Free Spirit

by Joshua Safran

  This sense of wonder was enhanced the next day when we visited an old lady down the mountain to buy ourselves some chickens. She lived in a secret hollow tucked into the side of the mountain, and looked like she must have been a thousand years old. The skin of her face was ancient parchment, and her thick white hair was swept back until it melted into her billowing white smock. Her spotted, gnarled hands flitted about her, serving as perches for a steady rotation of parakeets and canaries and endlessly doling out pellets, seeds, and treats to the eclectic flock flowing around her. Wherever she went, the Noahide crone was surrounded by a cloud of dogs, cats, goats, sheep, geese, ducks, chickens, and a potbellied pig. As we approached, this diverse herd broke in two, half of the animals surging forward to greet us and the other half seeking shelter behind their fairy godmother. I negotiated the leaps and licks of a border collie and the gentle head butts of a pygmy billy goat while Claudia was schooled in the relative merits of Rhode Island Reds versus Leghorns.

  “You want Reds,” the old lady decided. “You ain’t gonna eat ’em, so that means you want layers, and when it comes to layers, you can’t beat a Red. Reds are friendly, good pets for kids. They’ll come when they’re called. They’ll lay you an egg a day. And they’ll forage for themselves if you’re running low on feed. No, if I were you, I’d go with Reds every day of the week and twice on Sunday.”

  My first disappointment with the old lady was her voice. It didn’t sound appropriately magical. She should have spoken in an archaic British accent that reverberated in the ears when she came to a dramatic conclusion: “It is the Rhode Island Red that you seek!” Instead, she sounded like a local. My second disappointment came when she began introducing me to her menagerie. “This is Ricky the rooster, and Peggy the pig, and Billy the billy goat.” What kind of nomenclature was this? Her animals should have been named Cornelius and Ambrosia and Ramakrishnan. Instead, I shook paws with Dave, the dog.

  “Well, come back with your man, Bob, and a car, and we can load up the Reds. Say, what’re you folks doin’ for milk?” the Old Lady wanted to know, as she pulled a canary out of the air to tickle its head. Claudia hadn’t given the subject much thought. “You’re gonna need a goat. Goats’re no trouble to take care of, and when you’re pullin’ fresh milk every day for your boy, you’ll feel like a super mother. Goat milk’s the closest thing to human milk. That’s why I talk to my goats like people. Come with me.”

  We followed the Old Lady over to a dilapidated wire-and-wood enclosure. “Hey, Mammy! Hey, Mammy!” she called. A big black goat with comically bulging eyes trotted up and accepted a stalk of celery that suddenly protruded from the Old Lady’s sleeve. Glued to Mammy’s side was a slightly smaller goat with an auburn coat and russet eyes. Her clinginess seemed to annoy Mammy, who kept butting the smaller goat’s head away. “See this here nanny goat? This is Nancy. She’s already almost a year old and she still won’t leave her mommy alone. I want you folks to have Nancy.”

  “Oh, we don’t have the money to…”

  “Nope, don’t worry, I won’t hear of it. Nancy’s gonna be my gift to you folks, so I can know your boy’s gonna be gettin’ fresh milk. Nancy’s gettin’ in the way of Mammy freshenin’ again, anyhow. In a couple a months, she’ll be ready to breed and she’ll start makin’ you some milk. In the meantime, take her in and let her get to know you so she’ll be comfortable with you when the milkin’s to be done.”

  We walked back out of the secret hollow leading Nancy by a rope around her neck. The nanny goat kept looking back dolefully and bleating softly. As we paraded up the mountain across a bed of pine needles, I told her: “Leaving home is really hard, Nancy, but you’ll get used to it.”

  With spring in full bloom, Claudia unleashed her supercharged creative energies into cultivating our little patch of Earth into a flowering Utopian model for what New America should be all about. We would grow vegetables! We had Nancy the goat for milk, and the three Rhode Island Red hens for eggs. If the two white roosters (who had somehow survived the winter) had their way, we’d soon have even more chickens for even more eggs.

  With Nancy, my best friend on the Mountain.

  Bob was put off by the frenzy of activity and sequestered himself in the green bus for long stretches of the day.

  “Bob, come help us hoe the garden!”

  “Come on! It’s springtime. This is the season to relax. I deserve to take it easy, maybe drink a beer.”

  “Bob, the henhouse is leaking. You said you’d patch up the roof.”

  “Stop bothering me! You always want things from me. You’re never content with anything.”

  Bob stomped off to the animal enclosure and threw some scrap pieces of corrugated metal onto the chicken coop.

  “There! It’s fixed. By the way, the roosters are gay. They won’t come near the hens.”

  “Bob, when are you going to get moving on the school? Do you have parents on board, kids lined up? Are they going to pay you?”

  “You know what your problem is, Claudia? You’re always thinkin’ about money.”

  “Well, Bob, I’m thinking about money right now because we’re really stretching my Welfare checks. You have to at least pay for your own food. If you’re not going to teach, can’t you at least get a job in town?”

  “You’re just like everyone else. You just want to exploit me.”

  “OK, Bob. How about this? The Old Lady who gave us the goat needs someone to chop her firewood for her. Why don’t you do that? She’ll pay you.”

  Bob stared at my mother in disbelief, gathered up the lunch she’d made for him, and locked himself in the green bus for the rest of the day. And the next day. And the next. Eventually, another Welfare mother from down the road chopped the Old Lady’s firewood, while Claudia and I planted Swiss chard, bok choy, and kale. The hens laid eggs, and the roosters eyed the hens suspiciously. And Nancy the goat cried for her mother. The sun rose and traveled across the sky again. Bob emerged from the bus at last, full of his old vigor.

  “I got it,” he said. “We don’t need two of everything. I’ll sell my stuff.”

  So began a series of treks down to the flea market in Red Bluff. Bob took me along to help with sales. The flea market was an open-air warren of card tables and blankets, littered with junk. Poor and desperate people sold homemade corncob pipes, homemade liquor, homemade ammunition, Ozark mouth fiddles, rebuilt toasters, and used motor oil. Bob fit right in and became the social leader of a little group of merchants on day one.

  “Buddy, this is Skinny Willy. He used to play one mean banjo before the accident. This is Cubby. He doesn’t remember why he’s called Cubby. This is Marsha. She came up with her cornbread recipe all on her own.”

  On market days, we got started at the crack of noon. I helped Bob spread out his blue blanket, and we arrayed his wares: balls of socks (clean), a record player, a bag of marbles, rolls of industrial-strength toilet paper, a backgammon set, a mirror (slightly cracked), and more. The sun pounded down on us as we squinted up into the faces of passing would-be buyers.

  “Looking for some help raisin’ my boy, here,” Bob would call out. “Look at these cooking pots. Hardly used. I’m sellin’ ’em for my friend Susan.”

  When I got a headache from sitting in the sun for too long, Bob traded a ball of yarn (newish) for a tattered straw hat. This kept the sun out of my eyes pretty well, and Bob said my look helped with sales. Bob was happy and talkative on market days. He was back in his element.

  After a good day of sales, we stopped off at the nearby diner to celebrate with secondhand coffee and banana cream pie. Bob slid a little silver pitcher across the table at me. “You see this stuff, buddy? This is your best friend when you’re on the road. It’s called ‘half and half,’ which means it’s half milk and half cream. Which means it’s chock-full of protein. And here’s the best part. It’s always free. I mean always. It’s the cheapest source of protein in the whole world.”

  Bob had said the same thing to me about his
own semen in the past, and the association nauseated me. Bob didn’t notice that I was boycotting the half-and-half. He was looking forward to the next market day, when we could sit out in the sun, swapping stories with Black Gregory, and selling worthless junk to hapless suckers.

  In this manner, Bob got rid of most of his possessions. And when he’d finished selling everything he owned, he began selling off our stuff.

  “Bob, did you take my frying pan?” Claudia asked.

  “You weren’t using it. You said frying’s not healthy.”

  “Where is it?”

  “I sold it.”

  “Fuck! You’re buying me a new one, Bob. Do you hear me!? Oh, and Josh said you sold his teddy bear.”

  “Sheesh. Big deal. The thing only had one eye. Josh still has the goat to play with.”

  I tried to play with Nancy but she was not as easy to befriend as I had hoped. She was skittish and easily spooked. When Bob fired up the green bus, she bucked wildly and tried to ram herself into the wall of her shed. When Champ, the neighbors’ mammoth St. Bernard, came bounding by for a visit, Nancy would emit a panicked moan and her body would ripple with an involuntary spasm of fear. She was even scared of me sometimes. When I approached her unannounced or made sudden movements she would shiver and retreat into the corner of her shed. But for all the scariness of the bus and the dog and boy, nothing was scarier to Nancy than darkness.

  On her first night with us, my head had hardly graced the pillow before a devastating wail filled the air. The cry was so eerily human, yet so totally alien that I couldn’t imagine what manner of cruelty was being inflicted on what manner of creature. Claudia stood above me in the silence, projecting her spirit out into the darkness to investigate. When that didn’t work, we went out corporeally and cautiously, armed with a flashlight. We found Nancy folded into the corner of her little shed, bleating her terrors out into the night. Seeing her so alone and distressed made me cry.

  “The old lady said she would miss her mother,” said Claudia. “I think she’s just lonely.”

  I cuddled up next to Nancy, stroking the coarse fur of her head and neck. “It’s OK, it’s OK, it’s OK.” Nancy submitted to my petting and eventually put her head down and closed her marbly eyes. But when Claudia beckoned to me, and I began to shift my weight away from her, Nancy opened her eyes, full of terror again. We spent that night, and several subsequent nights, hunkered down in the goat pen, covered in a green army blanket made from scratchy wool. Claudia thought the feel and lanolin smell of the blanket might remind Nancy of her mother. Claudia found a windup clock Bob had salvaged from the dump and brought that into the shed with us. The ticking of the clock was supposed to remind Nancy of her mother’s heartbeat.

  There was something deep and primal and satisfying about lying up against that goat. The side of her warm, coarse belly pushed me up and brought me down with each sleeping breath. I was awash in the overwhelming smell of goat, which was at once awful and inexplicably familiar. Humans must be born accustomed to the smell, I thought—some affinity for the goat that began thousands of years ago. And there I was, like my unknown shepherd ancestors before me, comforting my little flock under the stars. My very presence assured her that she was safe. A night breeze rose up from the little creek in the vale below, fresh and cool. The goat at my back slumbered peacefully. The clock ticked its reassuring heartbeats. I slept as the shepherd boys must have slept—lightly but swollen with pride in my own heroism.

  We slowly weaned Nancy off of human company, until eventually the army blanket and the ticking of the clock were all she needed to get through the night. Nancy now recognized me as family and she would come when I called and eat food from my hand. “I love you, little goat,” I told her. Nancy nudged my chest for more lettuce, which was her way of reciprocating the sentiment.

  One night, late, the silence was ripped apart with nightmarish screaming. It was Nancy, but her cries were louder and more horrifying than before. She was screaming with every fiber of her being, as though she were screaming for her life. The sound grew fainter and fainter until it died out completely. I lunged out of bed and found Bob standing at the front door, looking down at Champ, who was pacing around excitedly. We ran out toward the goat shed.

  “What are you trying to tell us, boy?” Bob was talking to Champ in a halting, encouraging tone. “What is it, boy? Did something happen to Nancy?”

  The wood-and-wire door to the animal pen was open, and Nancy’s shed was empty. The army blanket lay crumpled on the ground. The clock was hanging from a nail, ticking away to nobody. Champ ran around, smelling everything.

  “Look,” Bob said to me. “Look at Champ.” He was pointing. In the moonlight we could see that the white band of fur on his chest was streaked with red. “Champ! Champ, boy. Where’s the goat? Where’s the goat, boy!?”

  Champ looked alert and seemed to understand. He streaked out of the shed, and we followed him out of the animal pen. He led us down the rocky hillside. I slipped and tumbled in the darkness. Bob picked me up and half-dragged, half-carried me down toward the creek. Champ was waiting for us, pawing at the ground and nodding his head at the body before him. On the graveled bank, next to the little creek that sparkled in the moonlight, Nancy lay flat on her side, unmoving. Bob stopped and let me go. I circled around Nancy’s motionless form and saw that her side was not rising and falling with breath. Her eye was inert and glassy. Her throat was dark and shiny and a shiny blackness pooled beneath it.

  “Is Nancy dead, Bob?”

  “I’m afraid so, buddy,” said Bob.

  We knelt down together and felt Nancy’s side. There was but a little warmth left on her skin, but even that seemed to evaporate under our fingers.

  We walked slowly back to the cabin, picking our way among the rocks and tree roots. When we reached the porch, Champ bounded up behind us, panting. I turned around: “Go home, Champ! Go home!” I didn’t cry until I saw Claudia. Then deep convulsions rocked my body. My throat constricted, and the heaving of my chest threatened to break my ribs apart. I felt like the lifetime of heartbeats stolen from Nancy were pounding through me all at once. Between thunderous sobs, I gasped out: “She was just a little goat and she missed her mother. She didn’t do anything wrong.”

  My mother hugged me and patted the back of my head and said: “It’s OK, it’s OK, it’s OK,” the way I used to comfort Nancy.

  Eventually Bob ran out of things to sell at the flea market, and he became taciturn and withdrawn again. He locked himself in the green bus for a couple of days and then emerged, bright eyed with new clarity.

  “I got it. Come on, buddy!”

  We pulled up to the lip of a vast ocean of garbage. As far as the eye could see, the landscape was a decomposing collage of rotting food, mangled odds and ends, broken appliances, and pieces of furniture. Everything in the world had come here to die. The skeletal remains of a burnt bunk bed caught my eye. As did the puffy black bags oozing soiled diapers. Flocks of birds circled overhead, diving into the garbage to pick off mice. In the distance, bulldozers climbed atop a sea of filth like ants on a carcass. Bob thought he’d discovered the richest racket in history.

  “Check it out, buddy. The dump! Everything you see here is free. And so much good stuff. All you can carry away for the low, low price of zero dollars. That means every penny we make for it at the flea market will be pure profit.”

  The smell was distressing, even from the protection of the bus. But once we emerged into the gaseous air of the dump, the stench was overpowering. I doubled over, gagging on the sweet-and-sour hallmarks of decay, as a swarm of flies sucked the moisture off my face. Little slimy gray rats scurried past my feet.

  Bob waved his hand under his nose: “Whoo-wee! Boy, that’s stinky. But that’s the price of doing business in a place like this, I guess.” And he leapt neatly down onto a stained old mattress and began picking through the garbage. “Looks like there was a fire. Look at this, buddy. Perfectly good,” he said, offering up a b
lackened flowerpot.

  I gingerly picked my way into the sea of garbage after Bob. I found that if I held my shirt over my nose with one hand, batted at the flies with the other, and focused my vision on one object at a time, I could avoid both vomiting and my atavistic urge to run away screaming. Over the course of our days at the dump, I found a few things that I would have liked to keep: an action figure missing only an arm, an egg timer, a squirt gun with a superficial scratch. But I couldn’t bring myself to put them in my pockets. Sure, they were perfectly good on their face, but they posed the same problem for me that plagued Bob’s secondhand diner food: once designated garbage by their initial owners, they were forever tainted with an insurmountable stigma.

  “Take it, buddy. Take it, it’s a perfectly good music box.”

  “It’s garbage, though.”

  “Why? Who says? Society?”

  “No, the person who threw it out.”

  “But your mother buys you stuff from the thrift store all the time. Someone threw that stuff out, too.”

  “They gave away that stuff. Someone threw away the music box.”

  “So, lemme get this straight. You think if there were two of the same music box, and one was given away and the other one was thrown out, one of them is magically OK and the other one is magically total garbage?”

  “Yes.”

  I believed in the magic of used versus garbage. And, to Bob’s surprise, the buyers at the flea market did too. Somehow they could tell when something had come from the dump. Bob’s great plan sputtered out, and he locked himself up in the green bus again.

  When he reemerged, Bob was sullen and mean. When I asked him to help me learn how to ride a bicycle, he pushed me down the driveway and let me crash on the sharp lava rocks. He looked down at my bleeding knee and declared: “That’s life for ya, buddy.” When Sky, the more aggressive of the gay white roosters, would chase me around the yard, Bob would ignore my calls for help and continue nursing his can of beer, deep in thought.