d never known her mother or her father. Sometimes, she wondered if she had ever been born. Was she even real? She could have been dreamed up by Gilbert, after all, or worse, the goat. She shivered just thinking about it.
​
Maybe, she thought when she felt most hopeful, they were her dream.
​
There was no way to be certain, of course. She could leave, but then the goat might have stopped dreaming about her. She thought about suicide, but if she’d dreamed Gilbert up and then killed herself, Gilbert in turn would cease to exist, unreasonably.
​
It was a conundrum.
***
​
They lived a good distance away from the town. They rarely saw anyone else. Their small blue house was at the end of a long muddy road. The only person that ever traveled up this road was Beatrice’s friend Charlotte. She couldn’t remember how she and Charlotte had become friends, but Charlotte came by each day at noon to drink a glass of goat’s milk. This had been the routine for quite some time.
​
Charlotte was very beautiful. She had long red hair and high, arching cheekbones. She sometimes brought her guitar and sang songs for Beatrice and Gilbert. Beatrice enjoyed the songs but Gilbert was too melancholy to pay attention.
​
Charlotte often spoke about leaving town. She wanted to travel around the country and play music for strangers. She would take the train from town to town and pay her fares with the loose change people tossed her on the street.
​
Beatrice thought Charlotte was just marvelous.
​
***
Lately, certainly, Beatrice was beginning to grow anxious with the routine. Gilbert cried about butchering Mama every day. He’d been given the goat by his father when he was a young boy. He’d known Mama for quite some time. The goat was practically part of the family. It was why he’d named her Mama, after all. Gilbert touched his crusty lips.
​
What day was it? Neither knew.
​
“I know your birthday’s coming up,” Gilbert said to Beatrice. “I can’t say I’ve planned anything special. I won’t be in much a celebrating mood. Will you forgive me?”
​
“You could take me to town for a meal,” Beatrice offered. She pulled on the ends of her stringy brown hair and bit her tongue.
​
Gilbert leaned in his chair and dipped his old head toward the ceiling. “So that’s a no?” he said.
​
***
They never went anywhere else. They stayed home and between the goat and the lentils always seemed to have enough to eat. Gilbert didn’t notice this, obviously. But Beatrice did. It snowed constantly but none piled up. Beatrice noticed this too.
​
For her birthday, Gilbert gave Beatrice a tape recorder he’d found in the attic. It was as large as a briefcase and the case was rusted. A little microphone came attached. Gilbert held the microphone to his mouth and said, “I am Gilbert.” He played it back for Beatrice and laughed at the sound of his own voice.
​
That night, Beatrice began to keep an audio diary. She’d take the tape recorder to bed and stay up late narrating her day into the microphone. But she never listened to what she recorded. She just recorded until the tape was full, and then recorded over what she’d already recorded. It only came with one tape. She’d looked in the attic but found nothing.
​
***
Beatrice showed Charlotte the tape recorder the next day when Charlotte arrived to drink a glass of milk. Charlotte picked up the recorder and hefted it around in her hands.
​
“Pretty cool,” she said.
​
This made Beatrice happy. “I got it for my birthday,” she said.
​
“Happy birthday,” Charlotte said. “How old are you?”
​
“I don’t know,” Beatrice said, blushing.
​
Charlotte handed the tape recorder back to Beatrice. “I guess it doesn’t matter,” she said. She snapped her fingers. “Hey, you could record me singing one of my songs.”
​
“Sure,” Beatrice said. “That would be cool.”
​
“Cool,” Charlotte said.
​
“Cool,” Beatrice said.
​
Charlotte leaned against the doorway. Snow frosted her red hair. Beatrice watched her curiously. The tape recorder was getting heavy in her arms. She felt on the edge of some precipice, as if there was something waiting for her just beyond the door.
​
“So,” Charlotte said after a moment, “how about that milk?”
​
***
Beatrice dreamed about traveling around the world with Charlotte. There was a large white mansion by the beach, and beyond the water she could see sand dunes. Skyscrapers floated along on a barge. Charlotte was wearing horns and a group of people in togas were lifting her up while she sang and played her guitar.
​
The next morning she told Gilbert about her dream. He laid his head on the table and began to sob quietly. “You can’t leave me alone,” he said.
​
“It was a dream,” Beatrice said.
​
“Just the same,” Gilbert said, trailing off.
​
“You’ll have Mama,” Beatrice said. She yawned. She’d stayed up quite late the night before, recording herself. She jumped when she noticed Gilbert was staring at her.
​
“Are you sick in the head?” he screamed. He grabbed her face. His hands were cold and his palms scratched her skin. “Don’t you remember what day it is?”
​
Beatrice tried to remove her grandfather’s hands from her cheeks. She barely recognized him in that moment. She pulled herself away with considerable effort and he seemed to calm down. He stared out the window at Mama, who was digging into the mud with her hoof. Beatrice craned her neck to see, too.
​
“My goodness,” Gilbert said, blinking. “I just had a terrible sense of . . .” He looked dumbly at Beatrice. “I forgot what I was going to say,” he said.
​
“It doesn’t matter,” Beatrice said, shaking her head. She mentally noted to record this situation later that night, after Gilbert was in bed.
​
Gilbert pulled at his beard with both hands. “Do you think Mama knows this is her last day to be alive? I fear that she’s wasting it.” He stopped to consider this. “When I was younger, Mama and I would climb the rocks that were on the side of the road on the way to town,” he said. “She was a magnificent climber.”
​
“Rocks,” Beatrice said absently. She’d only ever seen pictures of the rocks. She’d never actually seen anything. The mud road was long and mysterious. There could be anything out there. Or there could be nothing. She felt her cheeks flush embarrassedly.
​
“Well,” Gilbert said, slapping his corduroy thighs, “I guess this is it.” He pushed his chair back and stood suddenly. “Did you have a chance to say goodbye to her?”
​
“Goodbye,” Beatrice muttered.
​
Gilbert stood from the table. The front of his shirt was soaked through with perspiration. He dug a glob of crud out of his eye and flicked it to the floor. He had no motivation to behave gracefully or in any way other than what he was. He looked around the kitchen, slapped his belly, and opened his mouth as if he was about to give a speech.
​
“I think I’ll take her to the rocks,” he said. Then he began to weep.
​
Gilbert butchered the goat and pan-fried the meat with lentils for dinner. Beatrice ate and went to bed nauseated. She sat up in bed to let the nausea pass. She was trying to think of things to record. She brought the microphone up to her mouth. “I feel ill,” she said. That was all she could think to say. She felt dumber and uneasy with the tape recorder recording, even though no one listened to her tapes, not even her. The act of speaking into the microphone was enough. Not to mention she felt too sick to think.
​
The next morning Mama was back. Beatrice went out to milk her. When Beatrice came back inside, Gilbert grabbed the bucket from her and hissed through his teeth.
​
“That’s my job,” he shouted. “The last time I will have ever gotten to milk her, and you’ve taken it from me.” He looked at the bucket as if he’d just noticed it was there.
​
“You should have said something,” Beatrice moaned. She felt awful, truly.
​
Gilbert dropped the bucket at his feet. It tipped over. Milk flowed out of it. Neither of them moved to clean the mess, however. The milk spread out on the carpet and just as abruptly stopped spreading. Gilbert dabbed it with the toe of his boot.
​
“The older I get, the more I act like a child,” he said. “There must have been some point in my life where my age met my mind. When was that?”
​
“Before you were born and after you’ve died,” Beatrice muttered.
​
Gilbert cackled. “Listen to you,” he said. He smiled at her for a while before stooping over and lapping at the milk from the carpet.
​
Beatrice grabbed him by the collar. “Stop that!” she yelled. She hopped on his back and pulled at his collar with all her strength. Her grandfather bucked her off and she landed hard on her side, smacking her head. Gilbert sat up and stared at her. Milk dribbled from his chin. Beatrice got up with some effort and retreated to her room. Her head was killing her. She covered her face with a pillow and tried to see how long she could keep it there before giving up and playing with her tape recorder. She turned it on and held the microphone to her mouth, but she couldn’t think of anything to say.
​
***
She came up with a plan to get Gilbert to remember about the goat each day. She recorded him saying his name, the day, and that he was going to butcher Mama that day. Then she played for him his own voice saying things like, “My name is Gilbert, today is Tuesday, and today is the day I butcher Mama,” followed by another clip, “My name is Gilbert, today is Wednesday, and today is the day I butcher Mama.” Gilbert listened stoically for several minutes. His mouth retreated stubbornly into his beard.
​
Beatrice stopped playing the tape. “Well?” she said.
​
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” Gilbert snapped. He stubbornly put on his boots and clomped outside. Beatrice watched him stroke the back of Mama’s neck for a while before she climbed the stairs and shut herself in her bedroom.
​
She stayed in there until Charlotte arrived with her guitar. Beatrice brought Charlotte up to her room and locked the door behind them. They sat around the tape recorder on the floor while Beatrice played Gilbert’s recordings for Charlotte to hear.
​
Charlotte held her head in her hands as she listened. She stared at the ground, hypnotized as if in a grave meditative state, rocking on her basketed legs.
​
The tape ran out finally. Charlotte had an unmistakably constipated expression in her eyes. “Let me try to put this in words,” she said, but then she just whistled.
​
“We go through this every single day,” Beatrice said. She popped the tape out of the player and twirled it around with her fingers. Then she put it back.
​
“It’s unhealthy,” Charlotte said. She removed the guitar from its case and held it carefully as if it was a baby. Its body was a glossy burnt red color and its neck was black. The strings also were black. Charlotte cradled the guitar in her lap.
​
“Unhealthy?” Beatrice said.
​
“For you,” Charlotte said. “This kind of an emotional environment, I mean.”
​
Beatrice bulged with gratitude. But then she felt more or less judged. She sullenly watched as Charlotte tuned her guitar, repeatedly strumming the same note.
​
“Maybe you could take me with you,” Beatrice said abruptly.
​
Charlotte put her ear close to the guitar’s body. “Where am I going?” She laughed as if the guitar had told her a joke, and shook her head.
​
“Traveling the world,” Beatrice said, “playing your guitar for money.”
​
Charlotte repeatedly plucked a string. A large round note wobbled out. “Does that sound right to you?” she asked Beatrice.
​
“I have no idea how it should sound,” Beatrice said. She looked out her window. The snow was floating to the ground but accumulating nowhere.
​
Charlotte strummed a few healthy chords and squinted with one eye at Beatrice. “I may have a proposition,” Charlotte said. “How would you like to be rid of that goat?”
​
“That’s tricky,” Beatrice said. “Gilbert would never part with Mama.”
​
“He named it?” Charlotte said. “How dire!” She strummed a few more chords. Beatrice admired how Charlotte played her guitar with hard knuckles and a quick wrist.
​
“He’s had Mama for as long as he can remember,” Beatrice admitted. “It’d be like selling me off. Actually, that deal he’d be more inclined to make,” she added grimly.
​
“A goat like that could really feed people,” Charlotte said. “You say that goat comes back after being butchered? That’s what your grandfather can’t remember? He doesn’t want to remember how opulently he’s fed, not the other thing. Not the killing thing. What do you do with the extra meat?” She licked her lips.
​
“Nothing,” Beatrice muttered.
​
“You throw it out?” Charlotte asked.
​
“It doesn’t keep,” Beatrice said.
​
“It keeps for more than a day, I’m sure.”
​
“The meat’s ceremonial.”
​
“Not for the hungry ones,” Charlotte said. She reached into her guitar case and pulled out a pen and some paper. “I’m writing that down. ‘Not for the hungry ones.’ That’s a good song title.” She began to play something. She played the same chord over and over again, and Beatrice just
waited. Then Charlotte pieced the song together, eventually, chord by chord, word by word, until they were ready to record.
​
Afterward, they had a pretty decent demo. Beatrice let Charlotte have the tape. It wasn’t doing her any good to keep it. She kept recording over what she’d already done. There was too much of that in her life already.
​
Charlotte wagged the tape at Beatrice. “We’ll get out of this,” she said.
​
“What?” Beatrice said. “Get out of what?” She was suddenly very tired.
​
“The mud,” Charlotte said. “Don’t worry. I’ll send for you.” She blew Beatrice a kiss and set off down the mud road. Beatrice watched her for as long as she could.
​
***
Beatrice sometimes thought about their predicament from the goat’s perspective. What did it feel like to be killed on daily basis? It was almost a shame the goat couldn’t describe the sensation. To be cut open, dissected, and to later return. It wasn’t a gift or a curse. It was just a fact. It was the goat’s life. Then Beatrice thought about her own life. She supposed it could be considered a curse, her life. But she also supposed there were some good moments. Really, it was too early to tell. These things, Beatrice suspected, had to be considered at the end, when everything that would be done was done, for the sake of a total view, the most objective and complete perspective possible.
​
Charlotte didn’t even think of these things, Beatrice thought spitefully. Charlotte didn’t have to decide what life was, as Beatrice felt she did, for herself and for the goat. Beatrice did love Charlotte, but she was beginning to love her less. There were things that put them at a distance. There was the way Charlotte dressed, for instance. She was like someone out of a magazine. She dressed the way she imagined people in town dressed. Her clothes fit. Beatrice, meanwhile, dressed in the old clothes Gilbert wore as a teenager. His shirts flapped loosely around her arms and her hips. Her body disappeared in those clothes. This issue of fashion was less important, of course. But still.
​
Beatrice waited for several days, but Charlotte never showed up. After what Beatrice counted as a week, she noticed a man coming up the mud road. He held a rope that was tied around the neck of a tired, unenthusiastic cow. The man was dressed in a brown suit and a densely black bowler hat. He approached the house and knocked. Beatrice ran down the stairs to answer the door, but Gilbert was already there. He scratched his blistering scalp. The man with the cow gave a gummy smile. The cow snorted. Its tail swung and kicked erratically.
​
“Good day!” the man said.
​
“Is it?” Gilbert said.
​
The man grinned and removed his hat. His hair underneath was matted down with sweat. He looked to Beatrice like a child who’d been left in the sun too long.
​
“Let me give way to introductions,” the man said. His voice was guttural and proclaimed. “My name is Buttons, Tom Buttons.”
​
Beatrice listened at the top of the steps. She clung to the railing and paid close attention to how loudly she was breathing.
​
“Do I know you?” Gilbert said.
​
“Hardly, hardly,” Buttons said cheerfully. “I’m merely a man from town. Not so much a man, even, in this instance. For, you see, I am prospecting a trade.”
​
“Afraid you’re a bit off, then,” Gilbert chuckled. “This is no market.”
​
Buttons seemed puzzled. His dewy eyes moved between Gilbert and Beatrice. Then he smiled again. “Trying to pull me off, eh? Well, that’s quite fine. I could be persuaded to haggle. Why not? What’s a man’s worth, he can’t haggle?”
​
Gilbert briskly spit onto the floor. “What, can I ask, are we haggling for?”
​
“The goat!” Buttons exclaimed. He held up the rope. “For the cow!” The cow grunted and sneezed as if on cue. Gilbert jumped and bunched his shirt in his fists. He turned to Beatrice, who could barely look at him. She recalled what Charlotte had said—something about being sent for, escape, etc. In this man Buttons she saw something peculiar, or at least something new regardless.
​
“What would you want with my goat?” Gilbert said. “She’s older than you are.”
​
Buttons winked. “Ah! Well. I operate a small dairy farm and I’m thinking about diversifying, you see. Chèvre and the like. I’m experimenting with new sorts of beasts.”
​
Gilbert rubbed his chin. “Meet me out back,” he said.
​
“Absolutely!” Buttons said, tipping his hat.
​
Gilbert shut the door and made his way through the house. Beatrice cleared the stairs and followed him closely. She wanted to say something but didn’t know what. They were out back before she could think.
​
Buttons was crouched, examining Mama by the time they got out there, lifting her legs, tugging on her ears. The goat took all of this prodding in stride. Beatrice briefly marveled at Mama’s composed behavior before remembering her grudge against her. The cow was off to the side, its large wet eyes widely observant, the rope snuggling its neck.
​
“Give her some credit, and yourself,” Buttons said, rubbing one of Mama’s hooves. “This is still a fine specimen, despite her age.”
​
“She’s well loved,” Gilbert said. He walked over to the cow and looked it square in the eyes, patting it on its meaty hindquarters. “You’re thinking an even trade?”
​
“One for one,” Buttons said. He stood and rubbed the mud into his pants.
​
Gilbert touched his lips. “It’s a funny thing,” he said. “I was going to butcher her today. Today was to be her last day on this earth.”
​
“Good for her,” Buttons said, smirking. “A long life lived accordingly.”
​
“Just as well . . .” Gilbert said. He looked up at the sky. It was still snowing. He held out his hand and caught a few malleable flakes. Then he looked squarely at Beatrice. “What do you think about all this? She’s your goat too, you know,” he said.
​
Beatrice shivered. “It would be a smart trade,” she said. “We can do more with the cow. You’re so set on butchering the goat? Well, get something for it instead.”
​
“She has a name!” Gilbert said. He sucked in his weepy bottom lip. “Oh, I would miss her, that’s for certain.”
​
“You would miss her in any case,” Buttons offered smugly.
​
Gilbert swiveled and pointed a vicious finger at Buttons. “That’s what I mean. You want to take my goat. She’s worth something, is what that means. You came all this way, traveled the entire muddy road, for this? And I’m the one missing it, as usual.”
​
“I’m offering you a way out,” Buttons said. Beatrice couldn’t tell whether that statement was meant for her or Gilbert.
​
Gilbert licked his lips and rubbed his chapped hands together. Meanwhile, Beatrice was feeling extraordinarily guilty. Her grandfather had this way of accusing her without saying anything. She held her breath as if hiding it.
​
“There is no way out,” Gilbert said coldly. He stooped down to pet Mama and instructed Beatrice to show Buttons to the road. The cow followed them mournfully.
​
Buttons stuck out his hand when they reached the mud road and passed a slip of paper to Beatrice as they shook goodbye. The cow watched them.
​
“You know,” he said, smirking, “there are no lamps. It must get dark at night.” Then he stirred the cow, its heavy wet head lowered to graze, and set off down the road.
​
There was an address on the slip of paper. She called out, “Charlotte?” But Buttons didn’t seem to hear her and kept on with the sulky cow behind him.
​
***
Beatrice ate goat and lentils with Gilbert that night.
​
“What if I just left?” Beatrice said.
​
“You want to leave?” Gilbert asked. “Then leave,” he added after a while.
​
“You’ll disappear,” Beatrice said. “You will have been a figment of my imagination, and you will disappear.”
​
Gilbert coughed. “Is that what you think? Out of sight, out of mind, and whatever else follows, huh? That’s sad,” he said. “What’s become of us?”
​
“Us as in you and me? Or us as in the human species?” This seemed important to Beatrice for some reason.
​
Gilbert nodded and shoveled a soggy chunk of goat into his mouth.
​
She waited until he was asleep that night. She gathered her tape recorder, some pillows, and some of Gilbert’s old clothes in a duffel bag and grabbed another smaller potato sack. She went out to the mud in the backyard where Gilbert had left the goat’s bones and gathered them into the sack. She didn’t even think to say goodbye.
​
She was completely blinded by darkness, but she took off her shoes and kept her feet in the mud. She could feel if she strayed into the grass and she kept walking straight. The bones rattled against her body. She was about as thin as them.
​
She walked for quite some time. A few hours into the walk, she thought she heard Charlotte’s guitar strumming. She kept on walking. She hoped it would be light out by the time she reached the town, though they must have lamps, she thought.
​
There she would deliver the bones to Buttons. Charlotte would gather Beatrice in her arms and brush her hair and give her new clothes. They would eat well. They would feed many hungry people with the goat. Gilbert would learn to survive.
​
Gilbert. She had barely thought of him. Thinking of Gilbert made Beatrice drop the potato sack. The bones fell into the mud with a rhythmic clatter.
​
She bent down and rummaged through the mud, but she could not find the sack of bones. She turned around, her knees bent, the darkness tilting around her.
​
She finally found the bones and stood up, but the mud road was unraveling into the darkness forever on either side and she had no idea what direction she was facing.
​
END