“Don’t!” she said, and she made a funny snorting sound.
“Why?” I asked. I dug my elbow into her. I jiggled it.
“Tickles,” she said, squirming. “And don’t go getting any ideas.”
I jumped to my feet. I held my hands up like claws and wiggled my fingers at her.
“Nope!” she said. “Nope!” She burrowed again. Guffer came bounding over with his curious face on. He shoved his nose into the blanket. “Lydia! Stop!”
“Not me!” I laughed.
Eileen popped her head out to look. Guffer jumped back and barked. “Oh, Guff,” she said. “It’s okay, boy.” She held out her hand and he opened his mouth over it to give a soft chew. Then he slapped a big paw up onto the couch, just missing Eileen’s nose. Eileen took hold of his foot, and darned if she didn’t put it right in her mouth. She gave it a gentle bite. The dog pulled back, but then he jumped right up on the couch—all fours—on Eileen. “Help! He’s standing on me! Lyd-jah!”
“Hey,” I said, and I started to walk away. “Don’t like it? Guess you better get up.”
49
Coming Around Again
I cupped my hands around my mouth megaphone style and hollered from the front porch, “Eileen! Supper’s ready!”
She’d been in the small barn all afternoon. Now dark was falling and the little square window of the barn glowed with cheddar-yellow light. She hollered something back at me, but it was all bubbles.
I jumped off the porch and jogged closer. “Eileen!” I shouted again. “Come to supper!”
She stepped out under the pan lamp at the doorway where I could see her. “Go on and start without me!” She flapped one hand at me. The handle of the push broom was in her other fist.
“Aren’t you hungry?” I asked. I dropped my shoulders. I hoped she’d see me looking sad and slumpy and come inside.
“Nope,” she said. She slipped back into the barn and closed the door.
I accepted defeat. I turned to go back to the house. But I realized something: all that couch misery of the past few days was gone from Eileen’s face. Whatever she was up to, she was enjoying it.
Inside, I reported to Aunt Brat. “Eileen says we should start without her. She’ll come along when she’s ready.” Small lie. But I figured Aunt Brat deserved a little hope.
Elloroy rattled into his chair and Aunt Brat brought a pot of beans. She slipped a small plate with a slab of ham in front of him. “Ah!” he said. “Can’t knock me off the top of the food chain. Not until the day I’m—”
“Dead.” Brat and I said it together.
“Right,” said Elloroy. “Where is the cantankerous Eileen this evening?”
“In the small barn,” I said.
“Still? She’s been there all day. Is she going to stay all night too?” Elloroy chuckled. “Free up the sofa?” he added. Aunt Brat gave him a tired smile.
We were nearly done eating when Eileen came into the kitchen. She went straight to the sink. She soaped up her hands. Wisps of hay stuck to her plaid flannel back and in the cuff of her pants legs. In fact, she looked like she had a nest built around each ankle.
“Eileen, where have you been all afternoon?” Aunt Brat asked. Of course, she already knew the answer.
“Barn,” Eileen said. She did not turn around or raise her voice over the running water—probably on purpose. I could tell neither Aunt Brat nor Elloroy had heard.
“Barn,” I translated.
Eileen shut off the water. While she dried her hands, she added, “And it’s ready. Thanks to me.”
“Ready?” Aunt Brat asked.
Eileen did a half turn from the sink to show us all a scrunched face. “For our goats,” she said. She arched her eyebrows and thrust her jaw forward. “Not like we need to shelter our animals on someone else’s farm,” she added bluntly. “I’ll bring a truckload of hay bales home tomorrow. You tell me when, and we’ll move them in.”
Yes! Eileen is back!
I was just about dying, trying to keep a smile to myself.
She sat down to supper. She pulled her chair underneath her and let the legs land hard. She rubbed her hands together and picked up her fork. “Pass the applesauce, please,” she said, giving a finger point at the bowl in front of me. I lifted it in her direction. She served herself. “And the beans. Please.” She pointed in front of Aunt Brat and kept her eyes on the pot as it came to her. Elloroy pushed her the plate of brown bread.
We all watched Eileen. She looked anywhere that wasn’t at us. She gave a sigh as she tucked a forkful of supper into her cheek. She savored. She swallowed. Finally, she looked at my aunt, lifted her chin, and said, “What are you staring at?”
I looked down into my plate. If ever there was a right time to become fascinated with a puddle of baked beans, this was it. But I heard Brat answer plainly.
She said, “Someone I love.”
50
The Goats of Pinnacle Hill
According to my upbringing, March was the month of the Chaste Moon. “We must bless our garden and prepare for planting,” Mom used to say with a wry grin. If she’d been well, she would’ve had a magnificent flowerbed. Instead, the postage-stamp yard in Rochester had always been banked with dirty snow come March. Come April, it would turn into a scratchy patch of crabgrass. Still, Mom had insisted that it was our garden. Every March, she’d stood at the glass storm door and had given the yard a little bow. “There. It’s blessed,” she’d said.
The Chaste Moon is a signal to prepare yourself for change. In our hemisphere, that meant that weather. Springtime. For us, the women on Pinnacle Hill, the greatest change this March was making ready for two new adoptees.
The night before the goats arrived, Aunt Brat and Eileen sat shoulder to shoulder at the table after supper. They reviewed a “brief history of goat notes,” as my aunt called it. I had to laugh; leave it to Aunt Brat to come up with something textbookish. They discussed antibiotics, probiotics, sweet feed, and—ugh—goat diarrhea.
Listening in, I learned that a first set of molds had already been taken for the prostheses. As the stumps changed, they’d have to be done again.
“Oh, boy,” Eileen said, rolling her eyes. “Ka-ching.”
“Yes,” Aunt Brat said. “A challenge for the budget. But we’ll manage.”
I worried about their money. There’d been the unexpected cost of me, and now these goats. There was money from the sale of the house in Rochester, but Aunt Brat had said it was for my future education and we should all consider it “unspendable” until then. I tried not to be expensive. Then again, there had been that renovation to the upstairs, due entirely to yours truly.
Other expenses that had to do with the house had come up at the dinner table from time to time. Elloroy would often close those conversations out by saying, “That can come out of my piece.” But he was staying goat-neutral, much like he’d stayed Guffer-neutral. Budgeting for the animals was up to the women.
They talked on. “Now, remember, the goats cannot go outside yet,” Aunt Brat reminded Eileen. “No stumps in the snow.” (The thought made me cringe.) “No cold and no wet.”
“Brat, you already told me that,” Eileen said. She pushed back in her chair just a hitch. “And I already know anyway. I know goats.”
“Of course you do,” Aunt Brat apologized. “It’s just that all these notes from the vet have formed little mantras in my mind all these weeks. This is how I’ve kept it together.”
“Well, now you’ve got me,” Eileen said.
All in all, I thought my aunt seemed relieved to be turning most of the care of the goats over to Eileen. After all, she had a stack of student papers to read. “I’ve never been this far behind.” She’d said it more than once recently. “Then again, I’ve probably never been so fit either,” she quipped.
“Ski, ski, ski,” said Eileen in a sassy sort of way. But she set her hand on my aunt’s forearm and added, “Don’t worry, Brat. You’ll catch up over spring break. I’ll pic
k up on chores.”
Silently, I celebrated the way Eileen had managed to stop being mad at Aunt Brat. The temporary crack in my sense of home was healing over. My women were a team.
They named the goats Gigi and Effie. That was Eileen’s idea. “Gigi for the G in Gwen, and Effie for the F in Florry,” she said. “If it hadn’t been for the Gerbers, well, who knows?”
The first Saturday of spring, the Gerber women came to help move the goats into their new digs in the small barn. It was bittersweet for Gwen and Florry; they had become quite attached to the pair. Florry wept. Gwen put an arm around her daughter and pulled her close. “Hey, hey. I know it’s hard. But they’ll be right here, and we’ll come see them often,” she promised.
“When they get the feet on,” Florry said. She rubbed her eyes.
Gwen jostled her girl. “Oh, you bet we’re coming back for that.”
So Florry kissed Gigi and Effie goodbye. She cupped her hand around the place where each ear should have been and whispered something that only she and the goats would ever know.
Later, we brought the dogs into the barn. I feared trouble, not from Soonie, but from Guffer. But both dogs seemed to understand that the goats were ours—all of ours. There was no charging or chasing or barking, but Guffer was very curious. He paced about with his head bobbing and nose working overtime. Eventually, he settled at the barn door, chin on his folded paw. He looked handsome as a lion and somehow pleased that he had something to guard.
“Not bad for a chicken-dog,” I pointed out, and my women agreed. But it was Eileen who was the real guardian of the goats. She crawled out of bed and into her plaid jacket several times a night to check on them.
I begged Aunt Brat and Eileen to let me invite Raya and Sari to see the goats on Sunday.
“As long as it’s just the two and things are quiet, I say fine,” Eileen said.
But on Sunday morning, I watched at the front window as Raya and Sari came up the hill with half of my eighth-grade class in tow.
“Uh-oh. Sorry,” I muttered.
Aunt Brat looked up from grading papers. “What?” She looked outside, then simply said, “Oh . . .”
“It looks like the news got away from me.” There was Charlotte, and Axel, and Gilly. “Oh, and Moss Capperow,” I said out loud.
“Capperow? What?” Eileen looked alarmed.
“You mean Capperow the boy,” Aunt Brat clarified. “Right?”
“Yes,” I said. “Six kids in total.” I grimace-grinned.
“Well, this is a big reveal for this small town,” Aunt Brat said. She focused back on her paper grading. “It’ll be fine. . . .”
“Take them in a few at a time so the goatsy-girls don’t get overwhelmed,” Eileen said.
But I felt shy about corraling my classmates. Even as I swung out the front door with Guffer at my heels, I didn’t know what I’d say. Guff was excited to see so many people coming into his yard—and not in a 100 percent good-dog way. There was barking and jumping and slinking. Raya and Sari instantly showed everyone the invisible-dog trick.
“Chins up and arms across your chests!” Sari called.
“Until he retreats,” Raya added.
I explained that we were still keeping things calm for the goats, and every head nodded and every voice lowered to a whisper. These friends were better versed on the care of goats than I. Charlotte had come bearing gifts—four fleece goat jackets. “So you can use two and launder two,” she explained. Axel brought a bottle of caprine vitamins.
Soon the seven of us were sitting on the floor in the small barn with our backs against the hay bales. My classmates took turns stroking and cuddling Gigi and Effie, who fell asleep against the warmth of human bodies.
Everyone felt curious—if upset—about the stumps and earflaps. “Did they ever find out who did this to them?” Axel asked. But as far as I knew, that was a still a mystery.
Everyone watched the sleeping goats except me; I watched Moss Capperow. I couldn’t help it. I liked the tallness of him—even sitting on the floor of a barn he seemed tall. How funny, I thought. I liked his large nose, which I could see in profile as he gazed out, smiling his usual Moss smile at something—or maybe nothing—near the barn door.
“Wow, Lydia.” I watched the whisper come off his lips. “He’s so great,” Moss said.
“Uh . . . oh, no,” I told him gently, “both goats are females.”
“Not the goats,” Moss said. He turned to look at me—tall Moss, with his greenish-gold eyes. “Your dog,” he said, and he gave a nod to Guffer, who was resting placidly in a patch of sunlight at the door, guard hairs glowing in tiny wisps of silver white.
51
The Glue
At school, word about the goats went around quickly, and because Chelmsford was Chelmsford, anywhere from one to three kids hopped off the bus at my stop that first week. They’d follow me up the hill to spend time in the small barn gazing at the goats. Everyone wanted to watch those goats heal; they wanted the animals to take food from their hands. I could see how good that felt.
I was happy to swing open the barn door for them. I invited them into the house for snacks afterward. (Elloroy loved to shuffle out of his suite to sit down for tea “with the young people.”)
But mostly, I felt like the pygmy goats were Aunt Brat and Eileen’s project. I helped when they asked. But maybe it was enough that I’d become a dog person. There was something else: creatures in need were part of their glue as a couple, I decided. (I didn’t miss that that meant that I was glue too.) Or perhaps I just made all of that up. I didn’t know much about couples. But I had been observing.
It’d been twelve weeks since Aunt Brat had first driven me up Pinnacle Hill in her boxy car. Sometimes I’d stand stock-still while time and space floated around me. I’d try to remember what I had been doing before. Where was my other place? Then I’d look at Guffer—giving my shoe a chew or heading into the kitchen to pick the trash—and I’d think, You too, Guff. We’d arrived the same week; we’d both had our lives changed.
Our visitors were good for Guffer. He became less mistrustful. Sometimes he seemed glad to see them. I loved it when Moss Capperow thought to bring him a dead soccer ball. We all made a game of kicking it around the soggy enclosure while Guff bunny hopped in for a steal, then trotted away with the ball clamped in his kisser. People said Guffer was gorgeous, and he was.
“He’s done well since you rescued him,” Moss kept telling me, and I knew he was right.
In April, new snow fell but melted quickly. I missed snowshoeing. But I took the poles and went rock hopping and puddle jumping. Guffer trotted along behind me on his bendy legs. I found myself breaking into a run, poles flicking at my sides.
I’m running into April, Mom!
Cold rains flooded my little mouse-crossing stream into a wide, ankle-deep divide. That was fine. We’d gone two weeks without a mouse in either trap, and I had no wish for a meeting with the Capperow uncle on his four-wheeler. Guffer and I stayed out of that patch of the woods. But there were plenty of evenings, right around suppertime, that I knew Moss’s uncle was out there. Guffer would hear him from inside the house—dog ears standing at attention. He’d leap to his feet and pace and rumble at the back window.
I imagined myself braver than I was. I daydreamed about coming face-to-face with the man on the green machine again, and this time, I would not be speechless. I’d tell him to stay away from my yellow dog.
52
At the Top of the Stairs and Down
I was the first one into the kitchen that morning. Above me I could hear hurried footfalls, the kind that tell you that your adults are running late and probably can’t find their overalls or their snowflake socks.
I put the kettle on and started the dog food. Something was missing: Guffer. I glanced up the stairs and there he was with his mournful face on. I thought nothing of it. That face was just a part of his charm.
“Guffer! Come! I’m making your breakfast,” I called
. The kibble hit the pans. The sound would bring him running. I sloshed the warm water around in both bowls to coat the kibble. I set them on the counter to soak.
I looked again, and Guffer was still up at the top of the stairs. Same look on his face, except he seemed to be tipping his chin up slightly. Staying upstairs? Especially once his breakfast was made? That was not normal.
“Guffer?”
He shifted his hinds under him and made a mewing sound.
“Guffer, come.”
A few more seconds passed. Something was really wrong. Suddenly, the unmistakable smell of dog poop filled the old house.
“Oh! Hey, Guff? What’s going on up there?” I went to the bottom of the stairs. He looked away from me. Then awkwardly, hesitatingly, he reached and put a paw onto the first step. He started down, looking all kinds of wrong: front end dragging the hind end, the hind end looking like dead weight. His back legs made a terrible sound as they hit each step. Kudda-thunk, ka-thunk-thunk. He was picking up speed—slipping and falling down the stairs.
I sprang forward. I took the stairs two at a time and met him halfway. “Aunt Brat! Eileen!” I screamed. I caught the big dog by his shoulders. I couldn’t stop him, but I slowed him down. I supported him—me going backward—until we reached the floor. He tried to stand, but his hind legs slipped out from under him. Brat and Eileen appeared at the top of the stairs.
“Oh, pew! What happened here?” Brat said.
“Watch out. I think it’s poop,” I said.
“Oh, it is! Ew. It’s here at the top of the stairs,” Eileen confirmed. “What on earth? He hasn’t done that in weeks.”
“I know,” I said. I tried to sound steady. They weren’t quite getting this, and I hated to break it to them—or to myself—that this was bad, bad, bad. “H-he’s having trouble,” I said. “He just slipped all the way down the stairs. I had to help him.”
A Home for Goddesses and Dogs Page 19