Goat

by Brad Land

  All the whispers stop when the preacher moves under the tent. He reminds us again that Will is okay now that he’s with Jesus. The pallbearers move the casket over a hole surrounded by green turf. Will’s mother moves forward, puts a white lily on top of the casket and sobs into her hands. Her husband gathers her up and pulls her into his chest. Will’s younger brother can’t look at the coffin as it drops, he stands against his father like he will fall. Tara presses into me, wraps her arms around my waist. I look over at Brett and he’s watching the coffin drop like he can see inside it and then he nods at Will when the coffin is slipping beneath the soil and I feel everyone around me, their breath, the pulse and sway of others.

  ON THE HIGHWAY going home we don’t talk, we just listen to the tires spin. The sun has settled into a deep orange, thin clouds strewn along its edges. I look over at Brett. He’s got a wrist laid over the steering wheel, one hand settled in his lap.

  The road stretches before us like some path we’ve never seen and the pines along the edge of the highway glow in the sunlight silhouetted at their backs. We open the windows all the way and the air is soft. I reach over and place my hand at the bottom of Brett’s neck and squeeze. I leave it there and he reaches over, places his hand on my shoulder. We don’t speak but we both know we won’t go back to Clemson, that we won’t ever go back, and nothing else is important, nothing more important than our hands and the air slipping inside to brush our faces. I let go of my brother’s neck and his hand leaves my shoulder. He leans his head from the window. Drives with his eyes closed.

  A NEWSPAPER CLIP my father gives me on Will Fitch the day after the funeral says these things:

  Died suddenly after collapsing in his room on campus. Walked into his room and started talking to his roommate. Fell to the floor. The roommate called the Clemson University EMS, who transported him to Oconee Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at three thirty-three P.M.

  AND LATER, IN my head, I watch Will Fitch fall down.

  He opens his door and sees his roommate, Chris, at his desk, bent over a textbook. He takes a plastic pen from his shirt pocket, bites it with his back molars. He chews once and the heat begins just below his heart, the third rib, warms the bone and spreads in a dull wave. It’s like ripples on a pond, opaque heat moving from the center and then his heart speeds and the hairs on his forearm and neck stand like soldiers. He rubs his ribs with a flat palm, kneads his fingers just below his heart and his legs give and he drops to the floor, sits staring at his roommate and his textbook and then Will’s neck clenches and he is clawing at the mattress bringing knees one by one toward his chest like he’s climbing but the light from the third-story window is blinding and white and spit bubbles at his mouth and he’s shaking Chris stuttering no man what the fuck what the fuck oh God oh shit don’t motherfucker don’t don’t don’t motherfucker and the door opens and the air is sucked out of the room and he thinks so this is what it’s like and how he expected something much more Lutheran something much more brilliant not just the spit and the heat and the ribs and Chris shaking his head like an idiot not just this oh God not just this but then he concentrates on the ceiling and the patterns pull him up and he is limp and his eyes are still and he sees nothing but this convergence of pattern and light and dancing flakes of dust and everything is at once still but also moving with a clarity he’s never known and his chest and hair and heart and tongue are silent as if in prayer and then it is black and then it is nothing.

  THREE DAYS AFTER Christmas I drive back to the memorial garden. Because I want to see this place alone. In the quiet.

  The memorial garden like a grid. I turn in, follow the road to where I know Will is. Park my car and get out and it’s cold and bright. The flowers marking the graves like hands, these plaques with the names everywhere and I’m walking where I think he is but I don’t see his name, it’s nowhere.

  IN THE OFFICE at the back, I stare at the different plaque designs on one wall. This skinny man with glasses clears his throat, he’s beside me.

  May I help you? he says.

  Yes, I say, I’m looking for someone.

  Who?

  My friend he’s buried here. I can’t find him.

  The man nods. When was he buried?

  Like a week ago, I say and he goes to a back office, comes out with a ledger, stands in front of me thumbing through it.

  Last name? he says.

  Fitch, I say.

  First name?

  Will.

  Oh, Fitch, yeah. He turns the pages, runs a finger down and stops.

  You couldn’t find him because he doesn’t have a marker. I nod but I don’t understand. He holds the ledger in front of me.

  See here, he says, this is where he is and he’s pointing at this map with all the last names. So what you want to do, he says, is find Cantey comma Robert, take two steps to the left and you’ll be standing on top of him. On Fitch comma Will.

  I want to ask why there’s no marker but I don’t. I thank him and go outside.

  I FIND CANTEY comma Robert. Take two steps to the left. Nothing but dirt. A billboard in front of me says Jesus is coming. A leaf falls at my feet. I bend down to pick it up and it’s plastic, fallen from someone’s fake flowers, and I think it’s supposed to mean something but I can’t figure out what and I’m staring at the ground and I can hear Will talking, his voice rises, spreads in waves around me and I feel it hoist my arms and I open my mouth to breathe it all in and I am shaking, and I listen to my dead friend, my feet on his ribs, roots from a nearby oak woven through him like careful threads and he says that I must remember him, I must remember how this place, this soil, these roots hold him like this late-December day holds the dizzy light and dense air.

  I put the leaf in my pocket, and at home, that night, I dream this: Will on the floor of the hall. Balled up. And we’re all there again: me, Brett, Chance, everybody. We kick him, but then he stands, and Brett’s still there but everyone else is gone, and we’re outside in the quad, we’re all huddled together, breathing the speckled light, spinning, eyes drunk with the day and the light, with all this, with this braided brilliant dance.

  BRETT AND I go to the road where my thing happened almost a year and a half ago. It’s his idea. Because it’s his thing too. Even though we’ve never said it, we both know it.

  It’s two days after New Year’s. Takes us a long time to find it and I don’t really know how we do but when we do we stop the car at the head of the road and sit there for a long time just staring. My heart is pounding and my hands are sweating.

  So, Brett says. You ready?

  I nod.

  Yeah, I say.

  I’m glad to finally see this place, he says. He squints his eyes. Looks down the road.

  I’m glad you’re here, I say.

  I wanted to be. You know that. He’s still squinting.

  We open the car doors and step out and beneath my feet I can feel the same sharp granite. I bend to touch it, take one rock in my hand. Black and gray with the sharp faces that catch the sun. I look over at Brett. He’s bent down touching the rocks with a flat hand. Picks one up. Turns it over in one hand. Looks up at me.

  I’ve been here before, he says. Still holding the stone. Stands up. I look over at him.

  Not really, he says. But it feels like it. I could see it all along. He puts the rock in his pocket.

  I turn from him and look down the road. Reach inside my pockets and pull out all the receipts the campus map the class schedule all the movie stubs the stone the matchbooks the green string the small glass bluebird the used lighters the plastic tiger cut from an Exxon gas card the Band-Aid all the change and crumpled cigarette packs the plastic leaf I got from Will’s grave. I hold them there in two hands and they spill through my fingers. I turn to Brett and he is standing with his arms crossed and looking down the road.

  The sun lights the granite all the way down it is bright and glowing, the sun against our faces, the wind brushing the tops of pines that
line both sides of the road. I hold my hands out and then I pull one arm back, throw everything and then I take the other arm and pull back and everything spills from my hands. The stone bounces into the ditch. The bluebird shatters. The lighters crack. And when everything else lands it is scattered and the wind comes through and holds the receipts the campus map the class schedule the movie stubs the matchbooks the crumpled cigarette packs the plastic leaf tosses them like bodies across the road.

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you.

  Kenneth and Nancy Land. The most amazing parents. Brett and Matthew, who are also Lands, and also the best ever. Howell and Land grandparents. All of whom told me to do what I wanted. Mark and Pat and Zelle and Wilson Land and all their horses and dogs and fields. Deborah and Dow and Elizabeth and Julie Stanley. All other derivations of aunt, uncle and cousin, of which there are many.

  These people helped a whole lot.

  Sarah Messer, Laura Ford, Jason McLeod, Jynne Martin, Stuart Dybek, Cynthia White, Thisbe Nissen, Matt St. Louis, Rebecca Lee, Jason Skipper, Ken Autrey, Meggen Lyon, Mark Cox, Heather McEntire, Sarah Strickley, Michael White, Justin Lee, Lynn Kostoff, Eric Belk, Jesse Waters, Lia Purpura, Anne Barnehill, JD Dolan, Wes Powell, Wendy Brenner, Jennifer Abbot, Dave Monahan, Mac Baroody, Philip Gerard, Cody Todd, Denise Gess, Sebastian Matthews, Allyn McLeod, Brian DeVido, Jon Tuttle, Beau Bishop, Rebecca Flanagan, Roy Flanagan, Laura Misco, Lee Bryant, Stephanie Tewes, Janet Ellerby, David Hisle, Melissa Sanders, John Pritchett, Catherine McCall, Sarah McIntee, Laurel Snyder, Alan Wise, Nick Flynn, Eli Hastings, Terry Tempest Williams, Haven Kimmel, Arlo Crawford, Jessica Craig, Tom Perry, Dan Menaker, Libby McGuire, Robbin Schiff, Paul Kozlowski, Webb Younce, Annie Klein, Steve Messina, David Ebershoff, Janet Cooke, Mary Dolan, Amelia Zalcman, and everyone else at Random House.

  Bill Clegg is the best and coolest agent in the whole universe.

  Lee Boudreaux is the most genius of editors.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  BRAD LAND studied creative writing at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, where he received his M.F.A., and Western Michigan University, where he served as nonfiction editor of Third Coast. He has been a fellow at the MacDowell Colony and now lives in South Carolina.

  While all of the incidents in this book are true, some of the names

  and personal characteristics of the individuals involved have been

  changed in order to protect their privacy. Any resulting resemblance

  to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental and unintentional.

  Copyright © 2004 by Brad Land

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American

  Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by

  Random House, an imprint of The Random House

  Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc.,

  New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House

  of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  Random House and colophon are registered

  trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to BOA Editions, Ltd.,

  c/o The Permissions Company for permission to reprint an excerpt from

  “Song” from Song by Brigit Pegeen Kelly, copyright © 1995

  by Brigit Pegeen Kelly. Reprinted with the permission

  of BOA Editions, Ltd.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Land, Brad.

  Goat : a memoir / Brad Land.

  p. cm.

  1. Land, Brad. 2. Youth—South Carolina—Biography. 3. South Carolina—Social life and customs. 4. Violence—South Carolina. I. Title.

  HQ799.2.V56L36 2004

  305.235’092—dc21

  [B]

  2003047067

  Random House website address: www.atrandom.com

  eISBN: 978-1-58836-354-1

  v3.0