The Goat Man

from The Fruitcake Empire
Originally published at Transgression

in the fields

The Goat Man walked across the lowcountry aimlessly. He was a stocky fellow with a big pot belly and a bushy beard that hung down heavy to his ribs in an unkempt bird’s nest. On his feet were worn out leather boots that were falling apart in the toes and the heels, and sitting on top of his head was a wide-brimmed hat to shade his face from the sun. His body was draped in animal skins and furs, made by hand from the hides of his own herd, as well as the pelts of captured raccoons and opossums. In his hands were the reins to his rig, along with a short black whip to drive along his beasts of burden.

Behind the Goat Man was his flock of goats. There were dozens of them, all in harnesses, bunched up together like a can of sardines. Their knobby horns sat on top of their heads in nubs and their beards came to sharp little points under their chins. As they walked along the side of the road, their two-toed hooves dug into the gravel and kicked up clods of dirt that blew across the open fields in clouds of dust. Out in front of their faces hung a carrot, tied to the end of a whimsical stick by a solitary piece of thread.

At the rear of the goats was the wagon, piled down high with junk. There were pots and pans and tin cans and busted telephones and rims and pipes and coils and jigs and poles and reels and rods, all swinging and clanking together on the rig as it rolled along on its rubber wheels. The wagon was made of scrap wood and rusted sheet metal, and it could be heard all over the country as it rolled by, the goats gruntin along, the Goat Man singin.

The man and his flock walked down a road that separated one crop from another. On one side, there were soybeans. On the other, corn. The soybean bushes and the corn stalks stretched out for as far as you could see, until they stopped at the tree lines way off in the distance.

The sky hung above this land as it did anywhere else. The clouds blew across it until they were heavy, but seldom came the rain. When it finally fell, the water collected in shallow puddles by the sides of the road, then quickly sank down into the dirt in between the rows where the soybeans and corn grew high.

in the town

The Goat Man walked into the town with the reins in his hand, leading his flock. His steps were slow and staggered, his body swaying from side to side as he picked up his feet and placed one out in front of the other. The goats giddied along, their heads bobbing up and down, the bells around their neck jingling. The wagon, loaded down and piled high, rolled along the dirt road all rickety like, the rubber wheels squeaking loudly as they wobbled on their rusty iron shafts and turned on the loose gravel rocks beneath them.

The people of the town had heard that he was coming long before he arrived. Someone had smelled the tire fire, the toxic scent of burning rubber at dusk. Someone had received a postcard, a scraggly figure draped in animal skins posing with some kids. Someone had heard someone had heard someone had heard a sermon, delivered atop a felled tree in an crab apple orchard beside a patch of pokeweed at a truck stop.

Now, the people all stood along the side of the road with their guffawed mouths all twisted and torn. The children hid behind their mothers’ legs. The women stood in the doorways, their hands on their hips and their aprons hanging from their arms. The men propped themselves up against fence posts, crossing their arms together tightly and clenching their jaws in the sun.

When he reached the town square, the Goat Man brought the goats to a halt with a yank of the reins, then stood out in the open licking his lips. He pulled down the brim of his hat with one hand, shielding his eyes from the sun, and stuck his other hand into his pocket, surveying the people that stood out before him. He cricked his neck backwards to glare up into the bare branches of a hollowed out sweetgum tree.

In the stifling silence of the late afternoon, the people of the town slowly walked up to the wagon. The women carried their pocket books, wallets and purses. The children clung to the shirt tails of their fathers and the hems of their mothers’ dresses. The elders stayed in the shadows, slowly rocking in their chairs. 

The people sifted through the items hanging on the wagon, appraising the value and haggling down the price. They picked things up, inspecting for splinters and rust and tarnish. They ran their fingers along the seams and knocked on the surfaces, smoothed out the fabrics and brushed the materials against their faces, and one by one, the people paid for the goods and wandered off into the shadows with their newfound things, and one by one, every single item flew off of the wagon until it had been stripped completely of the rubbish and trash.

It was then that the Goat Man stuffed the bills and coins into the front pocket of his overalls, gave the goats a little tug and walked out of the town out into the country, grinnin.

in the lake

The Goat Man stood under the powerlines in the lake with his casting net in hand. Wading in the water that had pooled up by the rocks, he held the weights in his teeth and wrapped the excess rope around his hand, waiting pensively for the trash to surface again.

The mouth of the creek opened up at the head of the lake, then flooded the plain until it came to a concrete dam. Beside the dam were two enormous cooling towers, pumping plumes of white steam out of the nuclear power plant and into the sky above.

The power lines above the Goat Man were buzzing loudly, and he knew that the rubbish would be drawn to the hum. He looked out across the surface of the lake searching for the ripples made by the schools of trash, but it sat as still as glass from where he stood for as far as he could see.

A gust of wind picked up from the Southeast, blowing the pollen out of the pines and across the sky in rolling clouds. The breeze skimmed across the surface of the lake, making it appear as if it were about to boil.

Before long, the water started rolling, and the man bent his knees and lunged out the casting net into the school and let it sink to the bottom. With one hand, he tugged on the rope and pulled in the net, emptying out the trash onto the banks by the pileful.