What Comes After

by Steve Watkins

  Mindy and I stepped into the hall. “I’m sure everything will be OK,” Mindy kept saying, though I doubted she was certain of that herself. “Mrs. Tuten can be very convincing — a very forceful advocate.”

  I kept my hands clenched into fists, not sure what I would do if Mr. Trask didn’t change his mind.

  Finally, after fifteen long minutes, Mrs. Tuten opened the door and invited us back in. She was still smiling, but it was a different, fuller smile this time.

  “Mr. Trask has reconsidered,” she said once we sat down. “Iris may visit the farm and take care of the animals and use her aunt’s truck. And Mr. Trask has also agreed to let Iris have access to some of the funds from her father’s estate during those months when she may not be able to earn enough at the farmers’ market, though of course we hope that won’t be necessary.”

  Mr. Trask didn’t say anything. He’d taken off his watch and it was lying facedown next to the yellow pencil.

  I stood up again, but I wasn’t sure why. Mrs. Tuten was still smiling, and we just looked at each other, and she nodded. Everything seemed frozen in that moment. I didn’t know what to say to thank her. There weren’t enough words.

  I thought about how hard it must have been for Mrs. Tuten to lose her baby, and I thought about her sitting up all night in the barn with me and Huey. I thought about all the things she and Mr. Tuten had done for me. And now this. After losing Mom, and losing Dad, and losing Beatrice, and losing Maine, I couldn’t have imagined there could ever be this much good left in the world.

  Mindy was the first to move. She stood up and hugged me, and Mrs. Tuten came over and hugged me, too. I was so happy that I started crying and couldn’t stop. I heard Mr. Trask’s chair scrape the floor, and I heard him walk out, but I kept crying, and Mrs. Tuten and Mindy kept hugging me, and I didn’t mind that at all.

  I begged Mrs. Tuten the whole way home to tell me what she’d said to Mr. Trask to make him change his mind, but she refused. She must have told Mr. Tuten later that night — I actually heard him laughing — but I could never get him to tell me anything, either.

  Littleberry and I drove out to the farm early the next morning before school with a giant bag of Cheetos — with the Tutens’ permission. The goats were especially glad to see us. I was ready to get back to milking them twice a day, every day, to increase cheese production.

  They were ready for a party.

  Mr. and Mrs. Tuten gave me an iPod for Christmas and added me to their cell-phone plan. Shirelle gave me a softball team T-shirt and a copy of the picture she took of Drunk Dennis and Donny and the goat manure in Donny’s car.

  And Littleberry wrote me a poem — actually a limerick. He gave it to me on Christmas Day, when the Tutens invited him over for dinner.

  There once was a girl from Maine who

  Raised goats and she had quite a few.

  When I saw how she loved them,

  And cared for and hugged them,

  I wished that I was a goat, too.

  It was my favorite present.

  Later, when I walked Littleberry out to his Vespa, he asked if he could kiss me.

  “Well, yeah,” I said, my heart thumping. Finally.

  “I’m a really good kisser,” he added, as if I still needed him to talk me into it.

  So that was my second-favorite present.

  Hob and Jill watched us from the Tutens’ front window, and I’m pretty sure they were dooking the whole time.

  I wandered back inside after Littleberry left, kind of in a daze. Mr. and Mrs. Tuten were watching football with Aunt Nonny, but I still had to drive to the jail to give Aunt Sue the January money. I was meeting up with Littleberry again after that, to go out to the farm.

  “You be careful,” Mrs. Tuten said. “And call if you need us.” Aunt Nonny told me to watch out for snakes.

  I brought a pack of crackers and some goat cheese for Connie, the guard. She ate it standing up in the interview room while Aunt Sue and I sat at the table.

  I told Aunt Sue she looked good, which was true. They must have had her doing stuff outdoors. She just sniffed. “I been working out. So what?”

  Connie waved a cracker at her. “It was a compliment, Sue. Have some manners.”

  Aunt Sue sniffed again.

  I showed her the check register, or tried to. She wouldn’t look at it at first, so I laid it on the table between us, just as I’d done when I visited on Thanksgiving.

  She flicked at it with her index finger.

  “They had us in court last week,” she said. “For the sentencing. Book nine months, me a year.”

  “I know,” I said. Detective Weymouth had called to tell me a couple of days earlier.

  “Why didn’t you come?” Aunt Sue asked. “I’d of thought you’d enjoy the show.”

  I shook my head. “No, I wouldn’t have. And you wouldn’t have wanted me there.”

  The conversation hung suspended on that note for a minute. I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t glad that she was going to have to spend a year in jail, but I wasn’t sorry about it, either.

  I’d never told Aunt Sue about the polio, or about the stillborn kid, so I talked about those things for a little while. She seemed interested but didn’t respond. Then I started talking about milk production. I said it was still strong overall — especially from Reba and Jo Dee — but had slipped some in December from Patsy and Loretta and Tammy. That seemed to get Aunt Sue going. She said it was probably getting to be about time to call over to Black Marsh Farms for their Rent-a-Buck.

  “Maybe give the milkers another month or so. They won’t taper off too fast. It’ll be gradual. And they might not ever stop altogether. But you’ll know when it’s time. Then take a couple of the nannies offline, get them knocked up, let them have their kids, then they’ll be right back producing. You might ought to do the three of them at once — Patsy and Loretta and Tammy. Cheaper that way with the Rent-a-Buck. You just have to hire him the one time.”

  Things went quiet again after that, except for Connie in the corner still eating her goat cheese and crackers.

  “There’s something else,” I said.

  Aunt Sue rolled her eyes. “What now?”

  I steeled myself, knowing how she’d react to what I was about to say, then blurted it out: “When you get out of jail, the end of September, I want you to let me have all the goats. Not just the wethers.”

  Aunt Sue’s head snapped back. “You want what?”

  “I’m saving your farm,” I said, as evenly as I could. “I’m giving you this money every month — and I want the goats in return.”

  Aunt Sue laughed. “That supposed to be your idea of a joke?”

  “It’s not a joke,” I said. “I want them to live with me.”

  “Live with you where? Last I heard, you were moved into town with Peg and Harry Tuten. Peg and Harry let goats live at their house? Got them a spare bedroom?”

  I’d never considered the possibility that Aunt Sue might know Mr. and Mrs. Tuten. It surprised me to hear her say their names.

  “I’ll find someplace for them,” I said. “I’ve got time to line up something.”

  Aunt Sue glared at me. “Let me spell it out as plain as I can,” she said. “You ain’t getting a single solitary one of them milkers. Not in September. Not ever.”

  I just looked at her. I crossed my arms and sat back in my chair and just looked at her. I don’t know if I thought it would unsettle her, or make her nervous, or make her crack, but that’s what I did.

  Connie sighed. “What the hell, Sue. You say you’re sorry for what you did to the girl. So prove it, why don’t you? Let her have the goats. Looks to me like she earned them.”

  Aunt Sue didn’t respond. She just looked down at her hands, still raw and calloused from all those years working in the warehouse at Walmart, and from keeping up the farm, and from whatever chores they had her doing now at the jail. She sat that way for a couple of minutes — the longest minutes of my life.

&nb
sp; “Fine,” she said finally. “Whatever. You can have them. I’m tired of them damn goats, anyway.”

  She looked up at me. “But not until September. Not until I get out.” The meanness was gone from her face; it was almost as if she was asking my permission.

  I don’t know what came over me. I reached across the table and cupped my hand over one of hers. She let me, though only for about a second.

  Neither one of us said anything else after that. I was ecstatic, though I tried not to show it. I was thinking about the goats, and thinking about where I might keep them. Maybe the Gonzaleses had room on their vegetable farm. Maybe I could call Dr. Herriot and see if he had any ideas. Maybe the Tutens knew someone with a field and a barn.

  I didn’t have a clue about what was going on in Aunt Sue’s head.

  “I guess that’s it, then,” I said, standing up to leave. I only got as far as the door before she called after me.

  “Iris.”

  I turned around. “What?”

  She had that same old hard face on again, though — the one I first saw back in August the day she picked me up at the Raleigh airport.

  “You still owe me another four hundred dollars for those truck tires you jammed holes in with the ice pick,” she said. “Don’t think I forgot about that for one single minute.”

  Connie laughed. “Good godamighty, Sue,” she said. “You just don’t ever quit, do you?”

  I hesitated when I left the visiting room. I thought about seeing Book. Not that I wanted to. The visit with Aunt Sue had worn me out, but I had another one of Tiny’s letters with me.

  I waited for Connie to come back out to the front desk and passed it on to her. She stuck it in her pocket.

  “You sure bring it out in your aunt Sue,” she said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I guess I do.”

  Connie handed me the empty goat-cheese container. “You’re going to be all right, Iris,” she said. “I can see it in you. Every time you come for these visits.”

  “I sure hope so,” I said.

  Connie smiled. “No hoping to it,” she said. “It’s just what is.”

  I had one more Christmas present — from Mr. DiDio. He’d given it to me at our last counseling session, the day school let out. It was an old poem by a Sufi poet named Rumi, called “The Guest House,” and I liked it almost as much as Littleberry’s limerick, though I still didn’t know what a Sufi was.

  “This has helped me through a lot,” Mr. DiDio had said. “I thought you might want to have it.”

  I pulled the poem out of my pocket while I waited for the truck to warm up. I’d been carrying it around with me all week, and every time I read it I thought about my dad. It was the kind of poem I bet he would have written if he hadn’t been so busy all his life taking care of everybody’s animals, and taking care of me. I planned to copy it down for Dad the next time I wrote him a letter.

  This being human is a guest house.

  Every morning a new arrival.

  A joy, a depression, a meanness,

  some momentary awareness comes

  as an unexpected visitor.

  Welcome and entertain them all!

  Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,

  who violently sweep your house

  empty of its furniture,

  still, treat each guest honorably.

  He may be clearing you out

  for some new delight.

  The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

  meet them at the door laughing,

  and invite them in.

  Be grateful for whoever comes,

  because each has been sent

  as a guide from beyond.

  I drove over to Littleberry’s house from the jail, and we loaded his parents’ grill into the back of the Tundra for smoking some hard goat cheeses so we’d have something new to sell at the farmers’ market.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about that kiss from earlier, and halfway to the farm I pulled off to the side of the road for a few minutes so we could do it again.

  Mrs. Tuten had given me a bundle of apple wood from Roxbury Mills, a nursery just outside Craven, and I’d had it soaking in a tub of water for a couple of days. Once we got out to the farm, we set up the grill next to the back porch, lit the charcoal, then went into the barn to milk the goats while the coals burned down just right. When the embers were ready, we spread on the waterlogged apple wood, double-wrapped a couple of hard chèvre blocks in cheesecloth, and closed them up on the grill.

  We were just finishing up when I heard the phone ringing inside the house, which startled me. I hadn’t heard it ring in months, since Aunt Sue and Book went to jail.

  It was Beatrice.

  “Hey, Iris,” she said. “Merry Christmas.”

  “Hey, B. Merry Christmas.” It had been weeks since we’d last spoken, and we’d barely said three words to each other then.

  “I called the other number,” Beatrice said, “and the lady said you were out at the farm.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So how are you?” she asked.

  “I’m OK,” I said, not really sure I wanted to talk to her. It had been such a good day; I didn’t want anything to ruin it. But I didn’t want to be mean or rude to Beatrice, either. “What about you?”

  “I’m OK, too. That lady — Mrs. Tuten — she said you were with your boyfriend.”

  I laughed. “He’s not my boyfriend. He’s just a friend.” I looked out the kitchen window at Littleberry, who was throwing sticks for Gnarly to fetch. “Well, I guess he might be sort of my boyfriend.”

  “That’s great,” Beatrice said, and she sounded sincere. “I’d love to meet him sometime.”

  I wasn’t sure if she was going to continue talking, or if she was waiting for me to respond — and what, invite her down to Craven County? I tried to imagine Beatrice here but couldn’t. The silence stretched on.

  Beatrice finally broke it. “I just haven’t talked to you for a while,” she said. “So I thought I would call.” She paused again. “And I wanted to tell you that we moved back home — me and Mom and Sean. Mom and Dad have been talking about things, and they’re seeing a counselor. So I’m in my old bedroom again. I’m here right now. It’s pretty weird.”

  I had to sit down at the news. “Wow, B. That’s huge. When did this happen?”

  “Just a week and a half ago,” she said. “I already went back to school, and rejoined the team. Just before Christmas break. Coach had us doing conditioning drills in the gym. He just about started crying when I showed up. He didn’t have another pitcher. Everybody says to tell you hi. Coach says to tell you we could sure use you back in center field.”

  I stood up again by the window. Littleberry was still playing with Gnarly, pretending to throw the stick in one direction, then flinging it somewhere else. Gnarly fell for it every time, tearing off in the wrong direction, happy as he could be.

  I tried to imagine a life in Maine after all I’d been through here — tried to imagine myself back playing center field again for my old high school. Littleberry looked over, saw me at the kitchen window, and waved.

  “I wanted to tell you something else,” Beatrice said in a shakier voice. “I wanted to tell you how sorry I am. For everything. For being such a bad friend. For letting you down. For my whole family letting you down. We just got caught up in our own stuff, you know? We should have been there for you — I should have been. But everything got all twisted up.”

  “I know,” I said, and I realized that for the first time in a long time I wasn’t mad at her. “Life and all that.”

  “Yeah. Life and all that.”

  I had all but given up on our friendship, but suddenly I wasn’t so sure. This sounded more like the Beatrice I had known all my life, and talking to her now, hearing a different voice, I thought maybe I would see her again. Maybe I would go back to Maine. At least for a visit. Someday.

  Tammy came over to the fence then, probably to see where I’d gone off to. S
he crammed her head through and of course got stuck. She maaed in her usual desperate way, and the other goats crowded around, too, as if they hadn’t seen it all a dozen times before. Littleberry stopped playing with Gnarly and ran over to help her. I was starting to wonder if Tammy didn’t do it on purpose, like a little kid who just wants attention.

  I told Beatrice I had to go. She sounded genuinely disappointed until I promised I’d call her back, that we would talk again soon and I’d tell her everything that had been going on with me. I said there was something I had to take care of right at the moment, though.

  I said it was a goat thing.

  I could not have written this book without the help of my friend Lee Criscuolo, who generously shared her stories, time, expertise, cheese, and goat poo samples — and who didn’t lecture me too much about my bumbling attempts at milking. Thanks also to Mehitabel, who was the unrivaled star of our goat party, and to the late Rosie, Lee’s no-nonsense herd queen. Both were kind and patient despite my clumsiness and showed great restraint in not hooking me with their horns or butting me out of their barn. I’m just sorry that Rosie didn’t live long enough to see this book in print and to have the opportunity to eat it.

  Thanks to Marie Rizza for her beautiful, operatic rendition of the goatherd song, and to the Padovan-Hickman family, who taught the viewers of Wife Swap all they needed to know about contra dancing and living off the grid in King George County, and who also taught me a thing or two about goats. Thanks to my many friends at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Fredericksburg, who cheered this book along, and thanks to my friend Jill Payne and the staff and volunteers at CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates) who believe that every child matters and who show it every day through their amazing work and dedication.

  Thanks to my agent, Kelly Sonnack, who wasn’t able to make it to the grave-digging party for Rosie, but who has been there for everything else — and for me — throughout the writing of this book. Thanks to my wife, Janet, who read countless drafts of What Comes After and helped shape the manuscript in countless ways. Thanks of course to my own goat girls — Maggie and Eva and Claire and Lili — who remind me every day how blessed I am. Thanks to Maryellen Hanley for all her brilliant work on the haunting, resonant cover and design, and to all the good people at Candlewick Press for believing in this book and in so many wonderful books by other writers that might never have been published without their faith and vision.