Prodigal Summer - Barbara Kingsolver [93]
“Mr. Walker, you don’t have to go into that, I’m not a reporter or anything. I’m not even that nosy compared to most people around here. I’m just looking for some free goats.”
“Try an ad in the paper, then, that’s what I suggest. But don’t give out your address in the paper.”
“No?”
“Goodness, no, or people will just dump any kind of animal on you, and you’ll be sorry. Do you have a pickup truck, Mrs. Widener?”
“Sure.”
“Well, then, list your telephone number in the ad, but don’t make any mention of the Widener place. Just a phone, and ask people to call you. If they have what you’re looking for, then you go pick up the animals yourself. But first ask them some questions. Do you have a pencil and paper?”
“Just a minute.” He heard her clunk down the phone and walk across a floor. He wondered which room she was in. Upstairs, or down? Maybe the kitchen. They’d had the wedding right in the front hallway, with the girl walking slowly down those beautiful steps in her little white shoes and short white bridal dress. She’d looked about thirteen. They’d intended to have it out in the yard, but the weather had turned cold and rainy at the last minute. He remembered all of it. Ellen was sick. He hadn’t thought about that for years: she’d had a terrible headache, and they’d had to leave early. It was probably connected with the cancer, they just didn’t know it yet.
“OK, I’m back.”
“Oh,” he said, startled. “What was I saying?”
“When people call, I should ask them about their goats…what?”
“Oh, yes. First, you want meat goats, do you? Not for milking?”
“Definitely for meat.”
“All right, then, you want to produce slaughter kids.”
“I guess that’s right. In time to sell by, oh, maybe around the end of the year or something like that, I was kind of thinking.”
“Oh. Then you have no time to waste.”
“Is it even possible? To get them to breed at this time of year?”
“It’s not the right time for them, but there is a way to make it happen. If you can be sure they haven’t been around a buck for all of last fall and winter, they’ll be ready to come into season now. I guarantee it.”
“Is that reasonable to expect? That people will have does that haven’t been with a buck?”
“There are probably a hundred families in this county keeping a handful of goats in their backyard. And people don’t generally like billies that close to the house—they have quite a stout odor. Have you ever smelled a billy goat, Mrs. Widener?”
“Not that I recall,” she confessed.
“Well, if you had, you would remember it. It’s an odor that appeals to a nanny goat, evidently, but not to human beings. Most people only want to keep the does around.”
“All right. Good.”
“So what you’ll want is does—three-and four-year-olds are the best, nothing a whole lot older. Get as many does as you think you can handle, but watch out for bucks. You’ll only want one, with your does. Mrs. Widener, can you tell a buck from a doe?”
She laughed. “Mr. Walker, I’m ignorant, but I’m not stupid.”
“Well, of course not. I just meant…you are from Lexington.”
He heard her breathe in sharply as if to speak, but then she paused. “OK, just one buck,” she said finally. “Got it.”
“Well, but you might as well get a spare or two. Once in a while you’ll get a buck that doesn’t perform, so you may as well have a few on reserve. You’ll have to keep them in a separate pasture, out of sight.”
“Gentlemen-in-waiting,” she said.
Was that a bawdy joke? He didn’t know what was what anymore; kids laughed at you even when you said a simple word like queer. But she didn’t seem to be laughing. She sounded more earnest than most of the boys he’d had in 4-H.
“Now, if your does really haven’t been pastured