Goat

by Brad Land

  Nah, I say. I need to go to class, and I’m lying, because I know he needs to be by himself and I know he can’t help me right now anyway.

  All right, he says.

  I open the door and get out, reach back in for my bag.

  Have fun, I say.

  Yeah, he says.

  I shut the door and he pulls out.

  He doesn’t look over his shoulder and then he’s on the road, a car blaring its horn at him but he doesn’t look back at it or at me. This is what Brett will do: drive on the interstate in any direction. It doesn’t matter. Stare at yellow lines. Drive until he can’t keep his eyes open. He’s always done this when he can’t think or is thinking too much. I am standing alone at nine o’clock with the quilted morning sky and the orange and yellow leaves raining around me like ashes.

  I SHAKE ALL day.

  On the way to class everything is livid. I don’t know why. It just is. I can see the edges of things. I can barely walk and it hurts to look at things.

  I keep my head down the whole way. Stare at cracks in the sidewalk.

  IN RELIGION CLASS Whelan talks about the Tao. But I can’t follow him because my head is somewhere else. I can’t think. The smile and the breath, the brothers, these shadows everywhere.

  When Whelan’s up at the chalkboard writing something the girl in front of me turns around. Dark skin and brown hair.

  Hey, she says.

  Hey, I say. Look up at Whelan and he’s still scribbling.

  You’re a Kappa Sig, right?

  Pledge.

  Yeah, that’s what I meant. I’m Erin.

  Brad.

  Cool.

  She smiles and turns back around and I take my fingers, plug my ears until I see people bending beside their desks to get books and leave.

  ERIN STOPS ME in the hall. Touches my arm.

  Hey, she says.

  I look around, hope I don’t see any brothers.

  Hey, I say.

  So, I’m pledging Kappa, she says.

  Oh, yeah?

  Yeah. It’s great.

  I don’t know what to say to her because my mind is all over the place. I scratch my head.

  Okay, she says. So, maybe I’ll see you around.

  Yeah, I say. Maybe.

  Bye.

  Bye.

  Erin opens the double doors.

  AFTER CLASS IN my room I lock the door and turn the lights off because the glare hurts my eyes. Everything hurts. The air hurts, it hurts to breathe because I don’t want to do this pledge thing anymore because I’m scared of everything, of closing my eyes, of waking at night but I’m also terrified of what I will be without the fraternity, that I will be nothing, that I am already nothing. I know it with each step and breath. I know it more than any truth. I know I’m nothing.

  ——

  AND THEN IT’S done.

  I call my brother and when he picks up his phone I hear music blaring in the background. The Thursday-night party that I’m supposed to go to.

  Where are you? he says.

  I can’t come, I say. Can we talk for a second? He pauses, the phone scraping his chin. The music rises and he tells someone to stay the fuck out of his room.

  Someone says excuse me, motherfucker. The door shuts and the sound shrinks. The air between us silent.

  Where? he says after a moment and I can barely talk. I tell him I don’t know where and he tells me in the stairwell that connects the two sides of our dorm, between the third floors, and I say yes, that’s fine, and I know he hears the salt in my voice, my shaking hands.

  BRETT SITTING ALONE on the top step. Waiting for me when I open the door. I walk to the stairwell slowly, and he tells me not to worry, there’s no one around, but I worry anyway.

  I smooth my jeans out, pull the hat down over my eyes. Brett takes a pull from his cigarette and thumps it against the wall. It bounces, sends red ash like sparks from hot steel. One branch from an oak bounces against the window in front of us. Brett takes a drink from his beer.

  After the drink he says talk and I don’t want to because I know I will cry. I can feel it coming already.

  It’s hard to talk, I say and he nods, stares at the glass, brings the beer to his lips again. I open my mouth again and I can’t say anything. I drop my head against my chest. We sit and I cry and Brett says nothing. The door opens to our right. I look up and my face is all wet and red and Chance stops when he sees us.

  Whoa, he says and Dixon is behind him. He peeks over Chance’s shoulder and I bring my head down again. Brett turns, springs up, rushes at them and grabs the doorframe. He slams it closed and pounds his fists against the green metal.

  Stay the fuck out, he yells, stay the fuck out. He pounds his fist into the door again and backs away. Throws his beer against the door and foam spirals over the floor and he kicks the can against the wall.

  Goddamn you, he says, I fucking hate you hate every one of you fucks. He backs away and lowers his head, brings a hand to his forehead. Sits beside me again.

  I’ll tell them you’re done, he says.

  I don’t know, I say, maybe I should stick it out.

  He shakes his head.

  No, he says, you’re done. I’ll tell them tomorrow.

  I want to tell him that he’s all I’ve got left and I’m terrified of being alone, that maybe these brothers are all I’ve got, that I’m scared of them but I’m scared of what I’ll be without them, but nothing comes out and I just sit there with my head bowed.

  Brett gets up.

  Lock your door tonight, he says, and don’t answer if someone knocks.

  He steps back down the stairwell and the door downstairs opens and thick music lifts and the oak taps the glass again softly and through the haze I can see the moon cut by dark leaves.

  ——

  I PASS FROM them quietly, and then nothing’s left. No one remembers my name.

  Brett tells the brothers the next day that I am done and they act worried, concerned, and want to know if everything is okay with me. He tells them I’m fine and they all nod, hands laid flat over the pleats in their khakis. Eyes pinched into small slits. There is no ceremony to strike my name, no ritual to simulate my death, no walking the gauntlet between rows of brothers and pledges, each head falling like a domino, eyes turned down to the floor as I pass. This is how it goes:

  Brett speaks.

  They nod.

  I vanish.

  9

  I DON’T KNOW WHAT to do with myself after I leave the fraternity. I still feel their eyes on me everywhere but now it’s different. It’s fear and shame. I’m scared to see them, to see the look on my pledge brothers’ faces that says you left you left us and the look on the brothers’ faces that says pussy I knew you were a pussy I knew you couldn’t do it. When I see them I duck my head, skirt my eyes toward a building or tree or anything but I can feel their eyes on my back all the time and they’re laughing. The dreams still come every night. This thing inside me I can’t get out.

  And my fears are right. I have nothing without the fraternity. I don’t lose Brett but I do lose him. Something is cut between us. Again. But I know it’s how it’s got to be. He’s got to be away from me because I’m fucking him up. I stay on my side of the dorm and he stays on his and it’s not some regulation it’s just the way it goes.

  ——

  WE TAKE A field trip for Geology class and the hippie teacher leads us out past campus into these thick woods. Down into a ravine. Clay rising on each side. But I can’t keep up. I keep thinking about Brett and how he’s fucked, about me and how I’m fucked, how I don’t sleep and how my head won’t ever be quiet. There’s this kid named Doug who has long hair. The only one I can talk to. Not because he’s really interesting. He just never asks about what I do. Who I am.

  The hippie teacher points up toward the clay walls inside the ravine.

  Notice the striations, he says.

  We all nod.

  We can see time here, he says.

 
We all nod.

  On the way back I bend down and pick up a small rock. Granite. Put it in my pocket.

  I HAVE THIS one friend named Matt who’s a Phi Delt but he doesn’t care anything about it. Lives a floor below me.

  Matt’s five-seven and full of muscle and we work out to kill the time even though he’s got a busted ankle from intramural soccer. He never says a word about me quitting the fraternity. He doesn’t make fun of me. He doesn’t laugh or call me a pussy.

  I come into Matt’s room on a Wednesday night at eleven when my head won’t be still because I’m scared of the dreams I know I’ll have. Matt sits on his yellow couch with his bad leg perched on a coffee table.

  We watch Rocky and after the movie’s over Matt’s girlfriend Emily calls. He moves into the corner beside his desk to talk. He yells and tells her she’s fucked up fucked up, what the fuck is your fucking problem, he says.

  Then he hangs up.

  Emily calls again and he says don’t fucking call me again tonight I’ve had enough of your bullshit and then he slams the phone down, picks up his small coffee table and throws it against the door. It breaks in half and the beer cans and ashtrays go all over. He throws the door open and stomps out into the hall. I follow him and he’s leaning against the wall.

  I hit him as hard as I can in the stomach once, drop my hands, stare at him like it was the most natural thing to do. I don’t tighten my stomach for his punch and he looks at me like I’m crazy. He smiles and hits me, my eyes water and he lets his hands drop to his sides just like I did. I hit him again and it goes over and over until I can’t breathe and we fall down laughing and sobbing and clutching our guts. Matt gets up and puts his hand through the glass case of a fire extinguisher, just turns around without flinching. He has pieces of glass in his knuckles. He pinches his fist open and shut, pulls out flakes of glass, the blood dripping on the floor and I’m still on the ground holding my stomach and he just laughs and I laugh because there’s blood everywhere and there’s nothing else to do but laugh after we’ve beaten each other breathless.

  I do this because it makes me forget. Because the pain is real. Because it’s in my gut and not behind my eyes.

  ——

  WILL FORGETS ME. Dave forgets me. I know it. They all forget me and I can’t forget them. I love them. I hate them. I am dead. I never existed.

  TOILET. WILL’S HANDS in a toilet down on his knees kneading a banana. He thinks it’s shit.

  Squeeze it, they say.

  Get it in those fingers.

  Yeah.

  Mash it up.

  Uh huh.

  How’s that shit smell?

  How’s my shit smell?

  You’re shit boy.

  Goat.

  Fucking goat.

  He’s gagging. Eyes closed.

  Don’t open your eyes, boy.

  Shit boy.

  Fist on the back of his head. White behind his eyes.

  You gonna eat that shit.

  Swallow it.

  Pulled away. Stumbling with the shit on his hands. Dropping from his fingertips. Water over his hands. Open mouth. Fingers pulling his jaw down.

  Open wide, they say.

  Will can feel his throat locking.

  Don’t worry, goat, they say. No more shit.

  And it’s on his tongue, his throat clenches, and he swallows. Again and his mouth burns.

  You thirsty, boy?

  Thirsty, huh?

  Hot shit.

  Will’s face shoved down into a cooler. Water lapping the sides, he’s swallowing again, pulling it all down.

  Here is what’s in the cooler:

  Water. Phlegm. Pubic hair. Piss.

  I know he’s doing this. Brett tells me. He had to do it once too.

  10

  THREE WEEKS AFTER I quit Brett calls me. Out of the blue. We’ve talked a few times since everything went down. Sometimes I ask him what the pledges are doing. Mostly, though, it’s nothing more than hi, Mom and Dad say hi. And I know it’s not because he’s mad or disappointed, it’s just that he doesn’t know what to do, and I don’t either, so we leave it that way.

  Brett wants me to come down to his room and I say I don’t know, I don’t want to see those guys and he says fuck them, they aren’t around anyway. They’re all at a mixer with Kappa, he says. I don’t ask why he didn’t go. I already know. He’s pushing himself away from them. From everything. Because he can’t stand himself anymore.

  I LOOK THROUGH the window of the door to the Kappa Sigma hall. Brett’s door is closed. My hands are shaking but I push the door open anyway. Just don’t look, I tell myself, don’t look over and you won’t have to see them. I’m afraid I’ll see Ben Moore and he’ll call me a pussy or just shake his head back and forth. I walk quietly and knock on Brett’s door.

  He says come in. His voice opaque through the thick metal door. I push it open and he’s sitting staring at the television, the lights off, the volume down.

  Hey, I say.

  Hey, he says and I sit down in a metal chair and it’s cold through my T-shirt.

  I stare at the television and I know he’s looking at me.

  Do you want to leave? he says. I’m leaving.

  Tonight? I say.

  Yeah, tonight.

  Where to?

  Charleston, he says. To see Chrissie and to just leave. Chrissie’s his sometime girlfriend.

  I don’t know, I say. Kind of late for that, you know?

  Okay.

  Okay? I didn’t say I wouldn’t.

  You won’t, he says, and he’s right; even though I want to leave with him some part of me can’t. Everything is quiet and then he stands up.

  I’m going, he says. He looks over at me. At my pockets. What the fuck’s in your pockets?

  Nothing.

  Getting big, man.

  Drop it.

  Okay.

  Bye.

  Bye, he says, and then I’m up. I know he’s right about my pockets. I can’t stop keeping things and I don’t know why. I pull the door and when I turn around the television is off and the room is dark and Brett is standing in the corner staring out into the cold.

  I GO OUT onto the side stairwell and look down into the parking lot. Brett’s car pulled up on the grass. The wind blows, pulls the wet scent of garbage from the trash bin below me.

  On the wall next to me in blue marker someone has written this:

  Phi Delts suck cock.

  Beneath that someone has written this:

  Your mother sucks my cock.

  I hear a door slam while I’m reading the wall and I look down and Brett’s lights blink on. The car cranks and begins to back up and for a moment I want to run down and leave with him but I know it will just have to be like this for now.

  My feet won’t move.

  I watch Brett’s car grow smaller and then he disappears when the oaks swallow him.

  WILL’S NEW NICKNAME is Ghost Fitch. It’s because he’s never around. His excuse is that he’s busy with schoolwork. Architecture major. But the brothers don’t care.

  This is what they say:

  School is the most important thing.

  This is what they do:

  Yell and scream and hate if you don’t show your face.

  Will’s a ghost.

  My brother tells me this on a Tuesday in mid-November.

  NOW I CAN’T throw anything away. I’ve been saving things for a while but now it’s everything. It all gets stored in my pockets or under my bed.

  These are the things under my bed:

  Letters from my mom and dad.

  An article my grandfather sent me about a local high school student who has sworn off alcohol, tobacco, drugs and premarital sexual intercourse.

  My pledge paraphernalia:

  The Bononia Docet, which I haven’t given back.

  Invitations to pledge week functions.

  An alphabetical list of my pledge brothers.

  An alphabetical list of the brothe
rs.

  A photocopy of the Star and Crescent.

  My bid from Kappa Sig.

  A baseball bat.

  A bloody T-shirt.

  These are the things in my pockets:

  Receipts. From cigarettes. From food. From anything.

  A campus map.

  My class schedule.

  A leaf.

  Movie stubs. Trainspotting. Beautiful Girls. Heavy. Jerry Maguire. Swingers. Ransom. James and the Giant Peach.

  A watch that doesn’t work.

  A Band-Aid.

  A key.

  A tiger cut from an Exxon gas card.

  Pennies.

  A small glass bluebird.

  Cigarette wrappers.

  A green string.

  Used books of matches.

  A gold earring in the shape of a heart.

  One medium-sized rock. Granite.

  One clear blue plastic lighter.

  They make my pockets bulge like I’m carrying small animals down there. I think I do it because these things are tangible, because I can hold them in my hands and because I know that if I don’t something bad will happen. That the things I dream will find me. Brett doesn’t say anything else about my pockets sticking out or the way I have to pull out wads of trash every time I look for my keys or my money. When I walk everything rattles and I have to shove my hands down deep to hold the pennies and the trash so the noise won’t be too loud.

  I READ ABOUT the girl and the dam on a Monday after I leave class. Mike’s standing there beside the pile of student newspapers and I say hey man and he says hey man. Mike’s a Phi Delt from Pittsburgh, all gruff with a beard he never shaves. I don’t mind being around the Phi Delts because they never ask me about fraternities. They know I quit Kappa Sig and they don’t care. Mike says so Thanksgiving huh you going home huh and I say yeah day after tomorrow or tomorrow I don’t know. He nods, pulls out a smoke and lights it and then holds the pack toward me. I take one and light it. Fucking turkey Mike says and I say yeah fucking turkey. When he leaves I get a newspaper. I sit down on a bench and cross one leg. I’m reading the front page. At the bottom there’s a small article about a recent student death. Emilia Bright from Connecticut and she was a sorority pledge. Found bobbing facedown at the base of the Lake Hartwell dam.