Tin.Can.Goat

First, and good Lord, it took me all day to slave through this. I’m trying to do better, but laziness is a difficult beast to slay.

—————–

I’m the world’s most patient person. From temper-inducing traffic crawling up the road at the pace of a salted slug, to the slowest of all old ladies digging for pennies in the 16-person stacked single cashier grocery line I show the greatest of restraints. My kids can fight around me, punching screaming, pulling hair, spitting, and none of it rankles my nerves. I calmly fasten the deadbolt on their doors, stuff noise-dampening towels along the bottom cracks, and wait for the bitter whining to cease. Not even their shrill pleads for food or water can disturb the calmness that radiates from the essence of my nerves.

Ask my friends. Depending on whether or not the two of them are fighting with each other and taking it out on me, or how their day is going, they will most certainly agree, Phil is the calmest person ever.

To label me as calm is an understatement. An understatement best described with a story within a story. Such as this following:

I love Rite Aid, love it. The sales, the 2 feet of receipt for a one-item purchase, the crusty cashiers with facial scars and eye patches, pharmacists with red-lined eyelids and yellow-stained fingers and teeth, but most of all I love that no matter where I go, walking into a Rite Aid—in this case, McCall, Idaho—the experience is always the same; including, but not limited to, the recycling of fixtures, flooring, long-forgotten products, paint, and people.

The lady in line in front of me dug through her purse. I could hear the rattle of keys, the crunch of paper, the clinking of coins. “It’s in here somewhere,” she said. “Here it is.” She held the Rite Aid rewards card in her hand, something pink-ish dripped from it and smelled like melted crayons.

“Oh shoot,” said the man next to her. “We forgot water.”

The woman behind the counter smiled at me, the mole under her nostril darkened as she grinned. I half-hearted a smile back. The items in my hand were heavy and I was starting to drop them. She pointed. “There’s water in the cooler.”

The man walked away. “You don’t mind?”

I closed my eyes and shook my bowed head.

“No,” said the cashier. Then to me with a smile, “I’ll get you at the other register.”

I put my items on the counter and slid them to the cashier, but pulled back the pack of gum my son tried to sneak by and flipped it back on the impulse-item rack.

“Rewards card?” she asked as she scanned my items.

“I’ve got the number,” I said. I smacked Logan’s hand as he attempted to slip the gum past me again. He winced and the gum dropped to the floor.

She sighed and typed in the number. I slid my bank card.

“Debit or credit?”

“Credit’s fine,” I said.

The register door opened and the change in the door crashed against itself like rocks on the ocean shore. “Oh crud, I hit the cash key. Do you have cash?”

I looked at the bank card in my hand and shook my head. “Sorry, no.”

“We’ve got the water.” The man pushed past and Logan muttered “Jerk” as he rubbed his head.

The cashier looked at the man, “Be with you in a moment.” She muttered and chewed her lip, then picked up the phone. “Can you come up? No, I messed up. Can you void a transaction? OK, thanks.”

She smiled at me and exhaled. Her breath smelled of onions and peppermint. “Supervisor will be up here in a second.”

I rolled my lips, and she smiled and shrugged. “I’m so sorry.”

The supervisor was old and crusty. Her skin looked flaky and a cloud of dust and skin followed her as she walked. She spoke with my first cashier and looked dumbfounded at the mistake. “There’s no cash in this machine,” she said to the first cashier.

I coughed into my fist. “There’s some change—”

“And?” The supervisor eyeballed me, but I waved a hand and pushed Logan back with the other.

Logan was watching water guy argue with his wife over which of the two decided they needed a large pack of gum. I looked at Logan, but he just smiled and shrugged.

“Well I can’t do anything with no cash in the drawer,” the supervisor tilted her head; I heard something pop. “I’ll have to help you down there.”

‘Down there’ was the first register closest to the doors, soot black with old ivory keys and a pull handle on the side, but it had a scanner and for that I was grateful.

The supervisor grabbed my items and started matching them to the receipt.

“Can’t you just ring them up?” I asked as she keyed in the item’s UPC.

“Scanner’s broken,” she said.

“I mean, can’t you just do a new transaction so I can go?”

“Have to return these.” She marked an item off the original receipt with a black marker.

“I didn’t purchase those. I tried to, but she ran it as cash.”

“Look feller, this will go a lot quicker if you’d stop hounding me.”

I resolved to watch her with my chin propped on my hands, sighing deeply each time she keyed something incorrectly and had to begin again. She stopped and stared. “Sounds like you got a breathing problem.”

“I’m fine,” I sighed. “Just a headache.”

“Well this wine ain’t going to help none.” She cackled and sniffed the bottle top, and then set the wine aside.

By the time she finished the returns, water guy was behind me huffing quietly about the pack of gum his wife purchased. Logan watched him with a smile and tugged at my sleeve as he giggled. The super pulled a 3-foot receipt and laid it before me on the counter.

“Sign this,” she said.

“What’s that?” I said. I shook Logan from my sleeve and reached for the pen.

“For the returns.”

I set the pen down. “What returns? I didn’t purchase anything.”

“It’s policy.”

“Yeah, it’s policy if I walk in the door with an item and tell you I want to return it. I didn’t purchase anything, the other cashier ran it as cash. I barely swiped my card.”

She wiped her nose on her sleeve. “So, you’re not going to sign it?”

“No, I’m not going to sign it. Have that lady sign it.”

“One second.” She picked up the phone and dialed. “Sally? Can you come up here? Register one. Thanks.”

A minute later Sally showed up. She looked younger than the other workers by at least a century, and I wondered if her dress were 19^th century authentic. Maybe she’d sewn it herself.

“This guy,” the supervisor said and pointed at me with the pen, “refuses to sign the return receipt.”

Sally looked me over. “You refused?”

I did a double-take. “Of course I refused. Why would I sign that I returned merchandise that I never…you know what? Just ring this stuff up and I’ll be on my way.”

Sally and the supervisor exchanged a look and Sally signed the receipt, and then wrote a note on the back. Her arm fat flopped like a fish in a net. “Ring him up. I’m not in the mood.”

“I hear you,” said the supervisor. She totaled my items. “Cash or credit?”

I tilted my head, my brow furrowed. “Seriously?”

“Cash or credit?”

“This is idiocy,” I said, and ran my bank card across the terminal. “Debit.”

“Now sir, there’s no reason to be rude.”

I grabbed my plastic bag and Logan by the arm and hauled each out of the store. My wife was filing her nails in the car when I plopped onto the passenger seat. “What the hell took so long,” she said, and blew nail dust in my face.

“Just drive,” I said. “I hear the banjos in the distance.”

Oh, and that part at the beginning about patience? Yeah, that was all bullarkey. This crap pisses me off.

[1366]

Ferris pointed at the thin, shins-high wire strung between the wooden fence posts. “Pee on it,” he said.

I shook my head. He shrugged, and broke a leafy branch from a nearby Cottonwood. He poked it through the woven wire at the goats on the other side. They nibbled and pulled at the treat, and he inched it back in attempt to coax them closer to the electric wire.

“Neither me or those goats,” I said, “are stupid enough to let you get us electrocuted.” I pushed him, and he tipped back off his feet.

“I knew them goats weren’t,” he said, and picked himself up, “but I didn’t hold much favor in you.” He pulled the branch from the fence and tossed it on the ground as he walked away. I picked it up and heaved it to the goats; they bounced, hopped, and bleated their thanks. I followed Ferris to the picnic table where he’d sat next to my sister; the two of them spoke in low voices.

“…and that’s what I said, but he’s too scared—”

“It’s not fear,” I said, and interrupted him, “it’s the experience to know not to do something stupid twice.”

“I’m not scared,” Horrid said. “I’d do it.” Horrid, as in Buck-Toothed Horrid, is the name my older sister, Raymond Barf-Pickle, had given her.

I looked at Horrid and shook my head. “There is no way you are going to pee on that hot-wire,” I said.

“Uh-huh,” she said. She crossed her arms and furrowed her brow.

“Trust me Horrid, if you pee on that fence you’ll split in two.”

Ferris laughed, and Horrid hung her head.

“Listen,” I said, “You really want to see what it’s like? Hold the brave one’s hand, and have him pee on it.”

They scooted apart and Ferris rubbed his hands along his pants. “That’s disgusting,” he said. “We’re cousins.”

“I said hold your ‘hand’ stupid.”

I ran an arm across my forehead and flicked the sweat. Behind the picnic table was the snap-wall swimming pool my parents bought a year prior with inheritance money. “I’m hot,” I said. “You guys want to go swimming?”

Ferris pulled at the moisture in his pits. “Yeah it is. You want to hooky-bob the canal?”

Horrid shuddered. “There’s dead puppies in there,” she said.

“No, over there,” I said, and they turned and looked.

“Are you kidding?” Ferris said. He walked over and scooped out a handful of feathers, leaves, goose excrement, and dark-green algae. “I’d rather hooky-bob. At least the puppies won’t stick to my hair.”

“It’s not that bad,” I said. “It just needs a good cleaning because mom didn’t buy any turtle tablets last time. She figured she didn’t need to spend money on something we rarely use.”

The ‘turtle tablets’ were chlorine tablets to be used with a green piece of plastic molded in the shape of a turtle and supposed to keep the pool clean. The turtle held the chlorine tablet in its mesh womb and when dropped in the pool, the turtle acted as guardian against scum and bugs. Unfortunately, our turtle was a coward and the scum and bugs always won. The pool man convinced dad it was easy maintenance because he wouldn’t have to mix the pool chemicals himself, but after the first thirty days in the sun and the water still turned green, dad was sure the salesman was full of crap. On boring days, we’d shoot BBs at the turtle, or if out of brass ammo, we’d throw rocks.

“We could clean it now,” I said. “Dump it out. Refill it. It’s better than playing out front in the sprinklers and dirt.”

“Or swimming with dead puppies,” said Horrid. She looked at Ferris, and he faked a shiver.

“The fresh water will be cold,” he said.

“That’s better than hot,” I said. I stood. “I’m getting my shorts on.”

He shrugged, and flicked the handful of crap at me. “You’re seriously going to wade in that?”

“You’re right, we’ll need shoes,” I said, and walked to the pool.

“Why?” he said.

“BBs and rocks,” I said.

“Oh, right…wait, I never said I was getting in.”

“I know it’s gross,” I said, “but it’s easier to get in and dump the water out, than reach in from the outside.”

“Can’t we just pull the plug?”

“It doesn’t have one. You scoop out the water, then when it’s low enough, you push down the sides, and—whoosh!—drain it.” I made a wave motion with my hands, and peeked over the edge. “There’s not a lot of scum. We can skim it off and then bail the water. This’ll be easy-cheesy.” I looked at Horrid. “Run inside and grab that metal strainer from the kitchen.”

“Mom said she didn’t want to see us using that again,” she said.

“Then don’t tell her.”

†††††

We skimmed the top layer of scum from the pool. Horrid used the strainer, Ferris his hands, and I circled the pool and made sure they didn’t miss any.

Horrid laughed at two water bugs mating under the surface. “Look,” she said. “He’s getting a piggy-back ride and they have fart bubbles on their butts.”

“That’s for air,” I said. I took the strainer and flicked the beetles onto the grass. The beetles didn’t break during, or after their flight, and stayed mounted even as they bounced across the dusty, weed-pocked lawn.

“Them are two horny bugs,” Ferris said, and I nodded.

“They have horns?” Horrid said. She knelt and studied the bugs. “Where are their horns?”

“Forget it,” I said. I grabbed a bucket, and hopped into the pool. “Let’s hurry and get this…” I paused because Ferris was being a wuss. “Come on Ferris; grab the big bucket would you?”

He sighed and dropped the Mason jar, then grabbed a five-gallon aluminum milk bucket. “Why do you get the half-bucket?” he said. He tip-toed down the ladder into the sternum-deep water.

“You’re bigger,” I said.

Even after we’d skimmed the scum, Horrid was reluctant to enter the pool. She said the remaining beetles scared her, so Ferris and I rounded them up with the strainer and tossed them out. Once satisfied that the water was bug-free, Horrid sunk into the water with us. It topped her clavicles and splashed against her chin, which she kept tipped up to keep the water away from her mouth. Unfortunately, too much movement from either Ferris or me and the water splashed her lips anyway.

Because Ferris was bigger than I, according to my observations he was also less efficient. Where I was quick and agile, he was slow and clumsy, and for every bucket of water he tossed out, I tossed out three. He took notice of my speed, and, obviously impressed, commented on it.

“At least fill the half-bucket half-way,” he said. “For every full one of mine, you toss three nearly empty ones.”

“I prefer, slightly full,” I said. “Besides, I move quite fast with this marvel of ingenuity.” I scooped a Daddy Long-legs spider from the water, but dropped the strainer when the spider clung to my thumb like flotsam. I flicked my wrist and the spider impacted Horrid’s shoulder and stuck there like a spindly mole. Ferris’s eyes grew wide and I gave him the shush signal. He smiled and scooped a bucket of water-logged feathers over the side.

Ferris paused and stared at the fence. “Do you think your dad’ll be mad about all the water around his posts?”

I looked where he pointed; the water had eaten gulches and ravines around the posts. A particularly clever goat tapped one post with its hoof, rocking the post back and forth in its foundation. This was all bad news when your dad was a fence fanatic. Messing with dad’s prized fences was like pissing on Minos in Hell, while laughing about it from a cliff top in Purgatory; sooner or later he’s going to figure out it’s not rain.

“We’ll throw some fresh dirt around it when we’re done,” I said. “He won’t notice. Hey…what do you think would happen if we threw water on that electric fence from here?”

Ferris studied the wire. “Don’t know, but I’m willing to find out. Toss some water on it.”

“Why me?” I said. Horrid swam up and I moved lest the spider make the leap from her shoulder to my bony chest.

“It was your idea,” Ferris said.

“Yeah, it was my idea for you to do it.”

“I’m not doing it,” he said.

“Your ‘willing to find out,’ sounded like you were volunteering,” I said, and Horrid nodded. “See? She agrees. Toss the water.”

Ferris looked at the wire, then the water, then the wire, and then the water. “Ok, I think it’ll be fine,” he said. “It’s a good three feet from us and besides, I’ll be holding this plastic bucket. Electricity doesn’t go through plastic.”

“I didn’t know that,” I said.

“I know a lot of useful things because I read more than you. Such as, I know plastic conducts electricity…” He scooped a bucketful of water and leaned over the edge. “…and that means it blocks it. Should I throw it straight, or arc it up?”

“Arc it,” Horrid said, and clapped her hands.

Ferris pulled the bucket back. “Straight it is,” he said, and thrust the bucket from his mid-section. He pulled back as his arms reached full extension, and the water speared toward the wire. We watched in silence as it missiled over the dry, cracked earth, and completed a circuit with the hot-wire.

Horrid reacted first; partly due to her size and ability to conduct electricity through her tiny frame, and partly because she had reached up and touched the stream as it left the bucket. She jiggled and jolted. Her teeth snapped, and her hair greyed at the temples. The spider shot off her shoulder in a puff of smoke and it screamed as it skipped across the water in a contorted heap of legs.

Ferris gasped and crushed the bucket between his hands. He let loose a cry that frightened ducks from the nearby pond, and he quickly spelled out ‘b-o-l-o-g-n-a’ as he collapsed on the pool wall. Later he’d refuse to admit that he’d peed in the pool when his muscles contracted. “That’s the smell of algae when an electrical charge is passed through it in a liquid environment,” he’d said. “Uncanny, but it really does smell like urine.”

“I just thought it was strange how it smelled like poop once it dried,” I’d said.

“Oh yeah,” he’d said, “it does that too, but it’s rare.”

I was the last to react. Possibly because at a young age I was given the gift of prophecy, but also quite possibly, because I was halfway up the ladder and nearly out of the water once I realized that fool was going to electrocute us all.

I don’t know what it was about that ladder, but I became quite attached to it and I couldn’t release my grip from its metal handle for a good five minutes. I spit taste buds from my tongue and my teeth smoldered like charcoal briquettes, and oddly enough, the piss-scented algae seemed to have attached itself to my shorts as well. After I got some feeling in my legs, and my skin regained its color, I walked down the ladder towards Horrid who floated stomach up. I smacked my fist into her chest and restarted her heart, then I walked to Ferris and did the same to his back, but I struck him purely out of spite. Horrid climbed from the pool and shambled towards the house, dragging her left leg behind her. Saliva streamed from her mouth, and she choked out “mom” in black smoke rings that rose from her mouth and dissipated in her bangs.

Ferris stood up, and I said, “What happened?”

He looked at me, his jaw worked as if he chewed cud, and he spit feathers and algae. “Thunderstorm must of swept in real quick-like,” he said, and picked shards of bucket from the bleeding wounds in his palms. “Do you realize the odds of that hitting this pool?”

“What about the hot-wire?” I said.

“Right,” he said, and scratched his head. “When did we do that exactly?” He dipped his hands and ran the water through his hair, which immediately stood back up. “I lost track of time,” he said. “Which way is east?”

“Why?” I said.

“It’s dark. I can’t tell if it’s morning, or late afternoon. Maybe it’s those damn cataracts.”

“It’s afternoon,” mom said, “and if this is what’s left of my strainer, you’re two are in it deep.” She stood next to the pool, but neither of us had heard her approach, nor had we seen her pull the strainer from the house where the electricity had speared it into the siding minutes before.

“That’s not your strainer,” I said, and waved my hand like a Jedi.

“Wrong answer,” she replied. “Out of the pool, now.” She spat “now” as if it leaked acid, and her spittle burned when it impacted my eyes.

I tugged Ferris’ arm. “C’mon,” I said. “We have to get out.”

“Why?” he said. He looked around and then back at me. “Is it too early?”

“No it’s too late,” I said. “Way late. We’ve released the Kraken, and she’s pissed about her kitchen wares.”

[2246]