Land - Goat: a memoir

GOAT

A Memoir

Brad Land

Random HouseNew York

Table of Contents

For Brett

Part One

Yes lady, that is what I said. Goat.

CORMAC MCCARTHY, Blood Meridian

But listen: here is the point. The boys thought to have

Their fun and be done with it. It was harder work than they

Had imagined, this silly sacrifice, but they finished the job,

Whistling as they washed their large hands in the dark.

What they didnt know was that the goats head was already

Singing behind them in the tree. What they didnt know

Was that the goats head would go on singing, just for them,

Long after the ropes were down, and that they would learn to listen,

Pail after pail, stroke after patient stroke. They would

Wake in the night thinking they heard the wind in the trees

Or a night bird, but their hearts beating harder. There

Would be a whistle, a hum, a high murmur, and, at last, a song,

The low song a lost boy sings remembering his mothers call.

Not a cruel song, no no, not cruel at all. This song

Is sweet. It is sweet. The heart dies of this sweetness.

BRIGIT PEGEEN KELLY, Song

THIS IS HOW IT GOES:

Were getting floored at a beginning-of-the-semester party. Me, my younger brother Brett, these three people we came with. At this old fraternity house. Two stories with a big front porch and a backyard with a chain-link fence.

Bretts on the porch standing next to me. People moving all over the place. Like cells. Everything pulsing. All sweat and smoke. The house is breathing.

These two girls come up. Just stand there looking us over. One of the girls looks at Brett like she loves him already. Shes short and has long hair pulled into a ponytail. Legs all muscled like a soccer players. Shes wearing a Zeppelin T-shirt with a hole beneath the neck cuff. The other girls standing beside her all bucktoothed and shaky. Got a tattoo on her left shoulder blade. Something swirled and tribal. Her arms crossed. I give her a smoke and she nods, cups one hand around the lighter I hold out and I can tell shes drunk by the way her eyes wobble, the way she squints them against the porch lights. The other girl rubs the shaky ones back, runs her hand down and pauses in the bare patch of skin between her jeans and top. The shaky girl looks her over and smiles. Brett tells them to kiss. They look at each other and laugh and then the shaky girl moves toward the other one, puts a hand around her waist and holds the cigarette out to the side. Her tongues out and inside the others mouth and they lock together, wet cheeks pulsing with the overhead light. The shaky one steps back and pulls on the smoke, exhales and looks at Brett. Im staring at the two girls and the shaky girl asks if that was okay, and Brett says yeah that was cool, and I nod, say yeah good, and then Brett says do it again and they just laugh. The short girl says you dont even know us and Brett says so and cocks back his beer. When he brings it down, she takes the beer from Brett and drinks. Hands it back. And now the shaky girl looks at me like she knows something about me with my skinny arms and black hair all matted from the hot air outside. Bretts talking to the short girl and I dont know what to say with this shaky one staring at me. The short one leans, whispers in her friends ear. They turn and walk away.

Brett tells me they want us to come over later.

I nod like its standard.

SCHOOLS TWO DAYS away, and for both Brett and me, its the whole college-in-the-same-town-you-went-to-high-school-in thing. Itll be my second year, Bretts first, and right now Im not too happy with this small liberal arts school because its backward and I went to high school with most everyone there, but for right now, just right now, its okay because my brothers here.

I couldnt hack school last year at another college because I was lonely and I failed most everything. I tell everyone it was from the drugs or the alcohol but the truth is I was just lonely and cried all the time and lived in an old house with lots of dust.

This is what they say:

Didnt like it there man? That place is fucking cool, fucking badass town man, whyd you leave man, I mean whyd you come back here?

This is what I say:

Too much, just too much.

And then they say this:

Yeah man I understand that I mean that town does it to the best of them man, gets everybody all fucked up with all that shit they got there, theres so much shit there man, you know I understand that shit really.

And Brett gave up a soccer scholarship upstate. He didnt want to do the summer workout and couldnt make up his mind about anything, and its lame to be here and we know it, but its cool and livable for a little while because just a few minutes ago Brett and I decided to leave here next semester. We got the idea a few days ago when we helped a friend move in at Clemson where everythings huge and its where my grandfather went and where my dad went and after we decided Brett said fuck yeah and I said yeah fuck man.

Both of us.

Gone.

So this party in August is the beginning of the end of our time here.

We leave after Christmas.

THIS PARTY IS just a party with people from all over the town, which is not really a college town even though we have a college. Brett and I arent in a fraternity but it doesnt matter even though its a frat party because if theres a party, any party, anyone who sees it, or knows about it, or hears about it comes, because the towns small and theres not much else to do.

The towns named Florence and its this crumbling place in South Carolina with steel mills and railroad tracks. Theres a country club made up of all the old families and the new ones who have money. And even though Brett and I have lived here for three years we dont come from here and our dads a preacher but hes strange (not like hellfire crazy strange, or standing on a sidewalk holding a Bible up in the air strange, but just strange, like once he melted down the gold caps from his teeth and made them into a cross) and he doesnt have enough money to be in the club and neither does my mother (shes a school nurse and when we get sick shes always the one who tells us well be better soon, tells us what pills to eat) but occasionally we get invited to their parties because we know the sons and the daughters, and its always us just standing there with our cigarettes and the free booze, but we know we arent like them and we couldnt marry one of the daughters because we dont come from where their future husbands are supposed to.

BRETTS ONLY THIRTEEN months younger than me but bigger and everyone we meet thinks hes older and I have to say nah its me thirteen months and two days.

Me.

Point at my chest.

THATS HOW IT always goes. Me measuring up to my brother. Hes good-looking and all the girls swoon when they see him. Six-one. Dark skin. Brown hair. Broad shoulders. This chiseled face. My mom and dad say Im good-looking but its not the same as when a girl says it.

For example: My brother and me in our grandparents driveway playing basketball. I am fifteen. He is fourteen. I am tall for my age, the only growth spurt I really ever have, full of acne, awkward, he is shorter and still has that boy look to him. My first cousin (two years younger, a girl) comes over with one of her friends. They stand there and look us over, hands on their hips. My cousin looks over at her friend, says what do you think about Brett, like shes trying to set her friend up and the friend says oh hes fine. Gnaws her fingernail. My cousin asks about me. Weird, the friend says, hes weird. Looks at the ground.