The Goats

Parish

Chapter 10: The Goats

The goats are named Patience, Prudence, and Pearl. Marie-Claire named them for the virtues she wished she had and the luxury she could not afford, the naming being the first joke and the lasting joke, because the goats possess none of the virtues their names suggest and are worth considerably less than pearls, the goats being Boer-cross does valued at approximately $150 each at the sale barn in Natchez, the $150 being the market price for a mature doe in working condition, and the working condition is the thing, the goats' condition being their purpose, the purpose being the eating of brush, which is the parish's contract with Marie-Claire, the contract that pays her $800 per month to clear the drainage ditches and the right-of-way along the parish roads in the Ferriday district, the $800 being the income that, combined with the other income (the part-time work at the dollar store, the occasional house-cleaning job, the child support that does not come from Angola because Angola does not pay child support, the absence of the child support being one of the many absences that structure Marie-Claire's finances the way the levee structures the river, by containing the flow, by directing the limited resource to the places it must go).

Patience is the oldest. Six years. She is large for a Boer cross, maybe 140 pounds, red-headed with a white body, the Boer markings that identify the breed, the breed being the choice for meat goats and brush goats in the South because the Boer is heavy and hardy and capable of thriving on the vegetation that other animals will not eat, the thorny and the bitter and the fibrous, the goat's palate being the opposite of discriminating, the goat eating what is available the way the parish lives on what is available, without complaint, without preference, with the pragmatic acceptance of a creature that understands, at some cellular level, that the available is the real and the preferred is the fantasy and the real is what sustains.

Patience is also the most stubborn. Clem has treated her three times in the past two years — once for a hoof abscess, once for a barber pole worm infestation that had her anemic and weak, and once for a laceration on her shoulder from a barbed-wire fence she should not have been near but was, because Patience goes where Patience wants to go, the going being her primary characteristic, the unstoppable forward motion of a goat who has decided that the grass on the other side of the fence is the grass she will eat, and the fence is not a boundary but an inconvenience, and the inconvenience is temporary, because Patience will find the loose wire or the low spot or the place where the post has rotted and she will go through it or over it or under it, and the going-through is the goat's theology, which is: the fence is a suggestion and the suggestion is declined.

Prudence is the middle goat. Four years old. Smaller, darker, more cautious than Patience but not cautious enough to justify her name, not cautious enough to avoid the brambles that scratch her face or the fire ants that bite her legs or the particular foolishness of eating the bark off Marie-Claire's one good fence post, the post that holds the gate, the gate that is the only gate that works because the other gate is held together with baling wire and the baling wire is the parish's universal fastener, the thing that holds together what cannot be properly fixed, the temporary repair that becomes the permanent repair because the permanent repair requires money and the money is directed elsewhere, to the feed and the vet and the fuel and the child and the drive to Angola every third Sunday.

Pearl is the youngest. Two years old. White, entirely white, the Boer genetics diluted by whatever buck covered her mother, the white being the anomaly, the goat that does not look like the others, the goat that stands out, and the standing-out is Pearl's curse and her charm, the white coat showing every stain, every mud mark, every thistle burr, Pearl looking perpetually dirty in the way that a white thing in Louisiana looks perpetually dirty, the environment asserting itself on the surface, the surface being the record of the environment's contact.

Pearl is the one who is sick.

Clem arrives on a Thursday morning. Marie-Claire called the evening before: Pearl is off her feed, breathing hard, standing apart from the other two. The standing-apart is the sign. Animals that are sick separate from the group, the separation being the instinct, the sick animal removing itself the way a sick person withdraws, the withdrawal being the body's request for space, for quiet, for the reduced stimulation that illness requires, the body turning inward to fight the thing inside and the turning-inward producing the visible sign, the standing-apart, the separation that the observant owner notices and that the noticing produces the call and the call produces the vet.

Pearl is in the shed. She is standing but she is standing wrong. Clem can see it from the truck, the wrongness visible in the way Pearl holds her body, the slightly hunched posture, the head lower than it should be, the breathing visible in the movement of her sides, the sides moving too fast, the respiration rate elevated, the rate being the number that tells Clem, before he touches the goat, before he takes the temperature, before he listens with the stethoscope, the number that says: This animal is working hard to breathe, and the working-hard is the symptom, and the symptom is the beginning of the diagnosis.

He gets his bag from the truck. Not the large-animal equipment — the smaller bag, the one he carries for goats and sheep and the small animals that come to him when the small-animal vet is unavailable, the bag that contains the stethoscope and the thermometer and the smaller syringes and the medications dosed for the smaller bodies, the bodies that are not cattle-sized but goat-sized, the difference in size being the difference in dose, and the dose is the thing, because the thing that heals a cow can kill a goat if the dose is wrong, the wrongness of the dose being one of the things that veterinary school teaches and that practice reinforces, the reinforcement coming through the cases, the cases accumulating into knowledge, the knowledge being: the dose matters, the size matters, the species matters, each animal being a specific body requiring specific care, and the specificity is the practice.

He enters the shed. Pearl looks at him. Goats look at things differently than cattle or horses. Goats look directly, with the rectangular pupils that are the goat's distinctive feature, the pupils that give the goat a wide field of vision and a disconcerting directness, the goat's gaze being the gaze of an animal that is assessing you with an intelligence that is not bovine patience or equine alertness but something else, something more calculating, more skeptical, the goat looking at Clem the way a person looks at a person they are not sure they trust, the not-sure being the goat's default position regarding the world, which is: I will observe, I will evaluate, I will decide, and the deciding is mine.

Pearl's breathing is audible. Clem can hear it from three feet away, the labored respiration, the sound of air moving through lungs that are not fully functional, the lungs compromised by something — fluid, infection, the accumulation of the thing that is making the breathing hard.

He kneels beside Pearl. He takes her temperature: 104.8. Normal for a goat is 101.5 to 103.5. The elevation is significant. The elevation is the fever, the body's response to the infection, the body raising its temperature to create an environment hostile to the invader, the raising being the defense, the defense being the body's first response, and the response is working because the response is visible, the fever is measurable, but the response is also the problem, because the fever is using energy that the body needs for other things, for breathing and standing and maintaining the systems that the body requires, and the using of the energy on the fever is the depletion, and the depletion is what Clem can see in Pearl's posture, the depletion visible in the way she stands, less than fully standing, the standing being a diminished version of what standing should be.

He listens with the stethoscope. He places the bell on Pearl's chest, behind the left elbow, the location where the lungs are closest to the surface, the skin and the ribs and the lungs beneath, and he listens. The sound is wrong. The sound should be the soft whisper of air moving through healthy lung tissue, the sound that is called vesicular, the sound of the vesicles — the tiny sacs — inflating and deflating with each breath, the sound of healthy breathing. What Clem hears is not vesicular. What Clem hears is crackles. Wet crackles. The sound of air moving through fluid, the fluid that should not be there, the fluid that is the infection's product, the pneumonia's signature, the pneumonia being the diagnosis that Clem makes by the combination of the signs: the fever, the respiration rate, the crackles, the standing-apart, the off-feed, the combination being the picture, and the picture is pneumonia.

"Pneumonia," Clem said. "Fluid in the lungs. Probably bacterial. She needs antibiotics and she needs them now."

Marie-Claire nods. She knows what pneumonia means in a goat. She has kept goats for five years and in those five years she has learned the things that goat-keepers learn, the lessons that come from the daily observation of animals that are hardy and stubborn and intelligent and also, paradoxically, fragile, the goat's hardiness being the hardiness of the surface and the fragility being the fragility of the interior, the goat being the animal that will eat anything and climb anything and escape anything and that will also, with startling speed, succumb to the thing that gets inside, the parasite or the bacteria or the virus that breaches the surface's defenses and attacks the interior, and the attack can be swift and the swiftness is the danger, the danger that goat-keepers know and that the knowing is the vigilance, the daily checking, the daily watching for the signs.

Clem draws up the antibiotic. Nuflor — florfenicol — the antibiotic that he uses for respiratory infections in small ruminants, the drug dosed at the goat rate, which is different from the cattle rate, the dosing calculated by weight, and Pearl weighs approximately 100 pounds, and the dose is calculated and drawn into the syringe, the syringe being the delivery system, the mechanism by which the drug will enter the goat's body and travel through the blood to the lungs and attack the bacteria that are attacking the lungs, the drug being the intervention, the intervention being the practice.

"I need you to hold her," Clem said.

Marie-Claire kneels beside Pearl. She wraps her arms around the goat. The holding. The holding that is the thing. The holding of the animal while the veterinarian does what the veterinarian does, the holding that is the owner's contribution, the owner's participation in the treatment, the owner's hands on the animal's body saying: I am here, I am holding you, the needle is coming but I am holding you, and the holding is the comfort and the restraint and the love, all three combined in the circle of the arms around the goat's body.

Pearl resists. Of course Pearl resists. Pearl is a goat and goats resist, the resistance being the goat's essential nature, the nature that says: I did not agree to this, I did not choose this, the being-held is not my preference, my preference is to be free, to go where I go, to eat what I eat, to stand or to lie down or to climb on the thing that you did not want me to climb on, the freedom being the goat's theology, which is: I am not yours, I am mine, and the mine-ness is the thing, the irreducible thing, the thing that makes goats goats and not cattle, because cattle accept the holding and horses accept the holding (after training) but goats accept nothing, goats negotiate, and the negotiation is: You may hold me but I will let you know that the holding is under protest, and the protest is the struggling and the bleating and the particular twisting of the goat's body that makes holding a goat like holding a large, determined, fur-covered opinion.

Marie-Claire holds. She holds the way she holds everything — with the ferocity of a woman who has learned that the things you love must be held or they will go, the holding being the lesson, the lesson taught by the man who left and the money that does not come and the parish that watches and the life that must be gripped with both hands or it slips. She holds Pearl and Pearl struggles and the struggling subsides because even a goat, even a goat as opinionated as Pearl, eventually recognizes the superiority of the holding, the arms too strong, the grip too firm, the woman too determined, and the determining is the end of the negotiation, and the end is: I am held, and the being-held is the fact, and the fact is what it is.

Clem injects. The needle enters the muscle of Pearl's neck, the triangle of the neck where the muscle is thick enough to absorb the volume of the drug, the needle in and the plunger down and the drug entering and the entering being the treatment, the treatment being the hope, the hope being: this drug will reach the lungs and kill the bacteria and clear the fluid and restore the breathing and return Pearl to the goat she was yesterday, the goat who ate brush and climbed fences and looked at the world with the rectangular pupils of a creature that trusts nothing and needs no one and is, in her self-sufficiency, the parish's spiritual animal.

Pearl bleats. The bleat is the goat's protest, the vocal objection to the needle and the holding and the entire procedure, the bleat that is not pain (the needle is small, the injection brief) but indignation, the goat's indignation at being held and injected and subjected to the human's intervention, the intervention that the goat did not request and does not understand and that the goat would decline if the goat were given the option, the option not being given because the not-giving of the option is the care, the care being the decision to treat the animal regardless of the animal's opinion, the opinion being irrelevant because the opinion is formed without knowledge, the knowledge being: without this injection, the pneumonia will worsen, the fluid will increase, the breathing will fail, and the failing will be the end, and the end is the thing the injection is meant to prevent.

Clem withdraws the needle. He disposes of the syringe. He gives Pearl a second injection — banamine, the anti-inflammatory, for the fever, the drug that will lower the temperature and reduce the inflammation in the lungs and make the breathing easier while the antibiotic does its work, the two drugs working together, the antibiotic killing the cause and the anti-inflammatory treating the symptom, the combination being the treatment plan, the plan being the practice's response to the diagnosis.

Marie-Claire releases Pearl. Pearl stands. Pearl shakes, the goat's full-body shake that is the goat's way of saying: That happened and I did not like it and I am now resuming my life, the resuming being immediate, the goat's attention span for indignation being short, the indignation replaced by the next thing, which is the hay in the rack (the rack that Terrence built), the hay that Pearl sniffs but does not eat, the not-eating being the continued sign, the sign that the illness is still present, that the treatment has been administered but has not yet worked, that the working takes time, and the time is the waiting, and the waiting is the hardest part.

Clem gives Marie-Claire the instructions. Two more days of Nuflor — he leaves the pre-loaded syringes, labeled, in a ziplock bag. Give one injection in the neck each morning. Check the temperature. Call if the temperature rises above 105, call if the breathing gets worse, call if Pearl goes down and cannot stand, the going-down being the sign that the pneumonia has progressed beyond what the antibiotic can reach, and the beyond is the place where the treatment fails and the failure is the thing that veterinary medicine cannot always prevent.

"She'll be all right," Clem said. And the saying is not a guarantee because medicine does not guarantee, medicine tries, and the trying is the thing, the trying being the best that medicine offers, which is: We will do what we know to do, and what we know is considerable, and the considerable is usually enough, but the usually is the word that carries the weight, the word that means: Not always.

Marie-Claire takes the syringes. She holds them the way she holds everything — carefully, with attention, with the seriousness of a woman who understands that the thing in her hands is the difference between her goat living and her goat dying, and the difference is $150 at the sale barn but is also something that cannot be priced, the something being the daily presence of Pearl in the pasture, the white coat visible from the kitchen window, the visibility being the confirmation that the thing you are caring for is still there, is still alive, is still the stubborn, ungovernable, opinionated creature that you hold when the vet comes and that holds you, in its way, by being the thing that requires your attention, your feeding, your care, the requiring being the bond, the bond being: I need you and the needing is the connection and the connection is the thing that keeps you getting up in the morning, that gives the morning its structure, its purpose, its reason.

Patience and Prudence observe from the pasture. They stand at the fence, their rectangular eyes watching the proceedings in the shed, the watching being the goats' primary activity when they are not eating, the watching that is the goat's version of intelligence, the observation that precedes the assessment that precedes the decision that precedes the action, the action being whatever the goat decides to do, which is usually the thing you wish the goat would not do, the wish being irrelevant because the goat's decision is the goat's decision and the decision is final.

Patience chews. She chews the way all goats chew, with the lateral motion of the jaw that is the ruminant's defining mechanical action, the chewing of the cud, the re-chewing of the already-chewed, the food processed and re-processed, the nutrition extracted by the repeated mechanical and chemical action of the ruminant digestive system, the system that allows the goat to eat what other animals cannot eat, the thorns and the bark and the weeds and the brush, the diet that is the goat's advantage, the advantage that makes the goat useful in the parish's drainage ditches, the usefulness being the reason Marie-Claire keeps them and the keeping being the economy and the economy being the life.

Prudence bleats. The bleat is directed at no one and at everyone, the bleat being the goat's general commentary on the state of affairs, the commentary being: I am here, I have opinions, the opinions are strong, and the strength of the opinions is my contribution to the morning. The bleat carries across the five acres, across the shed where Pearl stands breathing hard, across the fence where Patience chews, across the parish road where Clem's truck is parked, the bleat being the sound of the goat and the sound of the parish, the parish that is stubborn and opinionated and ungovernable and beautiful in its ungovernability.

Clem walks to his truck. Marie-Claire walks with him. The walking is the custom. The walk to the truck.

"Thank you," Marie-Claire said.

The thank-you is simple. The thank-you is the transaction's conclusion, the exchange of the service for the gratitude, the gratitude being the thing that the invoice does not capture, the thing that is not $50 for the farm visit and $25 for the antibiotics and $15 for the anti-inflammatory, the thing that is: You came, you knelt beside my goat, you listened to her lungs, you found the problem, you treated the problem, you left me the syringes so I can continue the treatment, you told me she'll be all right, and the telling was not a guarantee but a hope, and the hope is what I needed, the hope being the thing that the veterinarian provides along with the medicine, the hope that the treatment will work and the goat will breathe and the breathing will continue and the continuing is the life.

Clem drives away. In the rearview mirror, Marie-Claire walks back to the shed. She walks to Pearl. She places her hand on Pearl's side. The hand on the side. The touch. The touch that is not medical but personal. The touch that says: I am here. The touch that is the parish's posture, the hand on the body of the thing you love, the hand that held the goat while the medicine went in, the hand that will give the injections for the next two days, the hand that will check the temperature and feel the breathing and watch for the signs, the hand that is the care, and the care is the practice, Marie-Claire's practice, as specific and as necessary as Clem's.

The goats. Stubborn, independent, intelligent, entirely ungovernable. The parish's spirit animal. The animal that will not be contained by fences or constrained by expectations or governed by any authority other than its own, the goat's authority being the authority of the self, the self that says: I am what I am, I will eat what I eat, I will go where I go, and the going is my nature, and my nature is the thing you cannot change, the thing you can only hold, briefly, while the medicine goes in.

Marie-Claire holds Pearl. The medicine works. By Saturday, Pearl's temperature is normal. By Sunday, she is eating. By Monday, she is back in the pasture with Patience and Prudence, the three of them moving through the brush, the bells ringing, the eating resumed, the life resumed, the resuming being the miracle that is not a miracle but medicine, the medicine being the intervention that turned the illness back and restored the goat to the goat she was, the white goat with the rectangular eyes and the ungovernability and the name that does not suit her, the name Pearl, the name that suggests something precious, something smooth, something created by an irritation enclosed in a shell and turned, over time, by the patience of the organism, into something beautiful.

Pearl is not beautiful. Pearl is a goat. Pearl is a hundred pounds of stubborn, opinionated, fence-testing, brush-eating, bleat-producing, medicine-resisting livestock, and the being-a-goat is the beauty, the beauty being the thing itself, the animal itself, the life itself, the life that Marie-Claire holds when the vet comes and that the vet treats and that the treating sustains and the sustaining is the practice and the practice is the parish and the parish is the goats in the pasture and the bells ringing and the brush being eaten and the ditches being cleared and the clearing being the work and the work being the life and the life being the morning, this morning, any morning, every morning in Concordia Parish, Louisiana, where the goats eat and the cattle graze and the river flows and the levee holds and the veterinarian drives his truck through the parish with the confessions in his body and the medications in the box and the hope in his hands, the hope that the treatment will work and the goat will breathe and the breathing will continue and the continuing is the thing, the only thing, the thing that the parish asks for and that the practice provides.

Hold the thing you love while someone else does what needs to be done.

The goats are in the pasture. The bells are ringing. The parish continues.