by Lydia Peelle
“People is just—stupid.” He winced as soon as he heard himself say it.
Lucy brushed a lock of hair off her forehead. “Now what the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Charlie shrugged and coughed into his fist, cast down his eyes to avoid her glare. He felt like scratching a hole in the dry dirt and climbing in. The kid nosed the bottle and burbled as if it was a baby—their baby. Charlie was starting to like the kid. It was the only thing on the place that had a sense of humor.
When Charlie arrived in June, Lucy was just recovering from kidding season and desperate for help. He was desperate, too—the truck had broken down just seventy-five miles out of Red Bank, like a final fuck you from Darryl, and he’d blown most of his money on a new starter when he found Lucy’s help-wanted ad on a bulletin board at the gas station. He was grateful that she didn’t ask questions. A week or two, tops, he thought, surveying the old frame farmhouse and rolling fields, deciding it might not be half bad. He had started to drag his duffel bag into the house, and Lucy shook her head and pointed up to the barn. He thought she was kidding. Then she gave him a foam mattress, a lamp, a few milk crates, and an armload of blankets and told him to make himself at home. “For real?” he said.
She gazed at him with those blue eyes, challenging him. “None of the others ever had a problem with sleeping in the barn.”
You can do this, he told himself, lying on the floor of the grain room that first night, flies dropping from the rafters to land on his lips and the tinkling of the goats’ bells waking him every time he started to nod off. Be a man, Charlie. Buck up. So she didn’t seem to particularly like him. Who cares, he thought, so what? He was used to being misunderstood. He went about the world in two ways: there was the real Charlie, and then the Charlie he showed everyone else.
He had learned never to say what he was thinking, because no one else was thinking the same thing. “Oh, yeah, Mr. Know-It-All?” Darryl would say when Charlie started speaking his mind. “I got news for you. You think you’re so smart. Smarts ain’t all you need, you know. Plenty of smart people end up cleaning up other people’s shit for a living. So you just remember that, smart-ass.”
There were women at home—mothers of his friends—who tried to take care of him. Let him spend school nights at their house, always tried to send him home with leftovers. He would sometimes warily accept their offers of kindness, but mostly he’d curl up tight as a pill bug until they left him alone. Refuse the hot dinner even when his stomach was rumbling with hunger. Shrug the friendly arm off his shoulders. He was determined to show everyone that he could take care of himself. If that meant being alone in the world—well, in the end we all are, aren’t we?
“I’m afraid,” Lucy said one blistering morning, “that we’re going to have to put that kid out of its misery.” Charlie had only just crawled out of the barn into the white sun. Lucy, done with the milking, was out front, watering a pitiful rosebush. Its flowerless branches were akimbo, as if reaching out for someone.
Charlie was clutching the barn radio. Lucy had bought it for him at the thrift shop in town, replaced the missing knobs with a pair of clamps, and declared it good as new, but it was always breaking, and he had brought it outside with the intention of working on it. He looked down at it as if he suddenly had no idea how it got into his hands. He could hear the kid out there, mewling under the pear tree. He could always hear it. It was just a matter of tuning it in or out. No, he thought. Hell no. He moved into a tiny patch of shade and scowled at her.
She shook a kink out of the hose, slapping the dry ground with it, ignoring his fixed gaze. “Fill a pail. That’s the quickest way.” Her voice was measured, matter-of-fact, like she was assigning him any old chore, weeding, spackling, that she knew he was bound to screw up. Don’t talk to me like that, he thought, his grip tightening on the radio. I’m sick and tired of it.
“I’ve done this a dozen times. Trust me, Charlie. Above all it’s got to be quick.”
Quick, Charlie thought. Ha. When the male kids turned one month old, Lucy took each one and stretched a rubber band around its scrotum. “Go ahead,” she said, as he watched in horror. “Call me the ball breaker. Just don’t think you’re the first genius to come up with it.” Eventually, slowly, as the blood supply choked off, it all shriveled up and fell off like a scab. Charlie crept around the pasture for a week as if it was a minefield, terrified of seeing one or—worse—feeling one squash under his boot. Lucy caught him at it one day when he had squatted to examine what turned out to be a black walnut lying in the dust. “Don’t be a baby!” she called across the fence, laughing at him. “Besides, you’re never going to find one. The rats get them practically before they hit the ground.”
The days were not quick—the fat sun heaving itself along above them. He thought of the buck, dragging his tire on the chain. Nothing on the place was quick—except the does, and only when they knew you wanted to catch them. Give the thing a chance, he thought. Give it a break. Just yesterday, hadn’t it stood for a second? He started to fiddle with the radio, avoiding her eyes, his hands shaking. The antenna snapped off in his hand. He looked at it, dumbfounded.
“What are you doing with that?” Lucy snapped.
“What the hell does it look like? Trying to fix it.”
“Fix it? Looks to me like you just broke it.”
Charlie felt his ears and cheeks burn red. He looked up to meet her eye. “Well, goddamn! It’s like everything else around here. If someone hadn’t nigger-rigged it!”
Later, he regretted it. He regretted saying it and also what he did next, which was to turn and hurl the radio against the side of the barn. He regretted it because it was something Darryl would say and something Darryl would do. But mostly he regretted it because of the look on Lucy’s face—that look of shock and superiority—the ammunition he’d given her for the case against him. She thought he was just another dumb redneck, didn’t she? Well, he had news for her. She didn’t know what the hell she was doing. She couldn’t see past the end of her own nose. Always flipping through those stupid fashion magazines. Not even eating proper food. Making him sleep like an animal in the barn! And couldn’t she see that there might be more than one way to do things? Was it really going to kill the goats if he fed them a half hour later than usual, or put the hay in three hayracks, instead of four? Maybe if she would ever just stop for a minute and try to see something from someone else’s point of view, she would realize she didn’t have it all figured out.
The next morning, when she left to pick up a load of hay, he followed her out to buy groceries at the gas station. If I only had the money, he thought, bumping down the long driveway, I would just keep going. I’d be gone so fast my sparks would set the field on fire. But then a panicky feeling came over him. The thought that it might take more than money. That it would take something that he did not have and could not earn, borrow, or steal.
He crossed the cattle guard with a jolt. From a distance, it looked like there was nothing keeping the goats in at this gap in the fence—and when you got close, you saw it was just a shallow ditch covered with loose metal bars spaced several inches apart. “How does it keep them in?” he asked Lucy when he arrived.
“If they try to cross it,” she said, “they’ll break their legs.”
“And what if they break their legs?”
“They won’t try.”
“Why won’t they try?”
“Because,” she sighed impatiently, “because they’re terrified of it.”
Down at the gas station, he saw something that made him burn with jealousy: a boy and a girl in a truck with out-of-state plates, the back loaded up with furniture and boxes. The girl climbed out of the truck with a German Shepherd on a leash, looked around with disapproval, and walked the dog along the grass behind the phone booths. The boy leaned against the hood with a map for a while. Then she kissed him, and they climbed back in the truck. The dog jumped in after them, and they pulled out for who-knows-where. Charlie
stood there, watching the bend in the road where they had disappeared, thinking, That should be my dog. That should be my girl. That should be me!
“You gonna buy something?” the old man behind the register finally barked. “Or you just gonna stand there and fog up my window like that?”
When he got back to the farm he went straight to the milking parlor and pulled a pail from a stack with a sound like a sword being pulled from a scabbard. There was a stamp on the bottom: BEST FOR MILKING—SEAMLESS AND STAINLESS. Charlie read it several times before turning it over and filling it with the hose. He moved quickly, afraid he’d lose his nerve. There are just certain obstacles, he told himself, that stand between me and the rest of my life. It is simply a matter of getting over and past them. He went out to the paddock, gathered up the kid in his arms, negotiating with its awkward legs. It was heavier than he thought it would be. Staggering towards the gate, he could feel its warm breath on his neck. It looked up at him. Bah!
Charlie stopped. What does she know, anyway, he thought, looking down at the little white body, the white eyelashes over the blue eyes, the soft hooves. The kid’s knees were grass-stained from trying to drag itself along after the herd. What the hell does she know better than me? That’s when he saw what he needed to do.
In the days before he left home, he had walked around feeling like a dam with a million gallons of water pressed up behind him. Acting like nothing was different, taking Darryl on his midnight beer run, making plans with his friends, all the while the money he’d withdrawn from the bank sealed in an envelope in his dresser drawer, a secret he held under his tongue like a pebble.
The secret now was the kid, hidden away under a locust tree at the foot of a hill in the back corner of the farthest pasture, where Lucy never went. Alive. Charlie was going to heal it. Prove Lucy wrong once and for all. She had been so grateful when he lied and told her that he’d done it—she had even reached out to hug him—that for a moment he felt a loop of doubt in his gut. But just wait until it’s up and walking, Charlie thought that night, lying on his mattress on the floor, listening to the jangling of the bells. Wait until I lead it up to the paddock, healthy and strong on four legs. She would have to reconsider everything she thought she knew about him.
Every day, he went down to feed it, sitting in the shade where the kid had scratched out a shallow hole in the dust. One morning, propping it up with one finger under its belly, he managed to get it to stand. “There!” he said. The kid looked around, pleased with itself. But as soon as he pulled his hand away, it crumpled. He tried again. The sun ratcheted up the sky, pulling away the shade of the tree. “Just another little while yet,” Charlie told the kid, and the kid shook its ears in agreement.
Weeks dragged on. The heat would not let up. Rain did not come. Every day, without fail, the sky was cruel blue and cloudless. Birds panted in the trees. The goats stood around on their skinny legs, heaving like accordions.
“Fuck the sun.” Lucy stood on the porch of the house in her bathrobe with a cup of steaming coffee. The outside cats were scratching at the door to be let in to the shade of the house, while the inside cats were scratching to escape the oven of the living room. Charlie was working behind her, up on a chair, washing the windows with vinegar. She said it slowly. “Fuck. The. Sun.” Then stood there, tapping her foot. He got the feeling that she was waiting for him to apologize for it.
She went on, “The weather never used to be like this. It’s freakish. You know, I think it’s got to be more than just the greenhouse effect. I think we might possibly be getting closer to the sun. And I’ll tell you what’s scary. If it’s this hot now, what’s it going to be like in fifty years?” She sighed. Charlie felt a darkness close in around the edges of his vision. Fifty years—where on earth would he be in fifty years?
“Well, it’s you kids I feel sorry for. A future like that. My God, all we had to worry about was blowing ourselves up. Now you—you’ve got problems.” She crossed her arms, balanced her coffee cup in the crook of her elbow, and contemplated the yard. Charlie crumpled the newspaper he’d been using as a rag, sat down on the chair, and lit a cigarette, trying to shake off the darkness around his eyes. Why is everyone always dooming me? The cats leapt up into the busted-out rockers and shit-riddled flower boxes. He watched, resisting the urge to toss a boot at them. Spoiled, he thought. Damn cats.
Lucy turned around and eyed his cigarette. “Those things will kill you, you know. You should quit.”
“What for?” he muttered. “Gonna die anyway.”
Lucy snorted. Charlie smiled a little, pleased to at least make her laugh, for once, even if he hadn’t intended to. She turned back towards the yard and motioned with her coffee cup towards the truck sitting under the walnut trees. Her voice turned gentle, coaxing. “That truck’s not yours, is it, Charlie?”
Charlie swallowed, feeling the fumes of the vinegar in his throat. He thought of the milking pail—seamless and stainless. That’s what I am, he thought. Fresh start. Brand new.
“Sure it is.”
Lucy turned and rolled her eyes. “Come on, Charlie. Rubber testicles? You somehow don’t seem quite the type.”
Charlie had the sensation of a door swinging on loose hinges—whether opening or closing, he could not tell. The feeling of pivoting between gas pedal and brake, trying to make a split-second decision about stopping for a hitchhiker at sixty miles per hour. He could tell her the whole story. Go back to the day when he was five and Darryl first hit him across the mouth with a beer bottle. But what would be the use?
“Why?” He edged his voice into a challenge. “You got a problem with my truck?”
Lucy looked at him a second longer, shrugged, raised her eyebrows, and brushed past him into the house, shaking her finger at a spot he’d missed as she passed the window.
I don’t know about no greenhouse effect, he thought, leaning forward, elbows on knees, to spit between his boots. All I know is that it’s too damn hot. Too hot to think or even take a breath. A flock of geese passed over the field. For the past few days it had seemed as if every time he looked up, there were geese up there. As if it was the same flock, circling the globe, searching for a cool place to touch down. Not finding one.
The milk went bad. It was something that the goats were eating. “It was absolutely fine,” Lucy told him, pouring a white torrent into the barn sink, “except that it tasted like shit.” With no milk, the little money that had been coming in dried up completely. Every morning, Lucy still had to bring in the heavy-uddered does, and every morning Charlie lay on his mattress and listened to the sound of her pouring the milk down the drain. He watched her stalk the fence line in a floppy straw hat and sandals, searching for the culprit weed. He searched the pasture himself, not knowing what he was looking for, but wanting to save the day.
He always managed to salvage enough milk from the bottom of the pails to fill a bottle for the kid. Every evening, when he reached the crest of the hill, he crossed his fingers for the sight of it standing. But it was always in the exact same spot he had left it—though each day a little bigger, plump and full like a summer cloud. A dream, a frosted shining birthday cake in the burnt field. Charlie would kneel and massage its tiny legs, shaking doubt off the way the goats shook off flies.
Lucy drove farther and farther to find anyone who would sell her hay, coming back with an empty gas tank, a sweat-drenched shirt, and four bales she paid sixty dollars for. The goats would finish it in minutes, the buck dragging his tire up and muscling through the crowd, lowering his head and sliding his horns under the kids like a forklift, tossing them out of the way. Afterwards they would all jostle up to the barn to chew the fence slats. Their ribs were starting to show.
Lucy and Charlie stopped speaking to one another. They communicated in grunts, only when necessary, and went through whole days without crossing paths. They drew down into survival mode, just like the trees. Days turned into weeks, and Charlie lost all sight of any world that might exist beyond the f
arm. Then one night in September, while he cooked himself a can of beans and Lucy, who seemed to have quit eating altogether, sat at the kitchen table riffling through one of her glossy magazines, she broke the silence.
“Trash,” she said, throwing the magazine down and pushing her chair back. “Why do I read this trash?”
Charlie froze. Was he supposed to answer that? He steeled himself for whatever was coming next—he was making a racket with the spoon, or his beans were stinking up the house, or he was breathing too loud.
“I’ll tell you something. Those Jesus boys. They hate a goat. I know they’ve got plenty of hay back there in their barns. But now that the stuff’s as good as gold, they just don’t want to see it go to a goat. Cows? Yes. Horses, sure. But wait till old Lucy drives up wanting a few bales for her goats—then it’s ‘No deal, ma’am, sorry I can’t help you, but I sure can’t. Why don’t you try on down the road?’”
“Don’t call them that,” Charlie said. He’d been so ready for an insult that this one seemed directed at him. And it was, wasn’t it? She looked down her nose at everybody.
“Why not?” She turned to him, seeming genuinely to want to know.
Charlie shrugged, thrown off guard. “It ain’t right,” he said lamely.
She turned away, slapped her hand on the magazine, pulled it back towards herself, and opened it. “Well, Charlie? I wonder what they call me? Twenty-five years they’ve kept me shut out. Not a single one of them has ever offered me a hand. Sniffing around this place like vultures, wondering when I’m going to throw in the towel. Meanwhile, half the time I’m out here with no help, and there’s just simply some things a woman can’t do by herself.”