Read The Goats Online

Authors: Brock Cole

The Goats (2 page)

The moon was just showing, getting ready to set, but there was enough light to turn the lake silver. He could make out one, no two, dark shapes coming toward the island. They were still some distance away.
She looked up, startled, when he pushed open the door. He realized that he'd forgotten to find his pillow, and so he covered himself with both hands.
“Listen. They're coming back.”
“What?”
“They're coming back. Some of them, anyway.”
“Oh, God, Oh, God …” She pulled the blanket over her head and started crying again.
“Stop it, will you? They'll hear!”
“I don't care,” she said in a muffled voice, but she quieted down.
“Come on, then. We've got to get out of here.”
“What do you mean?”
“What do you mean, what do I mean? Do you want to be here when they come?”
She thought about it. “They wouldn't hurt us or anything, would they? They'll probably just sneak up or something.”
He couldn't believe that she was so feeble.
“What's the matter with you? Do you want them spying on us?”
She shook her head, her rubbery face going all out of shape again.
“Well, then, listen. We'll go down to the shore, and when they come sneaking up, we'll grab their canoes. We'll leave them here. They'll be the goats, don't you get it?”
It seemed to sink in finally.
“What'll we do?” she asked, trying to get up without letting the blanket open.
“Just come on and be quiet.”
“Shall we put out the candle?”
“No,” he said after a moment's thought. “They'll come up slow if they see the light. It'll give us more time.”
Once outside, he forgot about keeping himself covered up. It was dark and not important anymore. It was the others he cared about. They weren't going to see him if he could help it. He grabbed a corner of her blanket and led the way down the path. She held on as if he was trying to take it away from her.
Near the shore they pushed through some brush until they found a place to hide in a clump of black alder at the water's edge. They were a safe distance from the little beach. He decided it would be easier to wade over to the canoes than try to push their way back through the bushes, so he pulled her down close to the water.
The canoes were near the shore now. He could see that there were only four people. He didn't like that. It seemed more menacing, as if something was planned which had to be kept secret, even from the others who had left him on the island. He began to feel weak inside.
The girl was snuffling beside him.
“Be quiet,” he whispered.
“It's the mosquitoes. They're in my mouth, everything.”
“I said be quiet.” He fumbled in the blanket until he found her hand and squeezed it hard. He wanted to believe he could hurt someone if he had to.
The people in the canoes beached them without a sound. It was too dark to see who they were, but they were big. They huddled together for a moment, whispering, and then two of them broke away and disappeared up the path.
The others stayed by the canoes. One of them lit a cigarette, and the other picked something up from the beach and flicked it out over the water. The boy heard a soft
plunk! plunk! plunk
! The person was skipping stones.
The boy waited, but he didn't know what he was waiting for anymore. His beautiful plan was coming apart like wet paper. He and the girl could never get the canoes away from the guards on the beach.
His brain seemed to have stopped working. He didn't know what he was going to do. He had never been so cold in his life. He wondered what was going to happen to them.
“There're some people still there,” the girl whispered. “What do we do now?” She didn't sound sarcastic. She wanted to know. The cold seemed to solidify into a hard little lump somewhere deep inside him.
“Come on,” he whispered, putting his lips close to
her ear. “We've got to get away. We're going down into the water.”
“But I can't swim, I told you.”
“You won't have to. There's that log I told you about. I'll push you.”
The water felt warm, warmer than the air. It made him feel better. He moved quietly, not making any splashes. When he was a few feet out, crouching so that only his head showed, he looked back to see if she was coming.
She came down into the water still wrapped in her blanket, and then let it drift away.
It didn't take long for them to work their way along the shore until the canoes were out of sight. The girl was clutching at him, afraid of the water. He could feel it in her stiff fingers digging into his shoulder.
They found the log just as the moon was setting. There was nothing but starlight now to show the shape of the distant shore. It looked black and lumpy, like a pile of coal.
He dragged the log into the water, trying to be as quiet as he could. It floated awfully low. He wondered if it could actually support them. Overhead, the beam of a flashlight flickered amid the treetops and was gone.
“Come on, now. Don't try to ride it. Just hold on.”
He transferred her grasping hands to the wood. She was making too much noise, gasping and trying to hold her head high out of the water.
“Relax,” he said. “Just try to kind of float along. Just keep your mouth out of the water.”
“I'm afraid. Maybe you'd better go without me.”
“No,” he said. He didn't try to explain. He knew he was afraid to leave her alone, but even more important, it wouldn't be good enough. He wanted them both to disappear. To disappear completely.
Very quietly, hardly daring to breathe, he walked the log out into the water until the muddy bottom dropped away and there was nothing there at all.
 
Margo Cutter, senior counselor, came down to the beach still carrying the bag of clothes. Max didn't shine his flashlight in her face, of course, but he could tell by her voice that it must be grim.
“They're not there,” she said.
Max flipped his cigarette into the water. “Well, they must be somewhere around. They wouldn't try to swim for it, would they?”
“I don't think so. Laura can't swim. She's afraid of the water. What about Howie?”
Max shrugged. “I don't know. He can swim all right, but it's a mile and a half, and he's kind of wimpy.”
He knew at once that he shouldn't have said that, because it annoyed Margo and set her off again. “I just don't understand how anybody could have thought that this would be even remotely funny.”
“Yeah,” Max said, trying to sound conciliatory. “We'd better see if we can find them. We should have brought some dope for the mosquitoes. They're pretty bad.”
“I mean it. I don't know what I'm going to say to her. She told me she wanted to go home, and I told her that
this was such a wonderful place and that she'd make such wonderful friends. Some friends. I tell you, Max, I'm ready to quit over this. I never want to see some of those smug little brats again.”
“Come on, Margo. It's not that serious. I know it was a dumb stunt, but they didn't mean anything—you know—harmful.”
Margo shone her flashlight right in his face. “No? Well, what the hell did they mean? You tell me, Max. I really want to know. What the hell did they mean?”
WHEN THEY were close enough to the shore to touch bottom, she couldn't walk. She tried to, but she kept falling over. Finally he had to drag her out of the water, holding her by the armpits. He dragged her over a narrow muddy beach and up on some grass before his feet slipped out from under him and he sat down with a bump.
He sat there panting while she lay between his legs, staring up at the sky through glasses pebbled with water. It was beginning to get light, with that pale dawn light that robs everything of color.
He looked at her body. It was long and white. She had no breasts, just two shriveled nipples. At the bottom
of her belly was a little patch of hair, like a Hitler mustache. That meant that she was more mature than he was. He didn't have any hair yet. The other boys called him Baldy. It was supposed to be funny, because he had thick curly hair on his head.
We're just little kids, he thought, and felt waves of self-pity sweep over him. He cried for a few minutes, and then stopped. She was shuddering and breathing funny, and her skin was cold, like damp rubber.
“Get up,” he said.
She didn't say anything. Her eyes were open, but she didn't say anything.
The grass they were sitting on was short. His brain had to work on that fact for a moment before he realized that it had been cut. They were sitting on somebody's lawn. He looked around and saw a dark house tilting over them.
“Get up,” he said again. “There's a house. We'll get some help.”
She rolled slowly off his legs and curled up in a ball on her side, sagging into the grass.
He stared at her stupidly for a minute, and then got to his feet and climbed the lawn to the house. It was small and empty. A summer cottage. Large board shutters had been fastened over the windows. Behind it was a grove of dark trees. He could hear the drum of tires as someone drove by on a hidden highway. There was nothing else.
She hadn't moved when he got back to her.
“Nobody's there,” he said. “It's shut up. There's a
road somewhere. Do you think you can walk? We've got to get some help.”
“You go,” she said quietly, into the grass. “You get someone.”
He didn't know if he could. He was shaking with cold, and he wondered if they were going to die. It seemed ridiculous, to die on the front lawn of someone's summer cottage. There was a road not far away. At camp everyone would be snoring in their sleeping bags and soon they would be eating breakfast. It was summer. How could they be dying like this?
“I'm going to try to break in,” he said.
The door was locked and the shutters over the windows were fastened with big rusty wing nuts. When he tried to turn them, blood came out from under his fingernails. His skin was white and shriveled. He thought he would show the people who owned the house his fingers. Then maybe they would understand why it had been important that he break in. As he looked at his hands, he became angry at the people because they had locked up their house and because they weren't there to help. He found a stone and smashed at the wing nuts on one of the window shutters until they broke off and the shutter fell onto the porch with an enormous crash. Shocked, he waited, afraid that someone might hear. It occurred to him that he wasn't thinking very clearly.
The window wasn't locked. He lifted the sash and looked inside. The cottage was small, no more than a single room. There was a sink and some cupboards on
one side, a table in the center, and a bed. Light fell in pale bars through the cracks in the shutters. He could just make out some blankets and a tattered quilt folded on the bed.
He went back to the beach and made the girl stand up. She could walk if he helped her, but her knees didn't seem to work properly. They kept locking with every step.
When he got her through the window, he made her lie down on the bed and tried to cover them both with the blankets. It was hard to do. He had trouble getting the blankets unfolded, and they grated like Brillo against his bare legs. When he had done the best he could, he lay back. He didn't feel any warmer. His hands hurt and his teeth were chattering. She began to curl up again, burrowing against him like an animal, thrusting her face into his neck and digging her fists into his ribs.
“Hey,” he said, “what's the matter with you?” She didn't hear him. He wondered if she was feeling warm inside. He knew that when you froze to death you were supposed to feel warm inside just before the end.
He took off his glasses and folded them neatly, but there was no place to put them. He looked up at the ceiling. Someone had pinned a centerfold directly overhead. It was of a lady with her legs spread. She looked as if she were falling on him from an enormous distance. It was such a joke. It was such a joke he wanted to laugh.
He woke up when she rolled away from him. He could see blue sky out of the window. His hands hurt, but he was warm. Deliciously warm.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
She squinted at him with bleary distaste, as if she had stepped in something disagreeable and wasn't sure what it was. Her glasses were all cockeyed, but still on her nose.
“Where are we?” she said finally.
“In the house. The cottage. I broke in.”
“You broke in?” She stared at him. “You just broke in? They could put us in jail!”
“No, they couldn't,” he said, but he wasn't really sure. “You were passing out all over the place. I had to.”
She grimaced and wiped her hands against her chest as if they had dirt on them.
“I feel sick.” She craned her neck around. “Aren't there any clothes or something?”
“I don't know. Shall I look around?” He waited until she turned away, and then he got out of bed slowly. It hurt to stand up. His legs and arms ached. He pulled out the drawers in a cupboard by the sink and found some towels, a pair of pants stiff with paint, a grubby sweat shirt, and a couple of T-shirts.
He put on the pants. He couldn't stand on one leg, so he had to sit down in a chair to do it. Then he put on one of the T-shirts. The clothes were too big. They were for an adult.
“This is all there is,” he said, taking the girl the sweat shirt.
“That's okay. Give me that other undershirt, too.”
She drew the sweat shirt up over her arms and lay back, looking at the ceiling where the centerfold was floating like some kind of angel gone bad. The boy went back to the sink and rummaged in the shelves overhead. There were cans of fruit cocktail and chicken noodle soup and an open box of saltines. In a rusty refrigerator he found a half-empty bottle of ginger ale. He carried the crackers and the ginger ale back to the bed.
“Eat some,” he said.
The crackers were soft and stuck to the roof of his mouth. She couldn't swallow the crackers, but she drank some of the ginger ale. It was warm and flat. Then she dozed off again.
He lay down carefully beside her, propped up on one elbow so he could look at her face. Her hair was matted and her forehead puffy with mosquito blotches. Her ears were waxy and not very clean. They had been pierced, but she didn't have earrings.
He couldn't remember now why she was supposed to be a real dog. He couldn't even tell whether she was pretty or not. She had long eyelashes and her lips curled up at the corners. That seemed very remarkable to him.
 
When he woke up the second time, the girl was trying to crawl over him.
“What's the matter?”
“I'm going to be sick. I have to go to the bathroom.”
“There isn't one.”
“What?” She crouched over him, unbelieving.
“There isn't one. It must be out in back.”
She looked around, a little desperate. “Do I have to crawl out the window?”
He nodded.
“God, I don't think I can. I'm really going to be sick.”
“Use the sink,” he said. He was afraid she would be sick on him if she stayed where she was.
“The sink? How can I use the sink?”
“I don't know. Just do it.”
She looked at him as if he were crazy, but nonetheless lurched out of bed and toward the sink. She didn't make it. He looked away, trying not to hear.
When she had finished, she stayed where she was, her mouth wide open and twisted down at the corners. She was crying, but no sound was coming out.
Reluctantly he got up and went over to her. “It's okay,” he said. “Really, it's okay.”
She made a horrible gulping sound. “Look at the mess!”
“It's okay. It's just ginger ale, mostly.” He grabbed a dish towel that had dried into a hard, shriveled wad and tried to wipe her face. She swatted at his hand, knocking her glasses off so that they skittered across the floor.
“Oh, God, I need somebody to take care of me!” She blundered past him to the bed, crawling under the covers as if she wanted to hide there forever. He found her glasses and carried them over to the bed. They weren't broken. She wouldn't look at him, so he folded
them and put them on the mattress by her head. She had stopped crying. She was staring at the ceiling and sighing through clenched teeth. She kept shuddering over and over.
After a few minutes she stopped.
“Are you okay?”
She nodded.
“You want something to eat?”
She shook her head, still staring at the ceiling.
“I could make some soup. Maybe you'd feel better if you ate something. There's chicken noodle or chicken noodle.”
She wouldn't smile.
“What do you want?”
“Chicken noodle.”
He found a can opener in a drawer and opened one of the cans of soup. He dumped the soup into a pot, but when he held the can under the faucet and turned the tap nothing happened. He found a bucket behind the curtain under the sink.
“I've got to get some water out of the lake. They must have turned off the water here. Okay?” She didn't say anything. She was still staring at the centerfold as if it might swoop down and smother her.
When he climbed through the window he could see that it was going to be a beautiful day.
He carried the bucket down to the water's edge and looked out toward the island. They hadn't swum across the shortest way. The island was far down the lake.
He could see the camp launch, a big white boat with
varnished top sides, sticking its nose up into the trees there. As he watched, a small gray outboard worked its way into view from behind the island. A man in a white shirt was standing in the bow looking into the water.
The boy filled the bucket and went back to the house. He splashed some of the water into the soup and put it on the stove. It was a butane camping stove and it lit without difficulty. The rest of the water he sluiced over the damp spot on the floor. He could hear it dripping through the cracks in the floorboards into the earth below.
When the soup was hot he found two cracked cereal bowls and poured the soup carefully into them. There were some spoons in the drawer where he had found the can opener. He put a spoon into each of the bowls and carried them over to the bed.
The girl had torn up the second T-shirt and fashioned it into a pair of panties. They looked like a cross between a diaper and a bikini. She put them on under the covers.
“We should keep track of the stuff we use,” he said. “So we can pay them back.”
“It was an old shirt,” she said, as if he had meant to criticize her.
“Yeah, I know. That's okay.”
When the soup was gone, he opened a can of fruit cocktail. She poured it into their empty bowls, dividing up the red cherries evenly without comment.
“I don't think we should stay here,” he said when they had finished.

Other books

I Am the Clay by Chaim Potok
Blackwing Wolf (Kane's Mountains Book 2) by Joyce,T. S.
The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami
When Fangirls Cry by Marian Tee
Key of Solomon: Relic Defender, Book 1 by Cassiel Knight
The Bride Price: An African Romance (Chitundu Chronicles) by Suzanne Popp
Something Noble by William Kowalski
The Sleepwalkers by Hermann Broch
Cutlass: Motor City Alien Mail Order Brides: Intergalactic Dating Agency by Leigh,Ellis
Footsteps in Time by Sarah Woodbury


readsbookonline.com Copyright 2016 - 2024