Violet and Boaz

Boaz was a yellow he-goat, old as sin according to Grandma Gert. He stood just inside the barbed wire fence and aimed his gaze along the top of his nose as if it was a gun. When Joseph pointed him out to his mother, she said “Ish” without looking. The car bumped along the dirt road.

He liked to imagine catching the buck in a net and dragging him through the river till he came out white. Then you could walk near him and not have your stomach clutch from the stink. Nobody could figure out why Mr. Lurtz kept him. Sometimes he chucked rocks at his goat.

Grandma Gert kept Violet because she loved goat’s milk.

“You’ll have a really nice week,” his mom said.

“A nice week.” He could tell without looking that her mouth was tight now. His friends argued with their parents, but he didn’t see how that could work with his mom.

“Mr. Charles is going to be really amazing,” she said.

“I know.” Mr. Charles was a tennis pro who had offered lessons at the school auction and she bought them for thousands of dollars in order to help the school.

“Okay,” he had said when she told him. “But I hope it’s not in August.”

“It’s not going to make any difference, Joe, if this one year your visit’s a little shorter. Grandma Gert will understand.”

He brought it up another time, and she said, “Anyway you need to be in the real world. The world moves forward.”

The tires made a scraping sound as they turned into the gravel driveway. Grandma Gert came out to meet them in a big shirt that flapped in the breeze. She was barefoot.

After he hugged his grandma hello and his mom goodbye, they sent him away so they could talk about something. He carried his duffel bag into the cottage and walked straight out the back. The sun touched his face. On the way past the vegetable garden and up through the tall grasses, he could smell things. Something dusty, something minty.

Violet watched him coming up the meadow. She bit off five or six quick bites from a bush and stretched her head forward as if she had to lengthen her neck in order to chew and swallow the leaves down. He ran his hand over the stiff white hair of her back to feel the ridge of her spine waving up and down.

Far below, the river seemed to jiggle in place, dark under the bright sky. Really, though, it was chugging its way down through all the middle states to the Gulf of Mexico.

His mom’s black car came back up the road and she honked and waved. When its puttering died away, he closed his eyes. Insects buzzed. Violet chewed leaves and her saliva made them squeak.

“Violet’s stream is beginning to thin,” Grandma Gert said when he went in. “I barely get a glassful now. We need to make a new goat, so I don’t have to buy one. Kidding improves the flow anyway.”

She was cheap, his parents said. He liked to make things, too, or borrow them, rather than asking for something and then being driven to a bunch of stores to find the best one. Making a goat, though, that was new.

“What I need,” she said, “is for you to take Violet wandering. Near Boaz.”

He waited, guessing at her meaning. “Will Mr. Lurtz mind?”

“Lurtz won’t know because you’ll be careful. He thinks Boaz’s seed is priceless. I was stupid even to ask him about it.”

He stared at the pan on the stove and tried to think about what food was in it.

She mentioned that they had to wait for Violet’s estrus, but it should be coming any day. In all the piles of books he had to keep stepping over, there was no dictionary except a German one.

The next day she reconsidered. “A week. Not much time for your learning curve. Let’s start today and just see if they notice each other.”

He was in his bathing suit looking down toward the dark finger of the dock that stuck out into the river and held its own against the current again this year. He pulled on his clothes and put raisins and peanuts in his pockets.

Violet was in the meadow and didn’t fuss as he hooked the rope collar around her. The rotting posts and barbed wire that marked the perimeter of Lurtz’s pasture were right across the road. The cows were there, as always, standing in a brown bunch, chewing. But when you wanted him Boaz was hard to find.

He led Violet higher up so they were across from Lurtz’s cornfield. The treats worked for luring her through his grandma’s split rail fence at the place where the bottom rail was down. They threaded through the corn until the pasture came in sight between the tall stalks.

Before they saw Boaz, he soured the air. Violet pranced and kicked up her legs, old as she was, and made whining noises like complaints. They looked at Boaz. That was all Grandma Gert said to do.

On the second day, just as they got close to the pasture, the tractor choked and roared to life and came straight toward them. Joseph turned back and loped deep into the corn, dragging the bleating Violet. After that he waited till he saw Lurtz go into his house at lunchtime and then led Violet across the road. On the stormy day, Boaz stood with his head bowed under the huge maple as if a rain-washing were the most depressing thing in the world.

One morning Grandma Gert heard Violet bleating, and she raised her hands out of the soapy dishwater and walked to the kitchen door, hanging her wet fingers in front of her. Violet was next to her stable. She jumped once, and then stood wagging her stumpy tail back and forth in the air like a dog greeting its owner except she wasn’t looking their way. His grandma wiped her hands on the dishtowel and hiked up the path to Violet. He followed.

“Well, look at that.” Some snot-like stuff had dribbled out under Violet’s stick-up tail, making her look shiny in that area. “I’d say you’ll be able to get somewhere now.”

Boaz was in the middle of Lurtz’s big wheat field, in plain sight from anywhere. All day that was where he was.

“I could go at night,” Joseph said over chicken and the beans he had picked and strung.

“I think your parents would sic some therapist on me if I sent you on an errand like that after dark.” She used her napkin to wipe the grease off her mouth. “It makes the whole enterprise look criminal.” She smiled behind the napkin.

At ten o’clock he changed into dark clothes.

“If she’s not in her stable, I’d try where those bushes grow closer to the shore,” Grandma Gert volunteered without looking up from the TV news.

The wind had come up, and he zipped his sweatshirt as he went down the path. The big cloud over the moon was in his favor, though millions of stars pricked the clear part of the sky.

On the steep slope, wooden steps had been built in two places. Rustling noises came from the bushes around the boat shed, where anything could be hiding. At the bottom was a stretch of sand.

Violet stood with her hoofs in water taking quick drinks and then jerking her head up. The river was rushing and noisy, and her whiteness glowed against it in the starlight. He held out a couple of peanuts so she would back out of the water and stretch her bony muzzle to his hand. He was used to the feel of her snappy lips tickling his palm, but this time they were wet. He attached the rope and led her along the beach. As he entered Lurtz’s trees, the stiff needles of the pines brushed against his sleeves.

This narrow band of forest separated Lurtz’s fenced-in pasture from the river. He owned the land right to the shore but didn’t use it for anything. In sunlight, you could see how the sand lay in fixed ripples under the shallow water where there used to be a beach. Grandma Gert said the current had taken it.

He was prepared to offer more peanuts if Violet balked, but she followed briskly behind him.

What he knew about this kind of thing was from what he had figured out with his friends, plus movies. It wasn’t from the plan his mom had made a few months ago. She got a hotel room near the amusement park, but she wasn’t going. When his dad was lifting their suitcase into the trunk, Joseph was in the front seat already with his window down. “You’ll see, Wy,” he heard her say. “He’ll feel free to ask questions. If you waited till even this summer he might not.” They were supposed to listen to some CDs.

The cars crawled on the highway, and his dad grunted when he had to change gears. The sun glinted on glass and chrome. The talking voices said that sex was a natural function. A man’s voice would say a few things and then a woman’s voice would chime in. He said sex was pleasurable and she said, boy is it ever.

Between Parts One and Two, he’d thought of a question. “Mom wanted us to go on rides too?”

His dad dropped one hand to his knee, giving up on changing lanes. “We’re lucky, Joe — we get to goof off for two days, and all we have to do is listen to some stuff on the way there and back.”

Part Two was about animals and evolution and lovers pairing off.

In the parking lot, he looked back to watch the locks click down as they walked away from the car.

Some parents sat on benches and watched, but his dad crunched down and strapped himself in for the rides. He was more than six feet tall and had straight gray hair that fell onto his forehead in spite of the hair spray. His mom had suggested a perm once, but his dad said, “Forget it.”

Later, in the hotel, he had pretended to watch TV while his dad called his mom to report. “Cynthia, hi. We’re just settling in for the night. Had a great day.” Then a short silence. “Yeah, the first two, no problem.” Then his dad’s eyes started wandering all over the room. His mom must be praising his dad. She was big on praising. Then his dad managed to steer the subject back to the new roller coaster, and obviously she would be bored by that so the conversation ended with the I love yous.

“Found anything for us to watch?”

“You pick, Dad.” He threw the remote across and they found a movie about a guy stealing raw diamonds off a truck that was leaving a diamond mine.

When Joseph reached the hollow where the creek splashed into the river, he turned and led Violet back up through the trees, over the lumpy ground, toward Lurtz’s pasture. He tried to see into the darkness at his feet, wondering what each step he took was disturbing. Snakes preferred sun, or anyway rattlesnakes did. Now he saw the lights of the house through the trees.

Violet’s hoofs crashed through the underbrush. But the creek bubbled and the wind rustled up in the trees, and maybe Violet’s hoofs would mix with all the other noises if Lurtz happened to be outside. The house was close now, and the windows laid rectangles of light on the pasture and even sent a little glow into the woods. Lurtz was always up late, Grandma Gert said.

And there was Boaz, drinking from the creek. Visible in the dim starlight because his yellow hair was brighter than the pasture grasses. He was only about thirty yards away, close enough that usually you’d want to pull your sleeve across your face. But the wind was blowing off the river, toward Boaz.

On the way home from the amusement park after the second day, his dad had put in the next CD. The man’s voice used the word “beautiful.” The woman said “gentle.” Right after something about “bringing the very best of themselves together!” Joseph had pushed the button and extinguished the woman’s voice. The sound of the car engine filled the space. His dad said, “Yeah.”

He tested the barbed wire of the fence. It was loose, both the upper and lower strands. Of course there was no manipulating Boaz. His hope was that Violet would go on her own. He pulled the wires apart to make an opening large enough for her, but she stood still, as if the distant light from the house blinded her. She was utterly uninterested. In fact, she spread her hind legs to pee, and he had to jump out of splashing range. So much for helping them bring the best of themselves together.

The wind did the work. It passed by Violet and arrived at Boaz, who raised his head from the creek, turned in their direction, grunted loud enough to hear at a distance, cleared the small bank with a jump, and trotted over to the fence. Instinctively, Joseph parted the barbed wire again and Boaz was through it, possibly with a bloody scratch on his back. The air that surrounded Boaz and traveled with him was sharp and closed over Joseph’s face like a sickness. His mouth and eyes clamped shut, and his nose pushed the air back out before he could get the good of it.

He remembered Violet and opened his eyes. She stood absolutely motionless. Boaz sniffed around her tail, curling his upper lip back and making nickering noises. He pawed the ground with one hard hoof and made another kind of noise, more like grumbling. She took a few steps ahead, but Boaz followed her and got himself next to her so he could rub against her side. Joseph was behind them, and he saw that Boaz had enormous balls, like two oranges. He was sniffing her backside again and running his tongue in and out of his mouth. Then all of a sudden he reared up and came down over the back half of Violet. She bleated anxiously and he expected her to bolt away, but no. She had turned her backside to Boaz with her messy estrus, and he began bashing into her, his forelegs jerking along her sides. He made loud noises like barks but somehow goaty. She stood her ground, raising her hind end and actually bracing her feet to withstand his force. When Boaz backed down and quieted to grumbling, she waited. Joseph began to breathe again, through a sleeve of his sweatshirt, and he realized he’d been getting dizzy from the lack of air.

It began over again. It happened four or five times. With his arms latched around the fencepost, he watched because it was impossible not to. In any case, he could not have left Violet alone. Whimpering sounds came from his throat, but they were lost in the goat racket.

There was another noise. Cracking of twigs. And a sense of something dark passing close to him. His butt tightened against the urge of sudden diarrhea. When the shape was past him, it took human form and moved in on the goats to grab Boaz by a horn and ram something hard against Violet’s side making her bleat in pain—the butt of a gun. Lurtz. He kept ramming Violet, breathing heavily with the effort, until she skittered ahead, and the rearing Boaz was prevented from following her by the firm hand on his horn. Then Lurtz used the gun to prod Boaz to turn around and step toward the fence.

“Pull the wires up.”

Joseph found himself able to move his shaking arms. He kept his face down, his breath involuntarily suspended as Boaz hopped through the fence.

Lurtz stood in front of him in undershorts and a dark work shirt. His fleshless legs rose out of boots without socks. In the faint light, they looked like bones.

“You little pisser.” The gun had been angled in front of Lurtz, at rest in his two hands. Now he let go with one hand and the butt swung free by his boots.

“It’s not what you think.” Joseph’s voice came out high.

“I think what I think.” The butt of the gun stopped on the toe of one boot, and the toe energetically bounced it up and down. “Tell her a hundred bucks, you pissing little asshole. Go tell her that.”

Lurtz parted the barbed wire and climbed through, and Joseph shot away through the trees, stumbling once painfully and pushing himself on by leading with the good foot. The woods were darker. The rushing sound of the river was in the air, but he couldn’t tell which side it was on. He had lost the stream that led to it.

And his grandma wouldn’t pay, not that much.

When twigs crunched behind him, not in a sneaky, scared way but in the bold, rhythmic way of someone fearless, he only kept from wetting his pants by grabbing hold of himself and squeezing. He couldn’t turn to look back.

It was just Violet, all clean and white and trotting along with her head held up. Anyone would think she’d just gone somewhere on purpose, not been violently attacked. She passed him by as if his guidance were a thing she couldn’t possibly need. Then her crunching footfalls were beyond his hearing.

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Robin Underdahl’s fiction and nonfiction appears in Notre Dame Review, Short Story, upstreet, and Stirring. She lives in Dallas, but her blood is Minnesotan.