The Audacity of Goats

by J. F. Riordan

  Fiona nodded dumbly, a false smile on her face. Fiona’s appearance had been intended merely for the sake of visibility, so she was, perhaps naively, unprepared to speak.

  “Of course.”

  The president looked pityingly on her. “You’ll sit with me. And I promise, I won’t let anyone talk about anything upsetting.” She patted Fiona’s arm, smiled encouragingly, and hurried off to her other duties.

  Fiona felt relieved. She had half-expected that the local love of drama would have placed her at the same table with Stella. But the comment about not upsetting her made her realize that she had better up her game. She couldn’t, she thought, have the gossip be about how intimidated she had been by Stella.

  At lunch, Fiona pushed her food around her plate with a false smile she had never used before and which even she hated. The conversation around the table seemed stilted and pointedly about unrelated things. Would this luncheon never end? Fiona thought with longing of her jeans and sweatshirt and a long walk in the woods. The martini recurred in her thoughts like a distant dream of rescue to a shipwreck survivor. Had one been offered she would have downed it. It occurred to her suddenly that she could go stay with Elisabeth and Roger tonight. Anything to get away. Rocco would be there, safe and affectionate. And Roger. He would not be such a consolation, actually, but he was, at least, familiar. But Elisabeth always had good scotch. Better than any martini.

  Fiona was escaping into this reverie when she was interrupted by the movement of the president, who was rising to go to the front of the room.

  “I’ll just make a brief introduction,” she whispered as she departed.

  Secure in her power, the president smiled benignly on the crowd and simply waited. The chatter of women’s voices ceased almost instantly. The president smiled approvingly.

  “We are fortunate this afternoon to have our two candidates for Chairman of the Town Board. Of course we all know one another, but can you each say a few words about yourselves?”

  Stella stood immediately and thrust herself to the front of the room without further invitation. Fiona, aware that she was being observed, fixed a look of polite disinterest on her face, and stilled her fidgeting.

  Stella spoke well, and, perhaps not as briefly as the President would have wished. Her topics were the Island economy, state aid, and the falling water levels in Lake Michigan. Fiona couldn’t help wondering what Stella thought she could do about that, but she noticed there were heads nodding, and she made a mental note.

  As Stella finished, Fiona walked to the front of the room. They passed one another, and Fiona fixed her new smile firmly on her face, and in a moment of inspiration put her hand out for Stella to shake. Stella looked at her as if she were being handed a snake before gingerly shaking hands, and that split-second of reaction in front of the entire room gave Fiona exactly what she needed. Feeling gleeful, she made her way forward, smiled a genuine smile at the room, and introduced herself.

  At last it was over. Feeling, if not triumphant, at least satisfied, Fiona was thankfully preparing to leave when she felt a hand on her arm. A plump, grandmotherly woman with gray hair and rosy cheeks was looking at her with a friendly expression. Fiona felt pathetically grateful at the kindness on her face.

  “So,” began the woman, her eyes sparkling with interest and delight. “You must travel a great deal.”

  And they had what seemed to Fiona a very odd conversation about how often she found herself in the world’s big cities. It was some time before she could extricate herself gracefully, and Fiona returned to her plans for a trip to Elisabeth’s. “And, of course,” she reminded herself hastily, “Roger’s.”

  The encounters with Roger’s yoga practice had gotten Terry thinking. He had been struggling with his blood pressure for a while now, and a recent significant birthday had made an impression on him. He did not have the same margin for error he had once had. There was that little roll around his waist that hadn’t been there before, and he had to admit that his work did not include much physical exercise. It was clear that he had to do something, but when it came right down to it, the whole thing was a bit humiliating. The idea of going to a gym and showing his incompetence to the world at large made him reluctant to try. He needed to find something that was not so off-putting; something that would make it easier for him to make exercise a part of his life.

  Unlike most people, Terry felt a deep comfort around Roger. He liked Roger’s silence, respected his intellect, and didn’t worry one bit about Roger’s opinion of him, primarily because he was convinced that Roger didn’t think about him at all. It seemed to him that he was faced with an opportunity that he really ought to take.

  Fiona could not fully understand why the luncheon had been such an ordeal. It was particularly vexing when she considered that until today, she had begun to feel as if she belonged on the Island. Now she had felt again that she was an outsider, and something more that she couldn’t quite pinpoint.

  As she was leaving, the goat woman, as she had come to be generally known—a soubriquet that Fiona was only too happy to relinquish—approached.

  “Oh, Fiona! Fiona! Wait a minute. I want to talk to you.”

  The Islanders, though openly friendly, did not welcome the participation of newcomers in their affairs, as Fiona well knew. But Emily’s outspoken approach to nearly every topic made Fiona seem, by contrast, unassuming. For this reason alone, Fiona felt a certain sense of obligation toward Emily, and she was prepared to give her a great deal of latitude.

  Emily bustled up and put her hand on Fiona’s arm in a proprietary way.

  “Listen,” she said, without preamble. “Jason and I want to help you. You know, if things weren’t so terribly, terribly busy at the farm right now, one of us would have run, and of course, that would have been ideal. But we just couldn’t this time. Maybe next year things will be more settled and we’ll be able to jump in. But we wanted you to know that we are on your side. We newcomers have to stick together. If there’s anything you need—anything—we are here to help. We have a lot of experience in these things. Jason was on the school board back home, you know. So if you need any advice, you just call on us, okay? I just wanted you to know that.”

  Fiona suddenly realized that Emily had stopped talking and she was expected to respond.

  “Thank you, I—”

  “Anything at all. You know—” and here she looked around to see if anyone was close enough to hear and dropped her voice—“these people aren’t very sophisticated. So it will be important to try to speak on their level. We can help you with that, too.”

  Fiona smiled weakly. “I’m sure you can.”

  “Well, I’d better run. Talk to you soon!” Emily bustled off to her sleek German SUV and left Fiona gazing after her, still smiling. She recalled a line from William Hazlitt’s On the Pleasure of Hating: “Public nuisances are in the nature of public benefits.” This, she suddenly realized, was going to be fun.

  Reflecting on the universality of human experience, she went to her car and headed home.

  After the second, and then the third time that Emily found her barn door swinging loose in the morning, she determined she should do something about it. She had many things on her mind, but she was not so busy that she could have been routinely forgetting such a basic act of daily routine.

  Whoever was leaving the door open was spilling feed around, too. And there had been things missing: little things, like rags and bits of rope. She needed to speak with the family about putting things back after using them, and she would mention it to Jason, too. Probably, the children were being careless. She shook her head to herself and sighed.

  Chapter Eleven

  “So how was the luncheon?” asked Elisabeth. They were settled in Elisabeth’s living room after dinner. A fire was burning before them, and Rocco was lying with his head on Fiona’s foot. Roger’s steady gaze turned on her inquiringly, but he was silent, and so far, still seated in his usual place.

  “I’ve had bet
ter times at coroner’s inquests.”

  “It can’t have been that bad,” said Elisabeth with a faint note of scorn.

  “You weren’t there.” Fiona picked up a crystal tumbler of scotch. Tell me again why I’m doing this.”

  “Because you don’t want Stella to ruin your life.”

  “Too late for that.”

  Elisabeth rolled her eyes. “You’d better buck up if you’re serious about the election. You’ll never win if you let little things like this bother you. And you’ll never sleep, either.” She eyed Fiona. “Are you sleeping?”

  “Not much.”

  Elisabeth continued to gaze at Fiona as if evaluating her condition.

  “You don’t have to do this, you know,” she said, with an abrupt change in tone. “You could just drop out.”

  Fiona sighed.

  “No, I can’t. It’s not my style.” She paused and gazed into her glass. “As you well know,” she added. Looking up, she caught Elisabeth’s worried expression and laughed. “I’ll be all right,” she said. “But I may need to borrow Rocco. He might be good protection against the screamers.”

  Elisabeth looked confused. “Screamers?”

  “We seem to have a new phenomenon on the Island.” Fiona told them the stories she had heard. Elisabeth listened, first with skepticism, and then with growing concern. Roger scowled in his usual way, his thoughts inscrutable.

  “What do people think is going on?” asked Elisabeth, remembering her grandmother’s lifelong belief in banshees.

  Fiona, affecting indifference, shook her head and shrugged. “No one seems to know. The most likely theory is bored teenagers.” She put down her glass. “We have a lot of them up there.”

  “I wouldn’t imagine that boredom is limited to Island teenagers,” said Elisabeth dryly. She looked seriously at Fiona. “But this is not a joke. Is anyone doing anything about these... screamers?” She looked as if she were personally prepared to head up to the Island and begin an investigation.

  Fiona shrugged again. “They called out the entire rescue system twice and searched the areas thoroughly. Nobody found anything. Not one thing.”

  Fiona, her thoughts drifting on waves of scotch, was remembering her own strange experience last fall in Elisabeth’s woods. She slipped down to the floor and took Rocco’s big head into her lap. He sighed as she rubbed his head, gently stroking the big sensitive ears. As his body began to vibrate in a purr of contentment, Fiona felt the circumstances of the day melt away. She would like to have Rocco back. She had been missing him.

  A silence descended on the room, only the crackling of the fire and Rocco’s deep purr were audible. Fiona did not particularly need conversation, but she basked in the companionship. She realized once again how deeply lonely she had been.

  Elisabeth, who had been studying Fiona for signs of madness, sighed. “Would you like another scotch?” she asked, rising.

  “Yes, please,” said Fiona.

  Ben dreamed that he was in a small boat on Washington Harbor. The autumn sea smoke was around him, and land was invisible, but he was not afraid. The little boat drifted comfortingly on the waves, and Ben began idly to look down into the water. There were schools of fish below him, which he recognized variously as salmon and pike, sturgeon and northerns, all the varieties that he knew so well from his fishing trips with his father. He was leaning over the edge of the boat in a way that wasn’t possible outside of dreams, when a flicker of color caught his eye. Turning his gaze, he saw one small fish, brilliantly colored in blue and green and orange, flitting in and out of the larger, more somberly colored fish that Ben knew so well. Leaning over more deeply to see it better he wobbled for a moment on the edge of the boat, and fell into the water among the fish. He was not afraid. The lake was warm and beautiful, and Ben found that he could breathe underwater. He swam through the schools of common fish toward the bright flash of color he had seen, but the little fish was elusive. Soon Ben knew he had strayed a long way from the boat, and began to worry about where he was.

  He woke feeling grateful to be safe in his bed, his mother calling his name to get up. But he kept thinking about that one fish that didn’t belong.

  Having survived the League of Women Voters, Fiona still felt in need of some respite when she returned to the Island, and accordingly took herself out for some more congenial companionship than she could expect from Martin Luther and the Midnight Cruncher.

  It was spaghetti night at Nelsen’s, and there was the usual crowd. Fiona was there with Pali and Nika, and they were sitting together at the bar waiting for a table. Eddie wiped the surface in front of them and took their orders.

  Fiona had fielded the expected questions about the campaign, and now turned the conversation to more interesting topics.

  “So what do you think of this screaming business?” she asked as he set their drinks before them. Her eyes met his. “I hear you were caught up in the middle of it all.”

  Eddie nodded seriously. “I about jumped out of my skin when I heard it. I’d have sworn someone was being ripped to pieces.” He took on a distant look as he recalled the experience. “I’m still not sure that she wasn’t.”

  Fiona frowned with concern. “It was you and John?”

  “Right. And Kevin. We all heard it and took off running for the marina while the screaming was still going on, but by the time we got there it had stopped.” He shook his head briefly as if to shake off the image in his mind. “I don’t know. Can’t stop thinking about it.”

  “Hey, Eddie,” called someone from down the bar, “How about another one?” Eddie went to pour another beer.

  “I know it’s probably all a joke, but still, it’s disturbing, don’t you think?” Nika asked, pushing a strand of blonde hair away from her face.

  Fiona nodded. “Is that still the consensus? It’s a joke? Just some bored teenagers?”

  Nika shrugged helplessly. Fiona knew she was worrying about Ben and his solitary rambles.

  “Seems like it,” said Eddie returning to his post, leaning against the bar and wiping away imaginary spots. “What else could it be? I can’t imagine any normal adult thinking that creating that kind of fear was even funny. But kids have a different sensibility, I guess.” He smiled suddenly. “I know I did.”

  Fiona smiled back. “Me, too. But I don’t know if I’d have gone this far. Especially since it’s hard to imagine that you wouldn’t get caught. I mean, here on the Island, the chances of being found out are pretty high.”

  Nika and Eddie nodded.

  Nika was thinking about the things that had been so intoxicating during her youth on the Island. They had done some naughty things, certainly. She glanced at her husband seated next to her at the bar. But nothing like this. They had never been malicious. She reached over and put her hand on Pali’s knee. She remembered the first time she had known that she loved him, this man who was like her other self. They had been very young. She looked at him. Pali was silent, staring at the bottles along the back of the bar. Something was troubling him, she knew. But she also knew that whatever it was, he would not talk about it here. Absently, he patted her hand. She gave his knee a squeeze and retreated.

  It occurred to Fiona that this conjecture was all within the bounds of a reality on the Island that was utterly different from reality almost anywhere else. However alarming the screaming incidents had been, everyone now assumed that there could not possibly be any actual foul play. Terrifying things were for other places. It was a refreshing change from her life in Chicago. Feeling grateful, she pushed her glass toward Eddie, and he refilled it with his usual competence and flair.

  There was one of those random silences that happen in a group of people, and a snippet of a conversation from down the bar drifted toward them.

  “Gotta be one of the kids, I guess.”

  “Hate to be the parents once we find out who it is.”

  Lars Olafsen had been sitting at the far end with some of his friends. He had been thinking about the
situation for some time now, and was considering the fact that he didn’t have to watch what he said as carefully as usual. As an office holder, he would have simply nodded and murmured reassuring noises, but now, he thought to himself, he was a free man, and he could finally say out loud what he had been thinking for some weeks. What he said would be taken seriously, he knew, but he wouldn’t have to think and double-think and worry. He could say what he wanted without trying to figure out what was responsible public behavior.

  “I can’t help wondering,” he said aloud, in a voice that carried down the bar. There was a stillness in the room as conversations stopped to hear what this respected public servant had to say. Lars noticed the faces turned toward him and with the instincts of many years in the public eye, he unconsciously waited a moment for the full effect. All eyes were on him.

  “I can’t help wondering about something that happened to me. It was the strangest thing.” He stopped and took a sip from his brandy old-fashioned.

  Lars took a moment to savor his drink and put his glass down on the bar. The room waited respectfully.

  “I was coming home a few months ago, and I heard something in the woods that really knocked me back on my heels. I didn’t say anything to anybody because, to be honest, I felt kind of foolish. But now....” He stopped and looked into his glass. “Well, now I’m kind of wondering if I should’ve said something.” He looked up at the faces around him, his frank blue eyes and open face serious and troubled.

  The silence that followed was long enough that one of the men in his group felt the need to prompt him to continue. “So what was it, Lars? Are you gonna tell us or make us sit here and wait?” There was uneasy laughter, but Lars still looked serious.

  Fiona looked around the room at the faces of her fellow Islanders. They were country faces, most of them, unused to shaping their responses to the expectations of others—faces of integrity. These were men and women she had come to know well and to respect over the past year, and there was a feeling in the room she had not experienced here before. This was a subject that mattered to them all, and for good or for evil, it was forming a common bond among them.