John Barth - Giles Goat-Boy

In our play-yard were a number of barrels and boards that we used for Dean of the Hill. To entertain my admirers I would set two planks against opposite sides of a barrel-top; Redfearn's Tommy, my special friend, would scramble up from one side and I from the other, and we'd wrestle for possession of the summit. One weekend morning, encouraged by applause, I raised the Hill to a height of two barrels, and thence to two barrels and a box, which I climbed with great difficulty from the side. The plankway was too steep then for the others; they could only adore me from below as I teetered on my perch; presently they feigned indifference, butted one another on the ground as if they didn't hear my crowing, or the crowd's approval. But I knew their hearts were filled with envy. Redfearn's Tom, especially, craved to join me: "Come, Tom!" I called, and he would pick his way up the steep board until he lost his footing. The humans took up my taunt: "Come, Tom! Come, Tom!" My poor brown buddy hurled himself up the barrel-side, fell back in the mud, hurled himself again. I mocked his bleating; he redoubled his efforts; my tower shook. "Come, Tom!" I cried. And I found myself making the peculiar roaring noise I'd heard humans make: "Ha ha ha! Come, Tommy! Ha ha ha!" The word laughter was not yet in my vocabulary; I'd often mimicked its sound, but now I understood its cause and use. Inspired, I made water upon my friend. "Ha ha ha!" we all laughed as he sprang away.

I heard Max call from the barn-door: "Na, you Bill." His voice was stern; "Come down off," he ordered, and I conceived a queer new notion: he was jealous. The onlookers hooted: though I had not heard that sound before, I grasped its import at once and found it no chore to echo. What's more, it suggested my last and grandest stunt: rising up on my knees I cupped hands to mouth and did a perfect imitation of Max's shophar.

"Verboten!" he shouted, clutching at his beard, shaking his crook at me.

It was the peril-word. At once every goat round about raised head from browsing; years of training made me feel seized by that word as by a hand; my senses rang. But where was the danger? The humans were with me; they recommenced their laughter, and so again and again I sent the buck-horn's call across the fields.

"Te- roo -ah! Te- roooo -ah!"

Alarm and summons together drove the goats wild: they leaped and cried and crashed against their fences. The does all called for their kids, the kids for their dams — I heard Mary bleat for me from her stall. The big bucks stamped in their pens and plunged about; Redfearn's Tom tore between Max and the barrels. There stood our keeper shouting, "Verboten!" but the summons came from Billy Bocksfuss, Dean of the Hill!

My next "Te- roo -ah!" resolved Tom's doubts: I that had been his playmate was now his keeper and must be obeyed. As before he threw himself up against the barrels, frantic to reach me, and now the others followed his example. Hadn't I gulled them, "Ha ha ha." And then my tower came a-topple.

I had built it near the fence, which, when the Hill fell, I tumbled over, to the feet of my audience. No bones broke, but the wind was knocked out of me, and I was terrified to have fallen, as I thought, into the people's pen. They sprang back; their women shrieked — no fiercelier than I, when I had got my breath. It is a mercy I didn't know then what I learned by and by, that men have sated their bloody hunger with jambon de chèvre and billygoat-tawny. Even so I guessed they'd set upon me, as would our bucks on any of them who fell within reach. I scrambled up, my only thought to escape back into the play-pound; but trousered legs were all around me, and still rattled by my fall I sprang the wrong way. More shouts went up; I was struck a cruel one athwart the muzzle with a stick. I stumbled into the fence, but my eyes had watered, I couldn't see to climb. Max hopped about the pound, crying at them to stop; I bleated my pain to him and scrabbled up and down in search of the gate. The pens were in an uproar. "Ha ha ha!" the people snarled, and kicked me with their leathern hooves.

Hours later, when Max had calmed the herd at last and laid cold pads on my contusions, he did his best to explain that my attackers had been frightened as I, and had struck me thinking I meant to harm them. This I could understand readily enough. What stung more sharp than bruises was a thing he found less easy to make clear in our simple tongue: Why had they cheered my stunt and then ha-ha 'd all the while they kicked me? To attack — that was perfectly normal for bucks of any species, however unequal the contest. But what manner of beast was it that laughed at his victim's plight?

Even as I strove to find words for this question I felt a nudging at my back; Redfearn's Tommy had overcome his fright enough to cross the kid-pen and snuggle down beside me in Max's lap, which we often shared. He still smelt of my urine, and when I made to pick his lice by way of reparation, he bounded off a-trembling.

"So," Max said, and was kind enough to say no more.

This sweet forbearance — which had also spared me any punishment for my misdeeds — I myself was not graced with. The more I reflected on my ill use of Redfearn's Tom, the wrathfuller I grew at my own tormentors. Indeed, I tasted for the first time hatred, and turning its dark flavor on my tongue, lost my first night's sleep. Tom by next morning bore no grudge, he was ready to play again; but when the iron cycles drove up to our pound and the afternoon's humans were discharged to admire me — their numbers increased by news of the past day's sport — I attacked the fence viciously, and was pleased to see them scatter. That became my custom: I would wait in my stall until the visitors gathered, charge at them once, and then withdraw to brood away the balance of the day. When their first alarm passed they begged and taunted me to have at them again — "Here, Billy!" "Come, Bill!" — and made ready sticks to poke me through the mesh. But the first charge they were always unprepared for: to a man they sprang back; the females squealed, the males made oaths. I never gave them the pleasure of a second.

"That's not nice," Max suggested. But he didn't say verboten, as once he would have, and I noticed he was usually somewhere about to see the brutes jump.

This new sport — say rather diversion, since I had lost all taste for play — preoccupied me until one evening in March, just short of a fortnight after my fall. I had had no victims all that day; it was a Friday, and Max had long since told me how surpassing dull humans were, that spend five days a week learning things to make them miserable. Then after supper, as Redfearn's Tom and I enjoyed a fresh salt-lick, I heard a clinking rattle in the road, which I knew to be the sound of a bicycle . Together we peered out into the pound: a plump, brown-coated human lady had dismounted from her thing in the dusking light and approached our fence. By the look of her she was no doeling — though truly, all humans but Max looked much alike to me. Her hair was cream-white like a Saanen's and seemed decently brushed; she wore jeweled eyeglasses pointed at the corners; her legs were bare from hock to hoof… how did one describe a creature that changed its coat every day? She came to the fence and looked about the pound, where three or four kids were sleeping off their meal. They were polite enough, when she called something meaningless to them, to wander over and sniff the dead weeds she stuck through the wire. But of course it was not they she came to taunt; she pretended interest in them for half a minute and then yoohooed at the barn. Her voice seemed timid; I guessed she feared Max might hear and prevent her from molesting me.