Goat

by Brad Land

  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.

  I know, he says, I know. I shake my head.

  No, you don’t, I say, no, you don’t.

  2

  AN ELEVATOR DOOR opening. My father stepping in first. Turning to look at me, holding his hand out. I take it and step inside. We’re at the district attorney’s office in another town because I was beaten in another county. I sit with my father on a brown leather couch, and lining the walls are pictures of old men with white hair and they’re all in robes. A woman comes in behind us, I feel her pass by me, the air shifts and she smells like flowers and then she’s behind her desk with her elbows propped and her fingers laced together. She looks at me and smiles and I smile back even though it hurts and her hair catches the light coming through the blinds and she’s wearing a navy blue suit.

  You’ve been through a lot I know, she says.

  I nod.<
br />
  So what I’m here to do is to punish those who did this to you, okay? she says and I nod again.

  Yes, I say, the bones of her face sharp in the light.

  So I’m going to ask you some questions, she says, and I know it might be hard to answer but if you could do your best that’s all I ask.

  Sure, I say, okay, I’ll do my best, and I say it because I love her now because she is smiling at me.

  GRAVEL CRUNCHING BENEATH tires in the police station parking lot. I am here to answer questions about what happened. The sun dropping behind the station, behind the treeline, and the light bleeds red over everything, streaming through the windshield and landing on my chest. It’s warm and I close my eyes and let it stay there pressed like an open palm.

  My father’s hand on my shoulder.

  Time to go, he says.

  I nod. Open the door and drop my feet down into the gravel. The light shrinking. I follow my father across the parking lot.

  AN OFFICER TAKES me to a room past the waiting area, and my father has to stay behind. The officer sits me down at a long table in the center of a room with desks where other officers are typing. Some talking on the phone. I hear papers shuffle. The officer taps me on the left shoulder. I jump.

  Sorry, he says. I turn and he’s there sitting beside me with a yellow legal pad and a pencil. Pushes the square glasses up his nose, he leans in toward me, breath hot against my face. I turn my head down to the table.

  Write, he says, I want you to write it down just like it happened.

  Sure, I say. He slides the pencil and the pad in front of me and I take the pencil, clutch it tight between my fingers, run one hand over the paper and the officer leaves and the pencil starts to move and I can’t stop. I’m writing about teeth and growls and foxes and smiles and breaths and I know it makes no sense but I know at the same time that every word is true.

  THE OFFICER TAKES the pad from me. Hands me a book.

  Look at some pictures, he says, just flip through these and tell me if you recognize any.

  Shoves blank white paper toward me.

  You write down the numbers, he says. Opens the book in the middle, points to a picture. See? he says, like this. Points to the numbers below a picture of a white man with a blond crew cut. Okay, he says, you got that? Just write down numbers, okay? I nod.

  Yeah, I say, I can do that.

  Start at the beginning, he says.

  Right, I say and he turns the book to the first page, stands up and leaves. I can’t make any sense of the pictures. I don’t write anything.

  WHAT I WANT to know is this. How come a nice-looking boy like you picks up two guys you don’t even know and gives them a ride? A long ride. To the middle of nowhere.

  I’ve been moved. I’m sitting at another table in a room separated from the big office. I hate these cops and I want to be left alone. There’s a mirror behind me. The officer with the shaved head sits in front of me. Asking me questions. Now the officer with the brown mustache stands behind him.

  Who said I was nice-looking?

  My eyes down on the table.

  I did.

  Oh.

  So. Clear it up.

  I told you already. I wrote it down.

  He holds up a yellow legal pad with my scribbles. This? This is junk. I can’t understand this. You wrote about foxes. You didn’t write any numbers from the pictures.

  He throws the pad down on the table.

  It’s true, I say. It’s all I know.

  It doesn’t make any sense, son, I know you were out of your head but it doesn’t make any sense, it doesn’t mean anything to us.

  That’s what I remember. I can’t get at anything else.

  I’ll tell you what I think happened. He leans toward me. I think you wanted drugs. You were trying to buy drugs. I look at him and shake my head.

  I don’t do drugs. (Lying.)

  Yes, you do.

  No, I don’t.

  You do do drugs. We know you do drugs.

  You don’t.

  We do.

  No.

  Yes.

  No.

  Listen, son, we already got one, he’s right back there, says you wanted drugs from him, says he knew you already.

  Right back there?

  I point toward the mirror behind me.

  Yeah. Right back there. Says he knew you good.

  I shake my head.

  You can’t catch them. Him. Them.

  We did, he’s right back there, you want me to bring that boy in here so you can look him in the face?

  I look up at him.

  He doesn’t have a face. I say it softly.

  What? The officer leans closer. What? His face red.

  I said he doesn’t have a face.

  Both officers look at me like I’m crazy but I know I’m not.

  I MISS A week of school. The cuts on my face heal into shiny red patches. The bruises turn dull and gray. My lips are only a little swollen. My mother says look you’re better already, and she knows I’m not, but I know she can’t deal with this thing, so all she knows to do is give me pills and Neosporin and tell me I’ll be better. Nobody says anything and I like it that way. My teachers understand the absence. Make concessions. But even when I’m there at school, sitting in Cultural Geography or Political Science I’m not really there. I’m dreaming. I’m shaking. The smile and the breath everywhere. In breezeways. Walking down halls. Sitting at the back of classrooms. I have to go into bathrooms, pull the stall doors shut and slap my face until my ears ring.

  ——

  I’M IN THE car with the brown mustache speeding past fields through dark. He’s got both hands on top of the steering wheel. We’re trying to find the road where the smile and the breath left me. The road I wrote about on the yellow legal pad. We have to look in the dark because it’s the only time the brown mustache can go. He looks over at me with my hands in my lap and my head down.

  Need you to look, son, he says and I nod, raise my head to the window, to the fields, the treeline, the lumped soil and bent soybean.

  I am, I say, and I am looking but I don’t recognize anything, just this blackness and the moon standing over everything.

  I ASK THE officer for a cigarette. He looks over at me, his face dark.

  Why do you think I smoke? he says.

  Because, I say, I can smell it in here and he raises a hand to his shirt pocket and pulls a crumpled pack from it just like I knew he would. He holds the pack toward me and I take it, shake out a smoke and then he hands me a lighter and I hold the flame up inside the dark, it lights my arms, my chest. I blow the smoke out the window and hand the lighter back and he takes a smoke and lights it and I wonder why he hasn’t smoked yet, but I don’t ask. We just sit there driving and smoking and this is all there is.

  ——

  UNTIL THE CAR slows and he says that look familiar?

  It’s an old logging road, he says. Don’t use it much anymore but that house you found it’s not too far from here. This was the only place I could think of.

  The car’s stopped at the head of a road with the headlights lighting both sides, the pine, the tall grass leaning over the lip of the ditch. The brown mustache gets out and stands with one forearm draped over the edge of the open door.

  Get out, son, he says, I need you to look.

  Okay, I say. Open the door, and beneath my feet through my shoes I feel the same heads of granite push into my soles and I don’t even have to look anymore. I get back in the car and shut the door, the officer gets back in and shuts the door.

  Son, he says, what’s wrong?

  This is it, I say, I know it.

  How? You didn’t even look.

  I just know I could feel it through my feet those stones those are the same it’s like a hand you know every time you take this hand you’ve held you know it?

  I’M LOOKING DOWN into the floorboard, the torn coffee cups, a hammer with tape on the head, I keep my eyes there. We can leave now, I
say, can we leave now? and I’m rocking back and forth in my seat, hands against the dashboard, my heart clenching, the officer looks over at me, puts the car in reverse and backs up, the granite beneath the tires giving way, and then we’re back on the asphalt, we drive away and I rock in my seat, I laugh and the officer turns the radio up loud this country station Hank Williams I’m a long gone daddy I don’t need you anymore he says.

  Hank the senior, the officer says, he was one of the good ones.

  Yeah yeah you know how he died, right? I say. The officer turns the song down.

  Yeah, he says, he was a drunk.

  No actually that’s wrong well he was a drunk but that’s not how he died see he had some problems, back or something, I don’t know, but it was chronic, like it hurt all the time, so he had this doctor who gave him pills for the pain, and he got hooked and ate too many pills with whiskey one night in Louisiana I think, and the band was Hank Williams and the Drifting Cowboys, something like that, and Hank he died in the backseat of a car driving somewhere, and the doctor he turned out to be a fake doctor.

  The brown mustache just looks over at me.

  That so? he says, I didn’t know all that how do you know all that?

  I have all this useless information in my head, I say, you know just banging around up there all this stuff and sometimes I just have to spit it out even if it’s not exactly right you know the stuff about Hank that might not be exactly right.

  The officer nods.

  Well, he says, it sounds like a good story to me. He breathes out, scratches his shoulder.

  We drive back to the police station. I can see my father’s car in the parking lot. I can see him sitting there resting his arms against the steering wheel.