What Comes After

by Steve Watkins

  The barn doors were wide open when I got there, and Patsy was standing next to the fence, as if she’d been waiting for me the whole time I’d been gone. I threw myself over the fence and hugged her and hugged her, and then the rest of them, too. I kissed their faces, let them butt me, danced with them in their pen, tried to chase Huey and Louie — who had grown so big! Just in the time I’d been gone! I curled up with them in their stall, nestled down in dry straw. Huey chewed on my shirt, and I let him. I pulled both of them on top of me, burying myself in a blanket of goats. Jo Dee had gotten bigger with her pregnancy and kept trying to nose the boys out of the way so she could nuzzle me and so I could hug her and scratch her chin the way she liked.

  Patsy stepped back to let the others have their time with me, but she stayed close, too.

  “I’m so sorry,” I whispered to her. “I’m so sorry I left.”

  I could tell by her eyes that she understood and that she forgave me.

  Gnarly wasn’t tied to the clothesline, and I was just wondering why I hadn’t seen him when I heard crazy barking out in the field. I wondered if he’d been roaming free all this time, and if so, how many of the neighbors’ chickens he might have killed. I pulled myself out from under the goats but only made it as far as the barn door before he showed up and threw himself onto me.

  I staggered under his weight, then sat on the ground so we could wrestle while the goats looked on. We played for ten minutes, and I talked to him the whole time. I told him about the ferrets. I growled when I described them and Gnarly growled, too. I told him about the Tutens, and Mindy, and the football players, who I assumed were the ones who spat on my locker. Finally I had to stop. The goats wanted their turn again, so I checked on Gnarly’s food and water bowls by the back steps — both were half full, so at least Animal Control had been doing that much right — and went back in the barn.

  I could tell by how swollen the goats’ udders were that Animal Control hadn’t been milking them, or at least hadn’t done it lately, so I got buckets and cleaning rags and grain and coaxed the goats into the barn. Jo Dee attached herself to me, even more anxious in her pregnancy than Reba had been. I hugged her some more and let her stay close during the milking.

  I milked Patsy first, of course, and she nodded approvingly, but I moved Reba up to second because she was the fullest, since she’d kidded most recently. Even knowing that, I was surprised by how much she gave. After Reba it was Loretta’s turn, and finally Tammy, who didn’t seem as cranky or aloof as usual, but almost happy to see me. During each milking I pressed up against the goats’ warm sides with my face and shoulder. They were patient with me, and sweet, and the bucket nearly overflowed.

  I led the goats outside afterward, back into the warm sun. The kids kept jumping higher and higher, and even tried to do backflips. I’d never seen them so excited. I rolled on the ground and they rolled, too. And butted me, and kept butting, knocking me down and down and down. I let them. And at some point I started crying. I let them push me over, and lick my face, and steal my tennis shoe, and every time I thought I was done crying, I cried some more.

  Eventually I started singing to them, too. Dad used to sing “Hush, Little Baby” when I was little, but he changed it to “Hush, little Iris, don’t say a word. Papa’s gonna buy you a mockingbird.” So I sang that, but faster, and louder, to hear myself over all the bleating and barking. Soon it was more like shouting — And if that diamond ring turns brass, Papa’s gonna buy you a looking glass! — and then something came over me and next thing I knew, I was full-on shouting at the top of my lungs, until I was hoarse and my throat burned and I was so out of breath that I thought I would faint.

  But I kept shouting — And if that looking glass gets broke, Papa’s gonna buy you a billy goat — and the song got harsher and harsher until I was rasping it out, and the goats backed away from me and maaed nervously, crowding together over by the fence. Still I kept shouting:

  “AND IF THAT BILLY GOAT DON’T PULL —

  AND IF THAT CART AND BULL TURNS OVER —

  AND IF THAT DOG NAMED ROVER DON’T BARK —

  AND IF THAT PONY CART FALLS DOWN —”

  And then I lost my voice.

  I stood there silent, waiting for something to happen. The goats watched me from a distance. Even Gnarly had backed away and was hiding under Aunt Sue’s truck. I’d never gone crazy like that before and didn’t know what was supposed to come next. There was nothing left inside me. Finally Patsy came back over and nudged me with her head.

  I lay down in the middle of the field, as if that’s what she’d just told me to do — and maybe it was. I closed my eyes and let the last of the afternoon sun burn my face.

  After a while the other goats came back. Jo Dee lay beside me in the short grass and rested her head on my stomach. She felt heavy and warm. The others inched over, too, and hovered nearby.

  We stayed there until the sun touched the tops of the trees and it got cold out. I fed the goats again, and then I headed toward the house, Gnarly at my heels.

  I found the key to the back door where Aunt Sue always left it, under a concrete block by the steps, and went inside to pack up some of my clothes. I looked inside the refrigerator and made myself a sandwich with some cheese and wilted lettuce and a couple of dry, white Wonder Bread heels. I opened the door to Aunt Sue’s room. She kept it so dark in there — lights off, thick curtains drawn — that I couldn’t see anything, and for some reason I didn’t want to turn on the light. I fumbled through things on top of her dresser — pictures, a hairbrush — until I found some money. I counted it in the hall. Twenty-five dollars in neatly folded bills. I put it in my pocket.

  Book’s room — which I’d never been in, either — was surprisingly neat and clean. He had an East Carolina University Pirates football poster on one wall and a Carolina Panthers calendar on another wall. That was pretty much it — Book’s plan for his life: college and then the pros. His bed was made, clothes all put away, shoes and cleats lined up neatly on the floor. I kicked them all into a pile in the corner, then left.

  The mail was all bills.

  As I walked back through the kitchen, I saw the truck keys hanging on a hook by the back door, and I grabbed them. I didn’t think I had it in me to ride the bike back to the Tutens’. As awful as the truck was, Aunt Sue had bought it with my dad’s money, and that meant it was mine. Gnarly barked and barked while I loaded the Tutens’ bike into the back of the truck. Lifting it was hard. My shoulder ached. The excitement of being back with the goats had given way to exhaustion.

  I shut the tailgate. “You take care of the goats,” I said to Gnarly. He looked sad, but I didn’t waver. I said it again, as a command: “Take care of the goats.”

  I hugged Patsy and the others, then hugged Jo Dee a second time. I told them I’d be back tomorrow and pulled myself into the cab with my good arm. I adjusted everything I could find to adjust — seat, mirrors, steering wheel tilt — but it still felt too big for me.

  I parked on a side street a couple of blocks from the Tutens’ and rode the bike back to the house, my bag of clothes balanced on the handlebars. I was so hoarse and tired and sore that I just wanted to crawl into bed, but that wasn’t going to happen: either I had miscalculated the time or the Tutens had come home early.

  They were already back, and waiting for me in the liv ing room.

  “Please sit down, Iris,” Mrs. Tuten said. She and Mr. Tuten and the ferrets had the sofa, so I took a straight-backed chair by the front window. Mr. Tuten had one hand over Hob and the other hand over Jill, as if they might attack me if he didn’t hold them back.

  Mrs. Tuten looked at her watch, but that was just for dramatic effect. She already knew what time it was. “You’ve been out?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “You didn’t leave a note,” she said.

  “No.”

  “Do you want to tell us where you’ve been?” Mrs. Tuten asked. “And what you have in your bag?”

 
I kicked the bag lightly. I’d planned to smuggle my things in and hoped they wouldn’t notice the new additions to my wardrobe. “These are just some of my clothes,” I said. “I went out to my aunt’s farm. I needed to feed and milk the goats, and check on Jo Dee, the one that’s pregnant.”

  Mrs. Tuten’s face reddened. “I see,” she said. “So despite what we told you yesterday, you decided to go anyway.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “But I had to.”

  “Whether you had to or thought you had to, all that is beside the point,” Mrs. Tuten said. “Mr. Tuten and I were very clear when we said no. That’s your aunt’s private property. It’s considered trespassing for you to be out there.”

  “But nobody’s really taking care of the goats,” I said. “Nobody’s been milking them. The barn doors were left wide open. I doubt the Animal Control officer has been out there more than once or twice.”

  “I’m sure it will all be taken care of,” Mrs. Tuten said. She looked at Mr. Tuten, then back at me. He kept petting the ferrets. She did all the talking.

  “Iris,” she said, changing the subject, “how did you get out to the farm?”

  “I took a bike. I found it in the shed.” I didn’t mention Aunt Sue’s truck. They’d probably think my taking the Tundra was grand theft auto.

  “You did not have permission to do that,” Mrs. Tuten said, wringing her hands. “This is not a good way for us to be starting out. We need to be able to trust you. We simply cannot have this.”

  Mr. Tuten leaned forward. “We need you to understand — there can be no more trips out to your aunt’s farm.”

  “Please,” I said, the panic making my voice quaver. “They need me. I’ll walk out there. I’ll feed them and milk them and come straight home. I’ll do whatever chores you want here. I’ll keep walking your ferrets. But I have to see my goats. I have to take care of them. Please.”

  And in a smaller voice I said it again: “Please.”

  There was a long silence. The ferrets climbed out of Mr. Tuten’s lap and came over to inspect my legs.

  “We’re sorry,” Mrs. Tuten said. “If you’re going to stay here with us, you’re going to have to abide by our rules.”

  I trembled with frustration and anger, but fought to hide it.

  “We’ll need you to promise,” Mrs. Tuten said, “that you won’t go back out there. To the farm.”

  “It’s just that we’re responsible,” Mr. Tuten added, apologetically. “We don’t want anything to happen to you.”

  I stared at their shoes for a long time. Then I told them I understood, and I told them I wouldn’t go back out to the farm. It was a lie, of course; there was no way in hell I was going to stop taking care of the goats. I just had to figure out a way to do it without the Tutens finding out.

  Mrs. Tuten and Mindy took me downtown the next day after school for an appointment with the guardian, Mr. Trask, though I didn’t want to see him — then or ever.

  Mr. Trask didn’t look at me when the receptionist showed us into his office. He spoke to Mindy while Mrs. Tuten and I just sat and listened. For ten minutes they discussed me as if I wasn’t there: my condition, my situation, my placement options — which didn’t seem to exist, except for the Tutens’.

  “And as for the estate,” Mr. Trask said, finally shifting his gaze my way, “everything was liquidated after Miss Wight’s father’s death. Her aunt was fully authorized to make expenditures.”

  He turned back to Mindy. “As I have explained to Miss Wight before.”

  “How much is left?” I asked. “You didn’t tell me that.”

  He continued addressing Mindy. “The balance is forty-two thousand five hundred and eleven dollars”— he paused —“and thirteen cents. Social Services can draw from the account to pay the foster-care stipend to the Tutens, and a small allowance for incidental expenses for Miss Wight — clothing, school lunches, that sort of thing. The rest will transfer to Miss Wight on her eighteenth birthday. This is not an account to which Miss Wight will have access otherwise until that time. And I suppose it goes without saying that Miss Wight’s aunt, Miss Allen, has lost her executorship of the estate.”

  Mindy asked about the status of the cases against Aunt Sue and Book. Mr. Trask said he wasn’t directly involved — Book and Aunt Sue both had court-appointed lawyers — but he understood that they had a preliminary hearing in a week, and he expected that the case would go before the grand jury.

  “Will they be allowed to get out on bail?” I asked. “Why aren’t they already?”

  Mr. Trask leaned back in his chair. “It is my understanding that Miss Allen was unable to make her bail, or her son’s. You do understand that the state is treating this as a very serious felony.”

  “What do you mean ‘treating it’?” I said.

  He leaned back even farther. “I simply mean that it is a very serious felony. That’s all.”

  “But you said ‘treating it,’” I said, leaning toward him until I was practically out of my chair. “Don’t you think it’s serious, what happened?”

  Mrs. Tuten laid her hand on my arm. We were sitting in matching straight-backed chairs next to each other, about a mile away from Mr. Trask on the other side of his desk.

  “Of course he does,” she said in a tone I hadn’t heard before — as if she were giving Mr. Trask an ultimatum.

  Just before we left, I asked about going out to Aunt Sue’s farm. Mrs. Tuten seemed surprised that I brought it up, but it was all I had been thinking about.

  “Now, Iris,” she said. “We have already discussed this.”

  “I know,” I said. “I just wanted to see if it was possible.”

  Mr. Trask was unequivocal, though: No, I couldn’t go on the property. And no, I couldn’t tend to the goats or Gnarly.

  My heart sank, but only briefly. Because I was going back to the farm no matter what.

  Tuesday morning I pretended to take the bus to school but ducked around the corner from the Tutens’ and drove the truck instead. I parked in the student lot, then snuck out of study hall later in the day and raced over to the farm, ten minutes away. I felt as if I’d been holding my breath the whole time I was away. Gnarly’s dish was empty — I doubted Animal Control had been there — so I got busy right away, feeding Gnarly, giving grain to the wethers, gathering the eggs, milking the goats. I pasteurized the milk and started some new cheeses — out of habit, and because I didn’t know what else to do with the milk.

  The goats hated that I rushed through everything; they wanted to play. Tammy butted me in the side, hard, after I let her off the milking stand. I yelled at her but immediately felt bad about it — and bad about having to abandon them again so soon. I thought Jo Dee was going to batter down the gate trying to follow me out of the field when I had to leave.

  I nearly got in trouble for being late to English class, but I said I was having my period and Mrs. Roosevelt let me in. Littleberry was watching me as I sat down at a desk by the door. He gave me a crooked smile, as if he knew something was up. I didn’t look at him again the rest of class.

  I continued to slip off to the farm the rest of that week and into the next — sometimes leaving during study hall, sometimes during lunch. Twice I skipped homeroom and first period. I figured the Tutens wouldn’t find out about the tardies for a while.

  The goats were always happy enough to see me, but I could tell they didn’t understand why I came and went so quickly, why I didn’t stay, and why I milked them only once a day. Tammy attacked me a couple more times, even after I freed her head yet again from the fence. Jo Dee, whose pregnant belly hung so low that she practically dragged it through the grass, pressed herself so close to me that my jeans took on her goaty smell. I was afraid the Tutens might notice it, so I starting leaving a pair of jeans in the truck to change into and out of, just for the farm.

  There was trouble with Gnarly, too. I didn’t want to tie him up to the clothesline, even if he could still run back and forth. Plus his barking alone w
ouldn’t keep wild dogs or coyote from getting at the goats, and I needed him to be able to protect them — and to protect Aunt Sue’s chickens, which for some reason he never bothered. But then one night he killed another one of the neighbors’ chickens. He didn’t even eat it or anything, just laid the carcass on the bottom porch step, I guess thinking I’d appreciate the gift.

  Dad had shown me how to deal with a chicken killer, though. I found an old protective dog collar in a closet — a giant, hard-plastic cone — and strapped that on Gnarly. He wasn’t happy about it, but he couldn’t scratch or bite it off. I made sure he could still get to his food and water bowls with it on. Then I tied the chicken’s legs together, and its wings tight to its breasts, and tied the whole thing under Gnarly’s neck. He went crazy trying to get at it, but couldn’t because of the collar — not with his teeth, not with his paws, not scraping against the goat fence, not flinging himself onto the ground and crashing and rolling around.

  Finally he gave up and just sat there, looking up at me with his best sad dog eyes.

  “Forget it,” I said. “You can’t kill chickens, Gnarly. You have to take care of the goats when I’m not here. That’s your job. No more chickens.”

  I left the bird there for three days while it turned rancid and rotted — and hoped Animal Control wouldn’t show up, which, judging from what I’d seen so far, wasn’t likely to happen. The smell nearly made me vomit, and the goats couldn’t get far enough away from Gnarly. They ran to the farthest corner of the field every time he climbed under the fence. Gnarly could barely eat for the first two days, and not at all on the third. When I drove out that afternoon to milk the goats, he looked so miserable and pathetic — and stank so bad — that I cut the carcass loose and tossed it away deep in the woods.