The Audacity of Goats

by J. F. Riordan

  St. Johann’s Lutheran Church Men’s Prayer Group had been in continuous existence for almost 100 years. The men came from all backgrounds, and were highly respected for their commitment to Christian principle, their families, their country, and service to their community. Membership consisted of both retired and working men, so their schedule was designed to allow members to head off to work after the meeting. With the coming Christmas season, the group decided to celebrate with a special post-meeting breakfast.

  The yoga practice had progressed to the later phase of the morning ritual—Ustrasana, the Camel—accompanied by Richard Strauss’s “Also Sprach Zarathustra.” The choice of music may have been an expression of Roger’s mood, but it was difficult to be sure. The pose was well beyond Terry’s level. He was finding it more difficult than usual to keep from tipping over, and The Angel Joshua had moved his mat well away. The musical jolts were so frequent that the usual warnings of “Incoming!” were ineffectual, and Terry resigned himself to a few more bruises than usual.

  They were moving from Ustrasana to Vrksasana. Known as the tree, and deceptively simple in appearance, it was a pose Terry found particularly challenging even without Richard Strauss. He bobbled continually, frequently having to put his foot down before he went over. The music was in one of its more vigorous moments, accelerating quickly and creating a mood that reminded Terry of snowballs gathering speed as they rolled down a mountainside.

  He had just gained sufficient balance to attempt to raise his foot into the penultimate step of achieving the pose when the door to Ground Zero opened abruptly and the St. Johann’s Lutheran Church Men’s Prayer Group, accompanied by hearty voices, laughter, and vigorous foot stomping, entered the shop.

  Terry fell over.

  There was an awkward silence as the Men’s Prayer Group gleaned that all was not usual at Ground Zero.

  Roger merely continued his routine without acknowledging their entrance. The Angel Joshua, serene in his manly beauty and holding his Vrksasana, turned his gaze upon them, bathing them in its light. He spoke.

  “We’re almost done. Have a seat and we’ll be with you in a few.” And turning to Terry, “Terry, man. You okay?”

  Without replying Terry scrambled to his feet, and drawing inspiration from his comrades, resumed his pose with new success.

  The practice took its course, and for ten more minutes Roger, Joshua, and Terry focused on their poses and their breathing, while the St. Johann’s Lutheran Church Men’s Prayer Group looked on, bemused.

  With the passage of time, a greater sense of comfort emerged, and some of the men began a quiet murmur of conversation. Those who caught Roger’s glance fell silent instantly, but the others continued in blissful unawareness.

  As they reached the last pose, The Angel Joshua spoke again, this time to Roger and Terry. “You guys go ahead and practice Shavasana. I’ll start taking orders.”

  He moved with angelic grace through the Lutherans, his radiance shining from him.

  As coffee was being served, Roger and Terry lay on their mats, face up, and completed their practice with Shavasana, the dead man’s pose.

  Rejuvenated by Shavasana after his brush with humiliation, Terry arose from his mat and took a seat at the counter as Roger resumed his position behind it and began serving coffee and egg sandwiches. The men in the prayer group were well acquainted with Roger, and their familiarity with him made teasing out of the question. Terry, an old friend to them all, was a different story. But he took it with good grace, and got in a few shots of his own.

  They were all getting ready to leave when one of the Lutherans took Terry aside. “So… that looks really hard.”

  “Well, it is for me,” said Terry, with easy candor. “But I needed to do something about my blood pressure, so I figured I’d try it.”

  “Really? My blood pressure isn’t so good, either.” He looked thoughtful. “How’d you get started?”

  “I just bought a mat and showed up here.”

  “Every morning?”

  “Yessir,” said Terry. “It’s pretty early.”

  “Think I could come?”

  Terry looked doubtful. “Well… it’s not my place.” He paused and looked at his friend, a man he’d known since second grade, and emboldened by the morning’s experience decided to take the leap. “But why not? Tomorrow morning at five.” He leaned in and whispered, “But I don’t recommend telling Roger. Just show up.”

  Terry was in the parking lot checking his pockets for his keys when another member of the men’s group came up.

  “So,” he said without preamble. “That yoga looks pretty hard.”

  Stuffing envelopes with the candidate’s brochures is among the many requirements in running an election, and this tedious chore was one Fiona had been dreading. In an act of friendship Fiona felt was beyond repayment, Elisabeth and Nika had offered to come and help on a weekday afternoon in order to free Fiona up for her weekend door-knocking.

  Nika arrived just after lunch as planned, at just about the time the ferry—with Elisabeth aboard—was expected. Fiona heard her knock, and came to the door. As Nika was unwrapping herself from her down coat and removing her boots, she handed a canvas tote bag to Fiona and gave her a sly smile. Inside, tucked in among some personal items and a box of business envelopes, was a full bottle of Door County’s local gin. She laughed as Fiona’s eyes widened.

  “I got the idea just as I was leaving the house. My grandma always said that gin was the only way to get through Christmas. She used to add it to her tea. So I thought, given the time of year, envelope stuffing was a close enough parallel. It’s sort of a tribute to her memory.”

  She laughed again. “I don’t think she liked my grandpa’s mother very much.”

  “Well, I think I would have liked your grandma. Come on into the kitchen. Elisabeth should be here any minute.”

  Elisabeth arrived shortly afterward, and after taking inventory of their materials, they set to work. They quickly developed an assembly line of folding, stuffing, and sealing, and for a while there was nothing but the sounds of moving paper in the kitchen.

  “All this must have made a dent in the campaign funds,” commented Nika, scrutinizing one of the color brochures with Fiona’s photograph.

  “Not as much as you would think. It was the signs that killed me.”

  “I think you need to have more fundraisers, Fiona,” said Elisabeth. Even if you don’t really need the money, you need people’s commitment to support you.”

  “I know. But what do you do if the person who most wants to fundraise for you is busily alienating the entire populace?”

  “It can’t be as bad as that.” Elisabeth was in her bossy mode.

  “Oh really? My chief fan—for reasons I haven’t quite figured out, but which involve a deep and wholly understandable animosity toward our friend Stella—is Emily Martin. Emily, however, isn’t exactly popular around here.”

  Nika smiled in agreement as Fiona continued.

  “Last week she told the owner of the ferry line that his captains’ uniforms weren’t dignified enough. She told the newspaper editor that as soon as she had time she would come over and show her how to lay out the ads properly, and she told the Lutheran minister’s wife that the coffee hour needed ‘a little jazzing up.’”

  “Oh,” said Elisabeth. “I see your point.”

  “On her last trip over, she told Pali that he was swinging the helm too far when he docks,” said Nika.

  Elisabeth and Fiona stopped what they were doing and stared at her. They responded at the same time.

  “Seriously?”

  “You are joking.”

  “God’s honest truth.” Nika began to laugh. “She tried to come into the wheel house last week, and Pali told her that there were new regulations about who could ride up there. He didn’t say that the regulations were his.”

  “I’m sure he was very polite,” said Fiona, laughing.

  “Oh, you know Pali. He’s always
polite.”

  “At least you can understand that woman’s feelings toward Stella,” said Elisabeth returning doggedly to her subject. “At least you know she’s a sincere supporter.”

  “Well, yes,” said Fiona. “There is that.”

  They were silent for a moment as Nika went to the next room to retrieve a new batch of envelopes. Elisabeth brought another stack of brochures to the table.

  “Did you hear that Charlotte is going to have to have a knee replacement?” asked Nika, returning.

  Fiona grimaced. “Fortunately, we have no doctor on the Island, or Emily would be scrubbing up to assist with the surgery. She really is a plague upon the landscape. The question is, if we actually allowed her to host, who would come?”

  Nika was carefully folding brochures into neat thirds. “Why don’t you tell her that I’ve already agreed to host, and you don’t want to saturate the territory?”

  “Really?” asked Fiona. “You’d do that?”

  “Sure,” said Nika. “No problem.”

  “You’d have to invite her.”

  “I know.”

  “She’ll try to take over.”

  “I know.”

  “She’ll want to redecorate your entire house and make Pali get a haircut.”

  Nika laughed. “I know. It’s okay. I can take it.”

  “Wow,” said Fiona, who wasn’t usually given to saying wow. “Thanks.”

  “Those are the last two stacks,” said Elisabeth, returning from the next room. “We should be finished in record time.”

  “What shall we do with the rest of the afternoon?” asked Fiona. “It’s newly free.”

  Elisabeth sighed and looked weary. “I should be baking Christmas cookies for the church bazaar. Why do I always volunteer for these things? I hate baking cookies.”

  “I think it’s time for tea,” said Nika, pulling the bottle of gin from her tote bag.

  “Absolutely.” Fiona rose from the table.

  “You know, it’s funny,” she said over her shoulder as she filled the teakettle. “It’s Christmas time, and somehow I never get around to cookie baking. But given Nika’s family traditions, I’m beginning to think that I’ve been missing something.”

  Roger drove up to Ground Zero one morning, and frowned. There were half a dozen trucks in the parking lot, all with their lights off and engines running. He pulled into his own space around the back and walked around to the door. Behind him he heard engines being turned off and doors slamming. Eight men joined him at the door, all carrying rolled- up yoga mats under their arms. Roger turned and looked at them with his habitual look of cold fury. Knowing Roger, none of them took it as anything other than Roger’s normal expression. Some of the men looked sheepish, and some were grinning.

  “What?” he said, in what seemed to him an acceptable morning greeting. “We’re closed.”

  Terry, unwilling to be the spokesman for the group, remained silent.

  “Thought maybe we could join your yoga class,” ventured Stef, the unofficial leader of the St. Johann’s Lutheran Church Men’s Prayer Group.

  “There’s no class,” said Roger.

  “Well, what do you call it then?” asked another of the Lutherans.

  “This is practice,” said Roger. “Private practice.”

  “Well, can we join?”

  “No.”

  “Can we watch?” asked one of the other men, to laughter. “It’s kind of fun when Terry falls down.” More laughter.

  “No.” Turning his back on the group, Roger unlocked the door of the shop and went in, followed by The Angel Joshua. Terry looked back, apologetically, and went in, too.

  The orderly, obedient, God-fearing, and dutiful Lutherans stood for a moment watching, uncertain of what to do. And then one by one, they followed Roger into the shop.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The approach of Christmas brought with it all the annual excitement. The school and church concerts, the festive teas and luncheons, the charity drives, and all the rest. Fiona, newly conscious of the need for a candidate’s visibility, joined in, with, if not enthusiasm, then at least, good grace, and found that she was rather enjoying herself. If nothing else, it was a distraction from her increasingly painful longing for Pete. It was already clear that he would not be able to get away for long enough to come, and she was resigned to spending the holidays alone.

  The Christmas decorations had been installed. This consisted of live trees perched at the tops of the light poles in what could optimistically be called Downtown Washington Island. It was a tradition Fiona had never seen anywhere else, and one she kept forgetting to inquire about. She assumed that there was some ancient Druidic or Norse tree spirit connection, one that had been assimilated along with all the other Christmas traditions.

  Meanwhile, she was finding it difficult to decide whether it would be better to put up a Christmas tree at home and celebrate alone, or whether it would be less lonesome to do nothing. Neither approach was particularly desirable, but in the end she decided to honor the observance. “Life goes on,” she told herself, with more spirit than she actually felt.

  In contemplating his dilemma, Pali could find no guidance because there was no one he felt he could ask. He did not want to worry Nika, and the only other person he confided in, Fiona, seemed already to be carrying a burden with the impending election. He had rejected discussing it with his pastor, who was a good man, but intellectually one-dimensional. This left Pali on his own.

  On two points, at least, Pali was clear: He must do the right thing—at least as right as he could surmise; and he must honor his primary obligation to his family. Their trust was his honor.

  And so, sadly, Pali determined what he had to do. He did not believe in bitterness. He was arriving at this decision freely, and he would not bend to regret. Life was filled with hard choices. He told himself that he was fortunate that this one involved only his own relatively small sacrifice.

  Ben was coming to understand that the best part of secrets was having someone to share them with. His treks to the creek were beginning to feel lonely and a little bit burdensome. He would have liked to have had someone to come with him, or to go in his place from time to time. He would have liked to ask for advice about what he should be doing, what kind of food he should be bringing, or even how often he should go. But there wasn’t anyone in his class he felt he could trust not to blurt it out, and he remained convinced that all the adults in his life would disapprove. Even Jim—especially Jim—he feared, would not approve, or might even try to stop him. Ben needed someone who wasn’t like everyone else, and unfortunately, on the Island, he didn’t have a lot of choices. Doggedly, he carried on his daily routine, hoping that he was doing the right thing.

  It was remarkable, Fiona thought to herself, in the face of her move to the Island, her attempts to escape from the stress of her life in Chicago, and the somewhat ironic local slogan that life here was “north of the tension line,” that she was nevertheless continually finding herself faced with some task that filled her with dread.

  In this particular instance, she was trying to work herself up to a phone conversation with Emily. Emily’s offer of a fundraiser, though it should have been a kindness, felt, instead, like a criticism of the Island, its citizens, Fiona’s campaign, and Fiona herself. Emily and her husband’s eager insertion of themselves into every aspect of Island life seemed less like community spiritedness than it did a conviction of personal superiority. Nothing, it seemed, was as good as it could be if they, the Martins, could only take charge.

  After much procrastination, Fiona steeled herself to make the call. She hoped she would be able to withstand what she had come to think of as The Onslaught from Emily.

  The phone rang and Emily answered.

  “Windsome Farm,” she said. “Emily Martin speaking.”

  “Hello, Emily. This is Fiona…” Before she could finish the sentence she planned, Emily was off.

  “Fiona! I was just thinking about
you. You know, I saw some of your yard signs today, and I couldn’t help wishing you’d chosen different colors. Something brighter, something that stood out more. I’m so afraid that they look like advertisements for replacement windows, if you know what I mean. It’s too bad I wasn’t there to advise you. But, I suppose it can’t be helped now. What’s done is done. Now, I suppose you’re calling about the fundraiser. I’ve chosen the perfect date, one when we can be sure that the maximum number of the right people will be in town, and there are no local conflicts. You know how people around here love their church suppers and community events. We don’t want to get between an Islander and his pancake supper around here, that’s for sure!”

  Emily paused in The Onslaught as she laughed at her own joke. Fiona tried to jump in, but she wasn’t quick enough.

  “We’ll schedule it after the holidays, when everyone will be looking for something to relieve the boredom. Winter around here can get the best of you if you don’t have a plan.”

  “But...” said Fiona, wondering, since Emily had only just moved to the Island, how she could speak with so much authority about winter.

  “Now don’t you worry about a thing. I’ll take care of everything. I know exactly who we should invite, and I’ve already figured out the perfect menu. Some good wine, some beer, some simple hors d’oeuvres. With goat cheese, of course.” She laughed. “You won’t have to do anything but show up.”

  “But Nika—” persisted Fiona.

  “Don’t you worry about Nika. I’ll just tell her that we’ll let her do a little coffee morning. Just some coffee cake or something for people who don’t have to punch a clock. It’s perfect for her, and of course, she won’t be able to have a lot of people because their house is so small. Don’t you worry, Fiona. I’ll take care of Nika. She’s a nice girl. She won’t be any trouble.”

  Fiona, although she’d said barely a word, was feeling a bit breathless. As if Nika would be the one who would be trouble. She opened her mouth to respond, but Emily was already speaking.