Giles Goat Boy

by John Barth

  She shrieked, also pummeled. My attack was stymied high on her hocks by an unexpected harness, and as I fumbled to learn its secret she tore at my hair until tears came forth.

  “Not too hard!” I protested. Her fury alarmed me; where was the joy of Being if it cost such a hurt?

  “Get off!” she cried. “You mustn’t do this!”

  Truly the strappings were beyond me, but her tossing now disclosed that though my goal was bound in a hard encasement (unlike anything Chickie wore), it ultimately was bare as Mary Appenzeller’s.

  “It’s a horrid mistake, Billy! Stop so I can tell you!”

  Well, I could not both fight and service her. I was strong for a kid, but Lady Creamhair was larger and heavier. Moreover, there was in her struggling nothing of Chickie’s passion-to-be-vanquished; she fought to win.

  “You don’t even want me to Be with you!” I charged. I had been pinioning one arm; when now I let go to raise my wrap she caught up a stone and knocked at my head with it. My resentment burst into rage; I gave over everything to throttle her. She croaked; she thrashed; she made to push my hips away, but was obliged to clutch at my forearms instead, not to be strangled. Fearing her knees I pressed upon her, and thus, inasmuch as her garments were worked high, we touched.

  “Ah! Ah!” I flung back my head. Horror rolled in Lady Creamhair’s eyes—which then she closed, and wept. I collapsed upon her breast; had she set to breaking my skull with rocks I wouldn’t have cared. But she was quiet. She touched my hair; I felt the catches of her grief, and against my cheek her heart beat slow while my own still thundered. Directly I could feel, I felt contrite, though by no means certain I’d done anything wrong; and my remorse was tempered with chagrin at having come short after all of my objective. Yet no matter; there was nothing mattered. I had come near enough to very Being to taste its sweetness; what for the moment appeared a surfeit was in truth a whet. Even as Lady Creamhair moved me off, I felt new stirred. I hadn’t will enough to stay her: limp on the blanket I watched her put herself in order, now and then drawing her fingertips along her throat.

  “Excuse me for strangling you,” I said, though my head still hurt where she had struck with the stone. “Is that the way you like to Be, or were you really angry?”

  She covered her face and shook her head. “You didn’t know. I’m terribly upset.” Her voice was queer.

  “I can do better if you’ll show me how,” I promised. “And not hit me with stones.”

  My friend gave a groaning, not at my words, and averted her face. Then she wiped away rue and with new firmness—but still avoiding my eyes—bade me move from the blanket so that she might fold it.

  “I vow I won’t choke you next time,” I offered.

  She shook her head. It was I she grieved for, she declared: she should have known better; she had been foolish not to see that this could happen. Who was to say she didn’t finally deserve such use at my hands? Perhaps (so she considered, smoothing and resmoothing the folded blanket against her stomach) what had occurred was for the best, and we should be thankful for its having happened now, before actual commitments had been made.

  However little I followed what she said, I was touched with shame to see her seized here by a wracking shudder. “Oh! Oh!”

  I nonetheless demanded, blushing, to know what could be objected against as simple and intense a joy as Being, wherein every creature in the University clearly pleasured? A mere coupling of this to that, the business of a minute, but which lent zest to any idle pass or chance encounter; among strangers a courtesy, toward guests a welcome, between friends a bond. A meal’s best dessert; a tale’s best close. What hello more cordial, bye-bye more sweet? What gentler good-day or soothinger good-night? To Be, and not to not-Be, was my challenge and whole ambition. Even to speak of it rid me of lassitude; contrition was forgot—became I mean the mask of Guile; I said, “Don’t go, please. I shan’t annoy you any more”—considering as I spoke how she might be brought round to me.

  “I can’t think what to do,” Lady Creamhair said. Still wincing and with one hand at her throat, she set off toward the Road. “You don’t know!”

  I loped after. “I’m going too.”

  “No!” She shook her head and trudged faster, weaving like a dreamer. What was her grievance? I saw no farther than the hard-sheathed flankers of her good gate. There was fancy’s pasture, there the lick and crib of yearning; nothing mattered but to find again that threshold whence I had been thrust. I would put by all diversions and surmount whatever obstacles to drive into that deepy dark, and know the peace of Being in my soul’s home-stall.

  Something of this she must have sensed behind her, for at sight of the pasture-fence she commenced to run. Never mind her wail, I was as far past mercy as she was past a young doe’s speed. I sprang to bring her down; my hand closed on her collar, on the silver lanyard of her watch. She spun about, and with a cry flung the picnic-basket into my face.

  “That’s what you’ll have from me!”

  The blow frightened me; I fell off-balance, not to tread on the fruits and forks that strewed into my path, and Lady Creamhair availed herself of my confusion to escape. Too late I leaped to the fence; she had tumbled over. She scrambled onto the Road (her breath came hunh! hunh!), and seeing I dared not cross the fence, returned for her bicycle. Her face was red; her cream hair mussed; her lap was hooked full of wild seed.

  I began to understand that she would not come again, yet out of all despair I hit on nothing to ask but “Can’t you tell me now who you are?”

  The query was so plaintive it brought tears to my own eyes. But hers grew wilder; as she dragged the bicycle to the Road she said, “You should not have been born. There’s no hope …”

  Her last words to me. She ran beside her bike some yards before mounting and then clumsily struck off westwards, towards the halls of New Tammany. I considered sprinting abreast of her, at least, down along the fence; I even considered daring the Road—what matter if I die straightway? But I only clung distraught to a locust post and watched her go.

  Something flashed like a signal in the weeds just under the fence, where she had fallen. It was her watch, dangling off a thistle. By its lanyard, which trailed into the pasture, I fetched it in from human-land; quiet as her heartbeat it ticked in my ear. My own breath now came hunh! hunh!—not without the certain whine that had inflected hers. For a time I squatted in the brush to consider how I trembled and what to do. No hope? One gate indeed was closed—say rather, ah, it never had been open to me, any more than to Brickett Ranunculus. Yet a second remained; the day was but half done; I was only where I’d always been, and what: a goat, a goat.

  I knotted the silver cord where it had parted, hung Lady Creamhair’s timepiece round my neck, and left the grove. My muscles in the sun, no more a kid’s, felt weary with power; their stretch was good. More, my balls had a bucky swing, not theretofore remarked, which brought me as I walked first to interest, then to delight, at last to a serious exulting. There was the pasture, there the barn; I looked with new eyes and was shivered … not now by despair!

  Redfearn’s Tom saluted from his pen. Instead of calling his name I answered with a trumpety bleat that set him prancing. A hurt came to my throat. Nobler-than-human friend! Love proof against abuse; uninjurable love! With a snort I galloped to his gate and let myself in. Embraces be flunked, that humans greet with: Tom charged me right off, as he had used to do in the play-pound, and crashed rapturously into the gate when I sprang aside. A quarter-hour we romped, utterly happy. We were both far stronger than we’d been as kids, if less nimble. I locked arms through his splendid rack—which how I envied!—and wrenched him to the ground; he feinted me off-balance and whacked my wind out with the side of his head. We dodged and butted, we were mad with energy; the sight of our sport moved Brickett Ranunculus (just then the only other buck in the herd) to thud about his own pen like a two-year-old. And anon the does, lazing in the pound adjacent, were excited by our noise. Dainty H
edda I saw to be especially roused, whose first servicing was due within the month: she pushed to the forefront of the ladies crowded about our pen; her white curls pressed through the gate-mesh; she begged to come in.

  Hereat our play changed character. The does’ emotion, their candid pleas for love, set Tom wild. He pawed at the screen they thrust their flanks against, and charged me now in earnest. Indeed he no longer knew me, but as a rival—and I rejoiced. His lust was general: any nan would serve; he’d have humped even me had he knocked me down. My own, though—which reboiled hot as it had ever in the hemlocks—was for Hedda! How had I not understood? The evening past, when I’d nuzzled her fleece; that very morning, when I’d touched her—it was no aging, hard-cased freak I was meant to love, but Hedda of the Speckled Teats. Exquisite creature! And she loved me as well; that was no mystery: love rolled in her gold-brown eyes and quivered in her bleat.

  Redfearn’s Tom stood rampant at the gate. I seized him round his sturdy girth and flung him down; leaped astride him, heedless of his hooves, and rode him to earth. His head I braced against my chest, stayed clear of his legs, and laughed at the dust he flailed up. Behind, in the din of nannies, clearly I heard the voice of my sweetheart, shrill with passion. Good Tom, stout Tom—I was his better! I glowed there where we lay, apant in the sweat of proof; from all the University of wishes, I could have asked to complete my joy only that Max be present to share it.

  The time was come to claim my prize. Redfearn’s Tom, set free with a pat on the crupper, scrambled up, twice shook his fleece, and bounded to the rear of the pen to compose himself. I had perhaps used him too hard in a contest which, between bucks, was after all more ceremonial than sincere. No matter: I meant to be generous in victory. This once let Max’s breeding-schedule be forgot: I would admit some sprightly doe into the pen for Tom (say, golden Patricia) while out in the pound I crowned my triumph and sealed my choice.

  How did she bleat for me! Her head tossed as I approached. Patricia, no less afire, stood with her; it was a matter simply of admitting the one and slipping out before the others could crowd after. I climbed erect to undo the latch, speaking all the while of love to my sweet Saanen, and braced the gate just ajar so that I might reach round and collar Patricia. Too late I heard the rush of hooves behind me: Redfearn’s Tom full gallop smote my thigh like a rolling boulder and drove me, half-turned, against the gatepost. I felt a shock from hip to sole, then another, more terrific, when he crotched me with the flat of his horn. Unable even to shout I fell to my knees. He backed off for a second charge, but the nannies rushed the gate now and pitched me to ground at his feet. In and over me they swarmed; in terror I dragged clear, though every movement stung, not to suffer trampling. Near at hand lay a white-ash crook; I snatched it up against the next assault. But when I rolled over to defend myself, already sick and cold with sweat, I beheld a frightfuller prospect than attack: the does pressed at Redfearn’s Tommy from every side; those on the outskirts clambered up their sisters’ backs to get nearer. Even Mary Appenzeller (whom I’d envisioned a proud witness of my marriage) had no eyes for me; she whimpered her old heat like the others and thrust against Patricia for a point of vantage. Oh and before ever I managed to raise myself up, my ears had told me the worst: Hedda’s voice alone was still! There in the center she stood, my darling: Redfearn’s Tom was mounted on her; he tossed his mighty poll this way and that, hunkered to thrust, and with a shriek of joy bucked home.

  I found voice to suffer with. Most painfully I came through the scuffling does and leaned on my herdsman’s crook quite before the lovers’ eyes. I had as well been invisible. Tom’s nostrils flared; Hedda’s little forelegs were braced wide against the weight on her withers, and her head—slack with passion!—hung nearly between them. Now all swam in tears—the last I ever shed. Tottering for balance I brought the crook down between my friend’s horns. The does leaped back, all save Hedda, who went to her knees when Tom collapsed. He gave her a wild kick in the flanks as he tumbled off, and died with a jerk. The force of my blow had sat me down. I was out of wind, out of rage, one enormous hurt, as oblivious now to the does that ran a-frenzy as they had been to me. Hedda, loosed of her lover, bolted with them; in a moment they had chanced upon the open gate and were gone.

  Good Tom and I—once more we had the pen to ourselves. His eyes were open; his head was crushed. I had chipped no horn and drawn no blood as a jealous buck might have: merely I had killed him. And with my whole heart I wished what too no goat ever could—that it were I who lay thus battered past more hurt.

  Already the does were calming. Brickett Ranunculus neither gloated nor grieved that the entire herd was his now to stud; indeed he forgot what two minutes past had set him frantic, and turned away from us to nibble hay. Hedda still wandered about the pound, shaking her neck and trying to lick herself; yet she had no notion what fretted her, any more than she could know how suddenly dear a charge she bore. The rest had gone about their business.

  What I had done, what I now felt, apart from the great pain in my legs—ah, Creamhair, I cursed with you the hour I had ever been brought to light! Was I not a troll after all, the get of some foul mismating, or maggotlike engendered in dank turd under a bridge? And none, there was none even to gore and trample me—no hope!

  I crawled on all fours out from the pen, across the pound, through the barn. I thought I might die of the hurt, and wished life only to hear Max add his curse to Lady Creamhair’s. Why had I ever feared the Road, which could kill only goats? I dragged across safe as the grave-worms would through Tommy and made my way to the first building, a small stone box which I knew to be the Livestock Branch of the Library. I expected—half I hoped—to be set upon by dogs, such as I had seen round up the sheep in a neighboring pasture, or at the least to be whipped by human guards; but the place seemed empty. The first door I came to was a small one, stopped open against the hot noonday. Beyond it, like a cave, a dark hall stretched, which when my eyes accommodated I saw to be lined with bookshelves. What terrors waited in that place I couldn’t care; I heaved myself over the sill onto the cold flags.

  7.

  “Max!” My voice bleated like a new kid’s. Somewhere near in the cool dark had been a whining hum, which at my cry clicked off and unwound. The one sound then was a truckle of water, as from a tap or fountain.

  A voice, not Max’s, called from behind the wall of books. “Who that holler in my stacks?”

  It was the query put by trolls. For all my anguish I trembled.

  “Ain’t no students belong in George’s stacks. Who there?”

  Footsteps came from where the hum had been, that I must think was the monster’s snore. “It’s only I,” I answered. “Please, it’s—the Goat-Boy.”

  I saw come round behind, to the aisle I lay in, great baleful eyes; then a man, by the form of him, or troll in man’s disguise—but black as his lair. More dread, he held by the neck a silver-headed serpent, mouth agape; its body, twelve times the size of any rattler’s in the pasture, trailed out of sight around the corner. They stood outlined now between me and the doorway.

  I shouted again for Max.

  “What you squalling, Goat-Boy?” The creature set down his serpent, which drew back half a foot and lay still. I made to flee deeper into the passageway.

  “Whoa down, chile!” In a moment he overtook me and squatted at my head, so that both ends of the aisle were closed to me.

  “Don’t eat me up,” I pleaded, and resorted to the one stratagem I knew. “Wait till Dr. Spielman comes along, and eat him.”

  “Eat, boy? Who gone eat? Nobody gone eat.”

  His voice I had to own did not threaten, and for all the fearfulness of those eyes, his grip was gentle on my shoulder. I looked to see whether the serpent was creeping near.

  “How about that snake?” I pointed urgently, and he glanced there as if frightened himself. “Is it dead?”

  When he caught my meaning his teeth flashed white as his eyes. “Ol’ sweeper? I be dead �
��fore now if ol’ sweeper could bite!” His voice turned confidential. “Cain’t nobody eat me up, boy. I done been et.”

  His answer set him to chuckling; then after a moment he said, “Here’s you a riddle: Which mother got the most children, and eats ’em every one when they grown up?”

  “Please, sir,” I said wretchedly. “I’m not a student, I’m just the Goat-Boy, and I’ve got to find Dr. Spielman. I’ve hurt my legs.”

  I held one aching thigh as I spoke. The black man inspected my bruises, frowning concern. The pain was not nearly so severe as it has been at first, but my sweat raised gooseflesh in the chilly air.

  “Hurt his legs,” my examiner murmured. “Flunk if he didn’t. And not a stitch of clothes on. Who stuck you in the booklift, chile?” He did not seem to be addressing me. I sat up as best I could; with a fierce shrug he put his arm around my shoulders to brace me and looked closely at my chest. He spoke as if reading something from the watch that hung there. “Pass All … Pass All …”

  “Pass All Fail All!” I exclaimed. For all his behavior perplexed me, I was not so frightened now. “What does that mean, anyhow?”

  He drew back. “Land sakes, sir, I wasn’t messin’ with no tapes! I just come by with ol’ sweeper and hears this squallin’—what I gone do, let the poor chile get his brains et?”

  His complaint—to whom, I could not imagine—turned into a senseless mumble, thence to a mournful snatch of song about a certain Shore where (not unlike the brothers Gruff) he looked to find his heart’s desire, could he but cross to it. Then he broke off singing with a scoff.

  “Pass All Fail All! Ain’t no chile gone die in these here stacks!” He thrust his other arm under my legs, picked me up, and started down the aisle. I protested until I heard him say—still more to himself than to me—“I gone fetch you out of here, fore we both gets et. Dr. Spielman know what’s what.”