The Eden Express_ A Memoir of Insanity - Mark Vonnegut [40]
GOATS. The goats didn’t like me. I knew it and it hurt. The goats didn’t really dig anyone but they seemed to like me least. Maybe it was because I had played the heavy when we first got them. It was I who picked them up and took them away from their happy home, put them in the back of the truck, and held them there while we drove to the marina. They appreciated even less being dragged into the boat. In an attempt to make up I offered Martha a joint on the way up the lake. She just curled her lip menacingly.
I did my best to make friends. I’d bring them apples and other treats and hang around in their house not saying or doing much, just trying to get them to accept me. They’d accept the treats but I never got the feeling I was making much progress.
Alice didn’t seem to mind me much, but Alice was stupid so her acceptance didn’t mean a whole lot. It was Martha I really wanted to like me. Realizing that the deep hatred in her eyes went far beyond her and me, I started apologizing for all the awful things that people had done to goats. Man had taken a wild animal and bent nature to his selfish needs, distorting it horribly and making it dependent on him for its survival. Martha’s was the hatred of all animals that man had messed with and the resentment of all life for what man had done to what could have been such a nice planet. I even started feeling some of this resentment from Zeke.
The apple trees were sore about it too. Before I had felt gratitude from these beaten old trees for my help in patching them up and making them healthy. I imagined sighs of relief and appreciation as I cut away the dead wood, scraped their bark, and bound their wounds. But now I felt unanswerable bitterness. Cutting firewood became unthinkable.
I’m getting ahead of myself. It wasn’t till several weeks after the birth of Nancy that these feelings really got to me. When I had given up hope of ever having a close friendship with Martha or Alice, Martha because her hate was implacable and Alice because she was so dumb, I placed my hopes for a good man-goat relationship on their kids. I figured they’d be much happier here than their mothers, who had known other fields.
None of us had any experience with goats, and the woman who had sold them to us didn’t have any exact dates, so we just watched Martha and Alice swell up bigger and bigger, expecting the kids to come almost any time.
One morning, as I was out feeding the goats and making small talk with them, I noticed that Alice was acting strangely. At first I thought there was something wrong. There was some strange tumor sticking out of her ass. Then I figured out what was happening and ran back to the house to alert the folks to the impending blessed event.
Jack, Kathy, Simon, Virginia, and I all charged out to watch the miracle, hoping there would be no complications, since none of us had the faintest idea what to do to help if anything should go wrong. Their little shed had a space between the roof and the wall, so everybody watched from there. Everybody but me. I went into the shed. I had heard about farmers holding cows’ heads and comforting them while they gave birth. I wanted to be involved. It was Alice’s first kid and I thought maybe she could use some moral support. There was room in there for other people but no one else came in. I felt Virginia looking at me as if I were making some dreadful mistake but I tried to ignore it. After staying in there long enough so that it wouldn’t look like I felt I had blundered, I made some sort of excuse and went out. The goats, of course, did fine without me.
In the middle of all this Vincent showed up. Wet and cold, he was