Goat

by Brad Land

  I tear the article out and cram it down into my jeans with everything else.

  WHEN I KNOCK on Brett’s door he’s up in his bed with a hand hanging over the rail into the empty space between the floor and the loft. I pull on his index finger and he turns over, looks down at me.

  What? he says.

  I need your car.

  What’s wrong with yours?

  In the pit. I saw yours outside.

  Why?

  I have to go somewhere.

  Where?

  The dam.

  He sits up and rubs his cheeks.

  Gonna jump?

  No. Not yet.

  Okay.

  He drops down from the bed and pats his jeans, goes over to the windowsill and picks up his keys. I didn’t expect him to come but when I look at him I know that we’ve made this turn back toward each other. That now we’re going to be fucked together.

  THE DAM IS whitewashed concrete all the way down to the lake. Brett touches my shoulder as I lean over and we stand on the edge with our toes sticking out over the concrete and I’m scared of heights but I want to see what the girl saw when she went over into the water. If she could feel the air rush into her face.

  Brett stands there looking over the edge.

  Let’s both do it, he says.

  Okay, I say. Lean forward again out over the edge. Look for the girl. Brett puts a hand on my shoulder.

  No, he says. Not yet.

  I stare at the water. It’s still and the girl’s there floating facedown the hair stretched out around her head like weeds. She dips over the rise of water. Arms and legs stretched like some star. And I don’t know why I love her but I do. Brett touches my shoulder again and says careful and then the girl’s gone. I squint my eyes to see if I can find her below the dirty brown water. Staring up at me. Smiling.

  ——

  WE WATCH The Natural in Religion class. The girl in front of me with a Kappa shirt on. Big embroidered Greek letters across her chest. She’s hunched and I can see her shoulder blades poke through her shirt. I can’t stop staring at the shoulder blades, the way they make the fabric rise and fall. She turns around and looks at me like I’m bizarre, like I know something I shouldn’t. I want to tell her that it’s nothing, that I’m not strange and that I knew her once when I was a pledge and she smiled at me then told me her name was Erin and that just now I didn’t mean anything by staring at her shoulder blades but she just turns around and hunches again.

  I CROSS BENEATH a brick arch that leads from the quad to downtown, where I’m going to buy a compact disc of this band called the Descendents and after I do I keep the receipt.

  After I leave the record store, I go back toward the quad, down Main Street, all the bodies pushing past me, the voices, this chatter and hum everywhere. I keep my head down, focus on the cracks in the sidewalk, start counting, make sure not to touch one with my feet, make sure that my right foot steps over a crack first because it makes perfect sense now to do these things and I’m looking down and I hear someone call my name. I look over and stop my feet and there’s this girl named Tara Powers who I went to high school with and who I thought I might have loved once. She’s at a stoplight with the passenger side window rolled down, leaning over across the seat, saying hey you hey you, waving her hands toward the car and then I forget about the cracks and I’m walking over to the edge of the sidewalk. Tara tells me to get in.

  WE DRIVE. LEAVE downtown and take the road that leaves campus. She looks at me while she’s driving.

  So Eric, she says.

  Who? I say.

  Boyfriend. You know him. He’s a KA.

  Heard of him.

  Well, he’s a shit.

  Oh yeah?

  Shit, that’s what he is.

  Okay.

  Not really.

  Oh, I say. Listen. I turn around. Look behind me at the tops of dorms jutting out over the trees. Where are we going?

  To my place.

  Why?

  Just because.

  All right, I say and we drive to her apartment, which is in this complex with nothing but students.

  Inside her apartment she drops her bag on a coffee table littered with magazines. Tara sits on the couch. Puts her face in her hands.

  That fucker, she says. I know he’s fucking that girl. There’s a Van Gogh print on the wall. A Pulp Fiction poster. I’m standing by the door. She looks up at me. The brown hair. Pale skin.

  You can sit down you know, she says.

  All right, I say and then I sit down.

  You want to watch TV? she says. I say yeah. She turns on the television, it’s some cowboy thing with the horses and the guns and the red rocks everywhere.

  This cool? she says. Turns her head to the wall.

  Yeah, I say. She runs her hands through her hair. One of the cowboys gets shot off his horse and falls down.

  Whoa, I say.

  What? she says. Turns and looks at me.

  That cowboy he just got shot and fell off his horse.

  I look over at her and she’s still looking at me. She takes my chin and pulls my face to her and her mouth opens, her tongue inside my mouth and my tongue on hers all wrapped and she kisses me hard and I kiss her hard back.

  And then she pulls away from me. I sit back against the couch. Scratch my chin. On the television another cowboy drops.

  Sorry, she says.

  For what? I say.

  For that. I shouldn’t have done that.

  Oh, that was all right, I say. Fine. Good. You kiss good.

  We watch the cowboy movie and she reaches over and holds my hand.

  And it’s fine that it’s been this way with girls for a while now, these random things, because I know I’m too much for anyone, that if I let myself, I’d love them all, I’d think they could fix me. But I know they can’t, and it’s enough, because every so often when a girl kisses me, touches my hand, my face, I remember that the world has light.

  On the way back she keeps looking over at me and I don’t know what to say. She pulls up into the dorm parking lot. Keeps the car running. I open the door and step out. Look back into the car.

  Bye, she says. Thanks for that.

  I nod. Shut the door and watch her drive away.

  11

  THE DAY BEFORE THANKSGIVING.

  The pledges have a week left.

  I call Brett and no one answers. I’m supposed to ride home with him. When I go down to his room there’s a note on the door. A piece of torn yellow paper with my brother’s jagged writing. This is what it says:

  Brad.

  Fuck man had to leave.

  Ride home with Will.

  Brett.

  I knock on the door and Brett’s roommate Wes answers.

  Brett left last night about four-thirty, he says. Went to Charleston. I nod.

  Thank you, I say.

  ——

  BACK IN MY room I call Will.

  Yeah, he says, Brett asked me to give you a ride. It’s on the way.

  Thanks, I say.

  It’s cool, I’ll be out front at six, he says. After my lab.

  I don’t want to ride with Will but he has to pass right through Florence to get home. I’ve gone the last few weeks without seeing him. Or Dave. I’ve only had to see brothers or pledges at a distance. When I walk to class. In the cafeteria. I don’t want to sit for three hours and be reminded of what Will’s about to finish and what I left behind. If I had stayed it would have almost been over.

  But I didn’t.

  That’s what I’m left with.

  I LEAN OVER the railing in the outside stairwell and wait for Will’s car to pull up. Someone has added a new line to the wall directly underneath the one about someone’s mother sucking someone’s cock.

  This is what it says:

  Fuck you all.

  And I can’t stand looking at the lines anymore. I want them gone. I go into my room and get a black permanent marker. Scribble out the lines about Phi Delts s
ucking cock, about someone’s mother sucking cock and the last line that says fuck you all. I cover each letter with the black ink and add my own line. I write my name.

  ——

  I’M IN THE backseat of Will’s car. He turns around.

  Ready? he says. All smiles. The car a new-model gold Toyota Camry. Immaculate on the inside. A girl in the passenger seat. She twists around.

  Anne, she says.

  Oh hi, I say, I’m Brad.

  Will puts the car in drive, stops and spins his head.

  Oh man, he says, that was rude, Brad Anne, Anne Brad. Nods his head at us each time he says a name. Anne is wearing a heavy green coat, her long hair tucked beneath the collar. Her face is small and round and her hands are warm.

  You like the Dead? she says.

  Sure, I say, I like the Dead.

  Even though I don’t. It feels like the right time to lie.

  Man, Anne says, I love Jerry, and we listen to a live show. I keep thinking of a bumper sticker the punk rocker who lives next door to me in Daniel has. It’s on his door. It says Jerry’s Dead. Shave Your Head. Anne turns around.

  This is one of the best, she says. Fillmore ’71. I nod and place my face against the cold window glass and for a moment I forget that I don’t like the Dead and the cheers and music begin to blend with the quiet hum of the engine and Clemson slips behind us and we don’t even notice.

  I OPEN MY eyes when I feel the car stop. Will pumps gas and Anne smokes through a cracked window. She rests the cigarette against the slit and when she flicks her thumb against the filter the wind carries ash onto the windshield. It rolls down and rests against the wipers.

  Will hunched over the gas nozzle, one hand shoved into his pocket. He keeps pulling it out, changing hands to pump. Shaking with the cold. Anne leans back and lets smoke dance beneath the overhead light. She smiles, takes two quick drags and snubs the cigarette out in the middle console’s ashtray.

  Still glad that you quit? she says. She knows.

  Well, yeah, I say.

  Really though I’m lying. I don’t know if I’m glad. Not now. Not with everyone else so close.

  Just wasn’t for me, I say. Not my gig.

  Yeah, she says, I know what you mean.

  Did you? I say.

  Did I what?

  You know, pledge?

  Oh, yeah. Chi-O. Not really a big deal though. I don’t really care much about it.

  I nod. The brothers taught us a song about Chi-O’s. It goes like this: Chi-ho Chi-ho it’s off to bed we go with a Lambda Chi between my thighs and an SAE on top of me Chi-ho Chi-ho. These verses then repeated.

  We don’t have to do crazy shit like you guys do, she says. I mean I understand why someone wouldn’t want to do all that. Will’s told me some.

  Not much fun, I say. I turn back toward the window. Will running from the gas station. He opens the car door and plops down into the seat, rubs his hands together.

  My God, he says, it’s so cold. His hand twitches when he goes for the ignition. He cranks the car and turns the heat high.

  ——

  ANNE HAS HER feet pulled up close to her chest. Arms wrapped around her knees, head leaned against the window. The seatbelt looped under her chin. No one’s said anything for about an hour. The Dead are still playing but it’s a different show. I think. It all sounds the same.

  I lean up between the seats.

  You must be excited, I say.

  Oh, yeah, Will says, I am. It’s almost over. One more week.

  Cool. Been hard I know.

  Yeah, really. I didn’t know if I could do it.

  You did, though. That’s more than I can say.

  He shakes his head.

  You don’t feel bad about all that, do you? he says.

  Sometimes, I say. Yeah. A lot really.

  Well, don’t. You shouldn’t. I mean it’s easy for me to say that now when I’m almost done. But really. You don’t have anything to be ashamed of.

  I just feel bad sometimes. Lonely, you know.

  Yeah, I know. He reaches over into Anne’s lap and takes her cigarettes. He shakes the pack, brings a filter to his mouth.

  Since when do you smoke? I say.

  Since I became a pledge, he says. Want one?

  Sure, I say. Take the filter he’s shaken over the edge of the pack. He cracks our windows and the cold air rushes through. Stiff against my face.

  I’m worried, though, he says. I squint my eyes against the air blowing back.

  About what? I say.

  The vote.

  The final one?

  Yeah.

  Why?

  I haven’t been around as much as they want. They call me Ghost Fitch.

  Oh, I say like I don’t know already. I wouldn’t worry. I don’t think they’d vote anyone out who made it this far. It’s just a scare tactic more than anything.

  Yeah, you’re right, he says. I just worry about stuff. I’m a worrier.

  Me, too. That’s why I couldn’t hack it.

  I just got lucky I guess. I really don’t know how I did it if you want to know the truth. You don’t know how many times I almost quit. I just tried to stay busy with schoolwork.

  Well, congratulations, though. You’ve done something that’s really hard.

  Thanks man, he says and I can feel the fear leave his voice. It’s like someone has exhaled deeply, pushed everything out.

  That means a lot, he says. From you. Really. It does.

  Why?

  Just does. All that shit me and you did at the beginning. I mean I still feel like it should’ve been me and not you sometimes. You know, who quit. You’ve got more guts than me.

  I don’t.

  I think you do. You just don’t know it. But anyway, thanks for the congratulations.

  You’re welcome, I say.

  He shoots his cigarette through the crack in the window and exhales a stream over the edge. I flick my cigarette out and look back. Orange sparks over the concrete behind us. I turn back and catch Will’s face in the rearview. His eyes are dancing and his hands lie silent on the steering wheel.

  A GOAT CHAINED to a basketball post. Head bent, picking at the grass in the raised section of courtyard. Outline of jawbone poking back into his neck. My eyes are hazy because it’s seven-thirty on the first day of exams. I rub them hard and blink to make sure the goat’s really there. When I take a step down from Daniel Hall the goat looks up at me. Ribs poke through its wiry gray coat like curved fingers and small horns have come through the top of the skull. Breath billows from flared nostrils. The goat gives me a blank stare and then bends back down to gnaw at the dead grass. I lower myself onto the last step and watch through the cold. I’m shivering but the cold feels good and I start to rock back and forth, wrap my arms across my chest and begin to laugh. It begins as a slight heave but then I’m shaking with the cold and the laugh for this scrawny bristly chinned goat and for whoever left him here.

  AT MY GEOLOGY exam everyone looks drugged or dead. The girl next to me taps her pen and digs at the corners of her eyes, looks at each index finger and wipes them on her torn jeans. The baseball player still has his arm in a sling and has to write with his left hand. I am staring at the blackboard, at the coiled chalk smudges and I haven’t even looked at my exam. The hippie teacher walks through aisles and looks over our shoulders. When he passes by I feel his eyes on me telling me I better get to work but my hands won’t move because I don’t care. His patchouli makes me wince. When I pick up the pencil I mark C for every question.

  In three days Will and Dave will be brothers.

  In three days I will be gone and I won’t come back.

  I get up and leave my test on the desk and the hippie teacher doesn’t even look up. It’s December and he’s wearing a heavy pullover and shorts, leaning on the big desk up front, playing with this geode he bobbles like a grapefruit.

  THE KAPPA SIGMA hall is silent. It smells like a cow pasture and I scrunch my nose. I try the knob on B
rett’s door and it slides open. The room is dark. Brett’s arm is dangling from his side of the loft, head turned toward the wall. I touch his palm and trace the lines of his hand with my thumb. It twitches when I get to the soft part near the lifeline. I grab his wrist and pull, his eyes tear open, he inhales like it’s his first breath.

  What? he says. What are you doing here this early?

  I thought you had an exam, I say. This morning.

  What?

  An exam. A final. This morning.

  He looks around like he doesn’t know where he is.

  What time is it? he says. Rubs circles across his eyes.

  It’s like nine, I say. Maybe ten after.

  He falls back into his pillow, rubs his eyes again and lets out a slow oh fuck.

  Fuck fuck fuck, he says.

  What time was it? I say. He rolls over, places an open palm against the wall.

  Eight, he says. Fucking eight o’clock. I laugh.

  It’s not funny, he says.

  Yeah, I say. You’re right. And then I laugh again.

  Fuck it, he says. Whatever. He pulls the sheets back over his bare back.

  I close his door softly behind me and the pasture smell hits me again. I look down and there are hoofprints in the floor dirt.

  BRETT TELLS ME this after he wakes up at one:

  Last night the pledge class steals a goat. Twelve of the pledges drive in two separate cars to a farm forty minutes outside Clemson. Two pledges jump the barbed-wire fence at two in the morning, step in shit, lead the goat through a gate and lift him into the back of one pledge’s red extended-cab Chevrolet truck. The goat doesn’t put up a fight and sits still the whole way back. Like a baby. Somewhere around four they open the doors to the Kappa Sigma hall, lead the goat by a dog leash they’d bought at Wal-Mart, go into the bathroom on the first floor and tie the goat to a stall door handle. A pledge feeds the goat some dog food. Also purchased at Wal-Mart. Puts four tablets of Extra-Strength Ex-Lax into the food because he figures the goat is big but he’s really not and after all animals probably need more to induce diarrhea because their stomachs are strong and a goat has the strongest stomach of all. They eat aluminum cans. One pledge shuts off the lights in the bathroom when they sneak out but another wants to leave them on because he doesn’t want the goat to get scared so they leave the lights on and let the door fall shut.