Goat

by Brad Land

  There are four of us. Me, Dave Reed, Will Fitch and Kevin Brehm and we all stand in the hall, clustered together, looking around and waiting for something bad to happen.

  DIXON HAS A football. He says we’re playing Goat Invaders, a game, he explains, created long ago which has survived because it’s so much fun and this is how it goes:

  We stand four feet apart, single file, all facing Dixon. We move our arms and legs in slow jumping jacks and bounce back and forth from wall to wall. It’s supposed to look like Space Invaders. We bah like goats as we move and I don’t know if the brothers are actually going to throw a football at us or if this is just meant to be scary. But what I do know is that Dixon says we better not fucking duck when he throws at us and that I feel stupid for moving like this waiting for a football to find me.

  My feet grinding across the floor and I am third in line wedged between Will at my front and Dave at my back.

  Don’t you fucking flinch, Dixon says. He cocks one arm back and concentrates like it’s the most important pass he’s ever thrown. Ben Moore is behind us and he says come on, Dixon, throw the fucking ball. Claps his hands together. I turn my head slightly back toward Brett’s room. He looks at me and stands and then he shuts his door.

  THE FIRST BALL skims Dave’s head and bounces off the wall.

  Oh, bad throw, Dixon says. Snaps his fingers. He claps his hands, bends down and leans on his knees and says, all right, Ben, let’s see what you got.

  I know the ball will hit the back of my head and I am waiting on it but Ben Moore has a good arm and he is not aiming for me. Will winces when the ball hits the middle of his back. The veins in his neck stand up. He keeps moving.

  Sorry, goat, I was aiming for the bitch right in front of me, he says, and he’s lying but it works because I can hear Dave start breathing harder behind me and he knows that it will hurt with Ben only five feet behind him.

  Kevin kicks Dixon the ball that’s settled at his feet. Dixon takes his time again and the ball makes a dull thump when it hits Kevin’s head. He doesn’t pretend he’s aiming somewhere else, he just looks straight at Kevin and throws. Kevin stumbles a bit, pauses and then goes limp. He drops down to his knees and slumps against the wall. Dixon calls him a pussy and tells us to keep moving and not to worry about our little bitch of a pledge brother and we keep going back and forth until I hear the ball smack something and the air behind me moves and I know that Will’s hit the ground. Ben Moore laughs behind us and he’s on top of Will telling him to get his sorry goat ass up, get the fuck up, he says, what’s wrong, your pussy hurt, huh, your fucking pussy hurt? I keep moving and don’t look back because I’m supposed to do what the brothers say.

  Game over, Dixon says. He drops the football and walks back into his room. Dave and I stop moving and I look down at Will, and Ben is still standing over him, reaching beneath his armpits, trying to pull him up. He tries to stand but his legs wobble and he falls again. Ben slaps his head.

  Pussy, he says and walks back into his room. Dixon leans back out because we are still standing around. He says to get the fuck off the hall. Will moves to his knees, lays his hands out in front of him and shakes his head like it’s full of static. I grab his arm, help him up, but nobody helps Kevin. He’s still sitting with his back turned, slumped against the wall. I open the door to leave and look back at Kevin. He’s turned over, back flat against the wall, he’s looking up at the ceiling and smiling.

  OUTSIDE WILL IS still dazed and has to sit down on the front steps. I sit down beside him and Dave sits on his other side.

  You okay? I say. Will puts his face in his hands. Right hand twitching.

  Yeah, Will says, I’m okay, just a little dizzy. Dave shoves his hands through his hair. Stands up. I watch him walk across the quad and Will and I sit on the brick steps until his head is clear and he can walk without falling.

  I START TALKING to myself. Walking to class, in the shower, in the cafeteria sometimes. I do it because there is no one else. It is eleven on a Monday night and I am thinking about the pledge test we’ll have in a few weeks and about Will and the way his hand shakes and the air is heavy and wet around the white concrete staircase that leads up to my dorm room. The football stadium at my back all lit like a holiday. I climb the stairs and start talking.

  Why are you doing this? I say.

  You know.

  No, I don’t know.

  Yes, you fucking do, you know it’s all there is.

  I am more than that.

  Wrong again, that’s the wrong fucking answer, think, just think for a minute.

  I pass a short dark-haired girl on the second flight and bite my bottom lip.

  No, don’t look at her, she can’t help you.

  It always happens like this. I can get to the point where I’m about to tell myself the answer, why I’m doing this, and then it just slips away.

  I open the door to my room expecting to find my roommate plopped down on his futon smoking cigarettes. I close the door behind me and the room is filled with alcohol like someone’s sweating bourbon. I put my books down on my bed and step on a hand. It crunches beneath my foot and I expect to hear a whine but when I turn around I’m still standing on the hand and the body connected to it doesn’t move. One of my roommate’s pledge brothers is lying on the futon all curled up like a baby. His right hand over the edge. Dark hair spilled over his eyes. I can’t remember his name. He’s snoring. I take my foot from his hand and sit down on my small bed. I stare at this boy who is drooling, all wrinkled and dressed in a coat and loosened tie and just then I decide that I hate him simply because he is alone inside his muffled head and I have to sit and listen to myself. I put my foot back on his hand and move it around, press it down into the floor to grind the bones but he doesn’t move. I slap his head. He shifts a bit and then I go next door to get Mark.

  Mark is from Kentucky and he’s the biggest man I’ve ever seen. We talk in the bathroom when we shave sometimes, and I don’t know why I am going to get him, but it just seems like the right thing to do. After I knock once he opens the door to his room and smiles. He has a forty-pound dumbbell in one hand, wears a blue tank top.

  What’s up, he says, one hand on the doorframe.

  Nothing, I say, just that there’s this drunk guy in my room and I’ve tried to get him up but he just keeps sleeping. I want you to scare him, I say.

  Hold on, he says, turns into his room, places the dumbbell down at the head of his perfectly made bed. He leans down beside his bed and tells me to go on back to my room and just wait a second. I go and sit back down on my bed and stare at the boy who hasn’t moved. Mark comes in with his shirt off, this long knife in one hand. He leans down close to the boy’s ear. Mark is quiet like he’s thinking really hard. And then he yells. It makes me flinch because I didn’t know he could sound like this. I only thought he was big. But the boy stirs and Mark is yelling that he better get the fuck out of his room, that he is going to cut somebody. The boy’s eyes peel open. He looks up at Mark. He doesn’t know what’s going on and for a second he just sits there and blinks at shirtless Mark clutching his knife and yelling for him to get his skinny ass the fuck out of his room. The boy rises and stumbles a bit, wipes his forehead and Mark is inches from his face, asking if he heard what the fuck he just said. His knuckles go white when he squeezes the knife. The boy looks at me and then at Mark. He is pale. Eyes bloodshot and then he is gone.

  MARK AND I both laugh but mine is a sad laugh because I know the shadows I dream about, the smile and the breath, the brothers, they’re filling me up. Mark clutches my hand as he leaves. I thank him.

  Nothing to it, he says, I can’t stand motherfuckers in my room either.

  I WAKE UP when I hear the thump coming from downstairs. I stare at the clock and it says one-thirty and my eyes feel heavy even though I haven’t really been asleep. I’m still dressed and I get up and walk to the door and press my ear against the cold metal. Gaze through the peephole and then I open the door and n
o one is on the third floor but the music is rising through the tiles under my feet. I can hear people moving. The brothers are having a party on the other side of the small dorm like they do on most Monday nights but I have chosen to stay away. It won’t look good to the brothers but I have been shaking all day. I had almost fallen asleep but I’m always scared of my dreams or that someone will come pounding on my door at three A.M.

  ——

  I LET THE door at the end of my floor fall behind me and walk the hallway that connects both sides of the dorm. I open the door on the Kappa Sigma side slowly and look down the hall. The third floor is quiet. I glance down the stairwell. Someone moves below me and I pull back and then I hear footsteps and no voices but someone is coming up and for some reason I just stand there. My heart pounding. A girl named Natalie drags her hands along the rail and wobbles a bit, turns her ankle sideways when she takes a step and falls down to her knees. She is still holding the chipped railing when she looks up. She reaches behind her and pulls each of her black high heels off. Her dress is black and short, cut low in the front and when she bends over her breasts spill out. She has both her shoes in one hand, straps wrapped around her middle finger and when she looks at me again I see her eyes for the first time. Swimming, teetering a bit as she blinks. She stands up and steps toward me.

  Natalie is inches from my face and I can smell the alcohol on her hot breath. She sticks her tongue in my mouth and puts her hands around my hips. I pull away and look at her and we don’t say anything. I take her hand and lead her down the hall toward my room and she drops her shoes on the way and doesn’t look back.

  Inside my room she takes my chin and pulls my face toward her and she smells like cigarettes and perfume and her mouth is slick and I don’t even like her but, really, I love her for being here now. She moves in front of me, reaches around and clutches my back. The dim lamplight falling in bands across her stretched arms. The television painting her face. She slides against me. My hands on her hips, she takes my wrists and I let my fingers curl open slowly, she traces the grooves in my palms and pulls them to her breasts. My mouth is in her hair and my eyes are closed and she turns around and kisses me and I want to breathe in all of her, take every dancing cell into my mouth to keep from being alone. I crack my eyes to watch her mouth tremble, and everything is sleek from our open mouths and I close my eyes again. She pushes me down to the bed, hands against my chest and I feel like nothing and I want to tell her about all the dark things inside me, about the smile and the breath about the brothers and how they’re fucking me up, but I don’t, I just keep staring at her because I love her for kissing me and not saying a word. She touches my face with her hand. Lies down beside me. Closes her eyes. Her breath slow and warm against my face. I watch her breathe. When I wake up she’s gone.

  BRETT AND I leave on a Friday. Pledges are not supposed to leave on weekends but I do it anyway and Brett doesn’t care. He drives and smokes and we pass idle cows and fields laid like grids and I keep expecting him to say something, to say anything, but he just stares and turns the radio loud. I roll down the window and let air rush through and I fall asleep with half of my head hanging out the window and for once my mind is quiet but I know that this peace is fleeting and that Monday will be silent and gray and we will have to come back.

  ——

  OUR HOUSE SMELLING of damp and burnt wood. My parents beam, look at us like we’ve been gone for years. My mother looks at me and says I told you you’d be all right, and I want to say I’m not, I’m all wrong, but it wouldn’t matter, she wouldn’t understand, and even though she’s a nurse, she couldn’t help me at all. She’s in bed by nine. My father, Brett and I stay up and watch television until my father is snoring on a recliner beside the fireplace in our den. Brett on the couch with a blanket pulled up over him. Me on a chair beside my father. I go over and stare down at him, put my fingers close to his face, flick his nose and he shakes, bleary-eyed, and Brett and I laugh and my father tells us to fuck off, rubs his eyes, waves a hand at us and goes down the hall to the bedroom. Deep snoring a minute later.

  Man, Brett says, he can fucking snore.

  Yeah, I say. No doubt.

  You, too, Brett says.

  Not like that, though.

  You’ll be there soon enough. In your blood.

  Whatever. In the dark room the television punches light on Brett’s face.

  You remember, he says, how we’d come home late as shit and open the door all quiet and listen for those snores?

  Yeah, I say. All the way from the back of the hall. Loud as a sonofabitch.

  Brett laughs.

  It’s how we knew if we were cool coming home late, if we opened the door at two or three in the morning and could hear our father’s snoring from the den. If we didn’t hear it, we’d just sit outside and smoke cigarettes and then check again. My mother has trained herself to ignore the snoring but her ears were tuned to hear us, and if we weren’t quiet enough, we’d wake her and she’d appear in the dark all drunk with sleep and ask us where we’d been and we’d say oh just watching a movie, started it late you know? She’d nod and stumble back down the hall. This is how my mother is. If she wakes in the night, she’s delirious, doesn’t know what’s going on, but still stumbles around the house checking on us or cutting off lights we’ve left on, picking up shoes or books we’ve strewn around. My father, if he woke up for some reason, would just smell our breath and tell us not to be stupid and drive around drunk. We’d nod, say nah, man, we don’t do that. He’d always say you know you can call me if you’re drunk. I’ll come get you.

  BRETT AND I sit up and watch television for as long as we can and Matthew isn’t home yet from his Friday night. My parents had had enough by the time he started high school, so he’s pretty much free to do what he wants. Brett falls asleep and when I get up to go to bed, trying to be quiet, he looks up at me bleary and says night. It’s always like that. I always try to get back to my room without waking him just to see if I can but he always wakes up. No matter how quiet I am. It’s like he’s asleep but part of him is always listening to see if I’m still there.

  EVEN THOUGH I’M home I still dream the same fucked-up things, faceless men scratching at the windows of my room. I’d hoped it would help to sleep at home, that I wouldn’t keep waking up in the middle of the night sweating and then lying still and waiting for the sun to come up. But it doesn’t happen like that. It’s the same thing. All the time.

  SATURDAY AFTERNOON INSIDE a convenience store across from my house I’m buying cigarettes and the cashier tells me I’m going to die and I say what? and she says nothing.

  I tell Brett about the woman when we’re in his room Saturday night. He’s in his bed reading something about Kierkegaard. I’m on the small couch against the wall. He turns a page.

  Did you hear me? I say. He looks up from the book.

  Yeah, he says. I heard you. Looks back down at the book.

  Well?

  Well what?

  You don’t think that’s fucked up?

  You probably misunderstood her.

  No. I heard it. Plain as anything. She acted like she didn’t say anything but I know she did.

  I don’t know, man. Even if she did say it, so what?

  I just thought it was fucked up, you know? Telling me I was going to die.

  We’re all going to die.

  Oh yeah that’s fucking insightful.

  I don’t know what to tell you, man.

  You think I’m crazy?

  He looks up from the book. Closes it, holds a finger to mark the page and rests it on his chest.

  No, I don’t, he says. I think you misheard her or something.

  I didn’t, I say. I swear.

  What do you want me to say?

  I don’t know. Just that it was weird.

  It was weird.

  You think I’m going to die soon or something?

  No.

  Why not?

  I just don’t. I mean I
really don’t know but I don’t think so. Not like tomorrow or anything.

  Okay. And then we’re quiet. Me staring at the television that’s turned down low. Brett at his book.

  You sure? I say.

  Yeah, he says. I’m sure. Don’t listen to fucking crazy people like that.

  Okay, I say. Then I drop it.

  Brett looks up again from the book. Does this have something to do with the pledge thing? he says.

  What? I say.

  I don’t know. Like stress or something.

  Nah. I doubt it.

  Brett stares at me. Just think about it, he says. Maybe it does.

  Okay, I say.

  I DON’T THINK about pledging and whether it stresses me because I know Brett’s right. I leave the room and get into bed. I can’t stop thinking about the woman and what she said and how I know I heard it. I fall asleep and wake in the middle of the night shaking again. Sit up straight in my bed. The television still on and muted. I turn it up and listen for the voices of reporters, salesmen, fitness instructors, whoever.

  ——

  FIVE-THIRTY IN THE morning on a Monday and Brett and I leave to get back for class at nine and I sleep most of the way back and Brett just keeps smoking with the windows rolled up and listening to some sad crooner he likes. The glass cold against my face. The seatbelt draped under my chin to hold my head up. I keep nodding off and then the car shakes and wakes me up and my whole body quivers because I don’t want to go back, I would rather just turn around or get out here or keep driving to anywhere and forget about everyone, forget about Will and Dave and all the brothers waiting on me.

  But it doesn’t go like that.

  Brett pulls into the dorm, keeps the car running, we both just sit there.

  Going to class? I say.

  No, he says. Fuck class, I’m not going. Fuck this place. These people.

  I don’t say anything.

  What are you doing? he says. You want to come with me?