NSNETNOV LATITUDE 33

                                THE DEAD GOAT IN THE WATER HOLE

   
    Arlene brushed the dirt from her jeans and pushed her feet into her riding boots.  She could tell another day of intense summer heat was about to begin.  Her horses, especially John Henry would need to be close to water.  When the doorbell rang, she was tempted to ignore it.  She looked through the curtain.  Well, well, well.  There was Clara coming to bother her again about those goats.  It would suit Arlene just fine if they all were dead.  She pasted a smile on her face and opened the door.

    “Clara, here you are,” she said.

    Clara, an untidy woman, dressed in a checkered flannel shirt with denim overalls, pushed her way into the living room. She shook her walking stick right in front of Arlene’s face.

    “One more goat dead, “she said.  “I drove down to your water hole, and there was Billy Joe, floating, all bloated and stinking.”

     “You listen to me,” Arlene said.  “John Henry charged your fence after smelling that dead goat.  He’s got a huge gash on his leg.”

    Clara rolled up her sleeves on her shirt.

     “It used to be peaceful here,” she said,  “until you came with your horses.”

    “My horses are worth more than your goats,” Arlene said.  “Now I have to keep them corralled until you get that goat out of my watering hole.”

    “You killed it.  You get rid of it,” Clara said.  “Frankly, Miss-City-Slicker-Gone-to Country, you can’t get away with having that deep a hole.  It ain’t safe.”

    “Keep those goats away from my horses,” Arlene said.  “Jimmy and I are going to patrol this place.  If I see one more goat over here, I’m going to shoot it.”

    “You can’t do that,” Clara said.  “I’m callin’ Sheriff Patterson.  She turned and banged her stick  hard on the door frame.  Arlene jumped.  

    “Fine.  You do that. You call your old sheriff,” Arlene yelled at Clara’s back.  She slammed the door and leaned against it.  Her breath felt trapped in her chest.   Clara was not going to tamper with her dream come true.  She reached up, ran her finger around the  photograph of John Henry on the last race and saw herself again on the Pony Express Trail, covering fifty miles in desolate country with dust and heat swirling around them.

    And they had won.  She had all the fine and pretty horses.  Mean-spirited Clara was trying to cut in on her happiness.   She crossed to the gun cabinet.  She loaded a rifle and walked down to the corral.

    Jimmy was there, early as usual, currying John Henry the same way she did.  She liked having a hired hand, somebody who learned quickly and did what she wanted.  She watched him curry around the stitched cut on John Henry’s front leg.

    “Pretty baby,” he purred.  He sounded just like she did. “Yeh, your one of the best endurance horses in all of California.  Champagne and Crystal, you’re next.”

    He looked up to see Arlene climbing over the fence, balancing the rifle, bending her long legs.

    “What are you going to do with those,  Miss Arlene?” he asked.

    “I’m just going to set it down  here for now, next to the fence,” Arlene said.  “First, we are going to take care of one very dead goat.”

    In waders and wearing rubber gloves, they dragged the goat from the water and carried it up the hill and down the other side.  They lifted it over Clara’s fence.  The goat caught and wavered, then fell over into the pasture near Clara’s barn.  Tufts of ragged wet goat hair clung to the fence.

    “Whewee,” Jimmy said, “that’s one smelly goat.”

    “We can let the horses out now,” Arlene said, brushing one hand against another. “John Henry needs his freedom too.”

    Arlene tidied up the corral.  As she pitched horse manure, she thanked her lucky stars.  Being a physical education teacher instead of a professional rider in exhibitions meant she could only ride on weekends during the school year.  But she liked seeing kids physically fit, and she liked getting kids in shape, having them toe the line for physical fitness.  She shared special diets with kids who needed to lose weight.  So throughout her teaching career, she rode, and mostly by herself.  Loving every minute of it.  When Aunt Peggy died and  willed her the ranch in Hidden Valley, she left teaching and settled into her dream world, buying more endurance horses for breeding.

    The sweet pungent odor of manure was a part of her now.  It was the right place to be, and she wouldn’t let Clara or anybody else interfere with her dream.  She stabbed the pitchfork into the ground and headed up to the house.

    At twilight, a red light fluttered around the living room.  When Arlene went outside, she saw a patrol car bouncing toward her across the rough gravel road.   It skidded to a stop, shooting gravel in all directions.  Sheriff Patterson stepped out.

    “Now what?”  Arlene asked, her hands on her hips.

    Sheriff Patterson, bald and overweight, didn’t stand much on formalities.
    “You can’t go dumping dead animals over fences,” he said, adjusting his holster.
    Arlene felt herself go rigid.  She slid her hands fingers straight down into the pockets of her jeans.

     “I was just giving Clara what is rightfully hers,” she said.

    “Aw, Arlene, you don’t know Clara,” Sheriff Patterson said.  “She’s going to file a
complaint if anything else happens to one of her goats.”

    “Those goats are worthless,” Arlene said.  “My John Henry’s been cut up and all my prize-winning horses stampeded.”

    “I don’t care how many prizes those horses have won.  You can’t threaten Clara, saying you’re going to shoot her goats.  She’s seeing red,” he said, mopping his brow, and running his hand over his head.

    “Like I said, Sheriff, those goats better not get loose again,” Arlene said.

    Wasn’t anybody listening to what she was saying?  Her horses were worth big money.

    “You’ve only been here one year, Arlene, and you don’t need enemies,” Sheriff Patterson said.      His radio hummed with static and garbled voices.

    “Gotta get going.  Leave it alone, Arlene,” he said.  His car sped off, blazing red spots against dark hills.

    In the morning, Arlene sent Jimmy out to round up the horses.  But he came back too soon, too fast.  “John Henry’s missing,” he shouted, reining in Crystal.

    “That goddamn Clara,” Arlene said.  “She’s gone and done something evil to my horse.”
  She grabbed Champagne by the mane and jumped up on the bare back.  As she rode toward the water hole, her hands began to sweat.  It was hard to breathe.

    Following tracks, they rode up the ridge, looking down at the water hole.  No horse there.
Arlene twisted in her saddle and looked down at a grove of cottonwoods near Clara’s barn. 
    “That’s the only place we haven’t been,” she said, riding toward the trees. As they cantered up, they saw the brown mound.

    John Henry lay on his side, a pile of oats near his outstretched head.  His mouth sagged, and his tongue was out, swollen on one side.  Arlene jumped down from Champagne, and then knelt next to John Henry.  She cradled his head in her lap and leaned her face against his ear. She stroked his eyes, and tried to get them closed.

    “My poor John Henry,” Arlene said, combing her hand through John Henry’s mane.

     “I’ll bet Clara did this, she added, looking up at Jimmy.  She rocked the brown head back and forth.  “It’s those damned goats.”

     Jimmy’s arms were folded, the reins twisted around them.  He hadn’t dismounted. His blank face was frozen in time and space.

    “Are you listening to me, Jimmy?” she asked.

    He didn’t answer.

    “Go get some wire cutters, Jimmy, and call the vet,” Arlene said.

    Jimmy hesitated.  “Miss Arlene--”

    “Do it,” Arlene said.

    He rode off.  Arlene sat so quietly that she heard the bones in her arms creak when she shifted the massive head in her lap.  She stroked John Henry’s neck.  A light breeze picked up part of his mane and dropped it.   She felt a heart beat through her hand.  Was he still alive?  No.

    When she moved her hand, covered in dirt and horse hair, to her own neck, she realized her own pulse was beating, and fast.  The sound pounded through her ears, interrupted, muffled by the worried scraping of Champagne’s hooves.  Arlene’s fingers tingled.  Worn strength left her.   It flowed from her hands and fanned out into the dirt around her.   Her world wasn’t perfect anymore.  The massive head slipped from her lap.  She saw herself, mounding up purple ribbons, magazines, and books into a pile that kept falling down, with pieces blowing away from her.

.     When Jimmy rode up, she was already on Champagne riding in a small circle.    Together, they rode through the cottonwoods to Clara’s fence.  Arlene sliced the barbed wire in three places.  Jimmy just shook his head.  Arlene told him it wasn’t his problem.  Then they went back to the corral.

    By late afternoon, a hazy sun had crept across the sky, carrying more heat.  Arlene picked up the rifle near the corral, and with Jimmy, walked toward the water hole.  Up a gentle slope, a white shape browsed on low brush.

    “There’s one, up there,” she said, handing the gun to Jimmy.

    “I don’t know, Miss Arlene,” Jimmy said.  “I only shoot at the range or the arcade.  I ain’t never hunted anything real before.”

    “It’s for John Henry,” Arlene said. “You’re as mad as I am.  We have to protect our own.”

    “This isn’t good,” Jimmy said, turning away.

    “Shoot it, damn it,” Arlene demanded. 

    Jimmy turned back.  He shot the goat.  Another showed up in the shadow of the water hole.   He shot that one too.  They headed back to the cottonwoods where John Henry lay.  A third goat lay writhing on the ground, near the dead horse.  The goat’s mouth was full of oats.

    “I knew she’d done it,” Arlene said, taking the rifle from Jimmy.  Her hand tightened around the weapon, drawing it close in by her side.  Again, she felt something draining from her body, making her hand icy cold in the heat.  The hot gun metal moved to her shoulder.  The report and smell of gun powder closed in around her.

    “You can go home now, Jimmy.  I won’t be needing you anymore today,” she said.

    They rode back to the house. They tied the horses to the watering trough.  Sheriff Patterson’s car was parked near the corral.  He looked at Arlene and the gun.

    “Arlene, you aren’t going to do anything crazy with that gun, are you?”  he asked.
    “Nothing crazier than Clara would do,” she said.

    Jimmy sidled away.  “Be by tomorrow, Miss Arlene.”
    Arlene nodded, her eyes on Sheriff Patterson. Something was very wrong, but she couldn’t sort it out.  The heat must be getting to her.

    “Well, now,” she said, “did you know that Clara’s killed my best horse?”

    “What horse?”  Sheriff Patterson asked.  “I was with Clara just a few minutes ago.  All she was doing was feeding some goats in the barn.  Same as always.”

    “That’s not all she’s been feeding, Sheriff.  You ask her about my John Henry,” Arlene said.

    “I’m not going to insult her with your made up complaints,” he said.  “I’ve known Clara for over thirty years, and she doesn’t have mean bones in her body.  Besides, she’s filed a complaint against you.  That’s what brought me here in the first place.”

    “Sheriff, you wait until the vet gets here.  You’ll see who’s right and who’s wrong,”
 Arlene said, brushing the ground back and forth, back and forth.   “I’m filing my own complaint against Clara for killing my horse.”

    “You can do that tomorrow morning, but in the meantime you put that gun away,” Sheriff Patterson said.

    Arlene didn’t like the way he pointed at her and her gun.  “I just lost my best horse, and you don’t seem to care, Sheriff.

    Sheriff Patterson shrugged. “A goat and a horse.”  He shook his head.  “For God’s sake, Arlene, they’re only animals.”  .

    Arlene watched him get in the car.  “Only animals,” Arlene said.  “Only animals.  We’ll see about that.”

    She went back into the house, fully intending to lock the gun in the cabinet.  But then she decided to keep it near.  She’d stay dressed, sleep in the chair, be ready in case something happened.  She slumped in the armchair and drifted in and out of sleep.

    Grotesque shadows held together, then like oil and water, slid apart.  Shapes became a horse and rider together, and she was riding John Henry, weaving up a steep canyon trail.  She dismounted and ran before him, saving him from her weight, but then John Henry slipped and fell.  She could see herself grabbing for his mane, but he tumbled down the dark canyon wall.

    Arlene woke up.  The phone was ringing.  The vet wouldn’t be coming until the afternoon.  Jimmy’s truck pulled up outside.  He came barging in, banging the door behind him.

    “Won’t be needing you today after all,” Arlene said.
 
    “Whatever you say, Miss Arlene,” he said, tipping his hat.  “Be by tomorrow then.  You’ll work out all this sadness by then.  You’ll see.”  He left quickly.

    Arlene carried her rifle down to the corral.  It felt right in her hands.  She started counting her horses.  Ten in the corral.

    “Now where are those other two,” she asked.  Then she saw Champagne and Crystal on the ground, unable to get up.  Rushing over to Champagne, Arlene saw her nightmare stalking her.  The darkness that had taken John Henry was pulling the rest of her horses away from her.  All the perfectly trained horses were falling, one after another into dark space.

    “They’re dying,” she said, running for her rifle.  Bending her arm, she cradled it, walking fast across the dusty ground.  Purple ribbons fluttered from the corners of her eyes.  Trophies fell around her.  Horses slid down canyon slopes, and tumbled out of her reach.

    Now she was trotting, her rifle in one hand, steady, through the break in the fence to Clara’s barn.  She stepped inside.  Clara stood there, petting one of her goats.  When she looked up, she looked too smug.

    “You killed my horse,” Arlene said.

    “It got just what it deserved,” Clara said.

    “You fed him poisoned grain,” Arlene said.
    “Well, what if I did,” Clara said, brushing her gray hair from her face.

    “You’ve poisoned my other horses,” Arlene said.  She felt cold.  Whatever had taken John Henry over the edge was dragging her there too.

    “I don’t understand,” she went on, anxious now for something to make sense, but seeing only black shapes fluttering in the space around her.  She tried to brush them away.

    “Only one horse,” Clara said, “I only poisoned-- p-o-I-s-o-n-e-d--one horse, and he deserved it.  You’ve got plenty of others.  Now we’re even.”  Reckless words spilled out of Clara’s mouth.

     “No, you didn’t really do it,” Arlene said, wanting to make things all right.  But the black shapes became bigger, flapping wings before her.  Light, then dark.  She had to get rid of the shapes, the wings.

    “Yes, I did.” Clara said.  “What do I have to do spell it out for you again?”  Clara’s face was purple, her brow furrowed, her scarred hand, a fist on top of a goat’s back.

     “I’d do it again if I had to,” she said.

    Arlene knew the shape with wings were after her horses.  She felt her face heat up, her hand tremble, and her arm jerk up.  She fired. Clara tumbled.  Arlene pointed her rifle at a goat.  It fell quickly.  Then she started shooting at white goat hair.  So many goats, so many eyes staring at her..  She wanted to drop the rifle, but she couldn’t let go of it.  Breathing hard, she left the barn and ran through the hole in the fence.  Her shirt caught on the wire.  She tore it free and felt warm air hit her skin.  Only then did she slow her pace.

    She had gotten rid of the shapes, the wings, but now she was inside a swirling funnel, a vortex that pulled her down.  There was no foothold.  Below her, she could see John Henry, kicking his feet.  She wanted him with her, wanted her horses the way it was, the way it should be.

    Now she was at the corral.  The two horses lying on the ground kicked themselves up.  Alive, they sidled over to her, nuzzling in.  Arlene placed the rifle in the crook of the fence.  She reached up and pulled Champagne closer. Her lips touched the ear turned toward her.  “I was only protecting you,” she whispered.  “I thought you were dying.  You’re my babies, my prize-winning babies.  Crazy Clara wanted to poison all of you.  She tried.”

    Arlene pulled her fingers through Champagne’s tangled mane, combing and straightening.  Combing and straightening.  She didn’t stop even when red lights spun around her, and patrol cars encircled her and her horses.