Short Story - Thor's Goats

(Shortlisted in the inaugural 2023 Ernestine Hill Memorial Short Story Competition)

The spring wind has character. Weaned from its winter bosom, it sweeps down from the Snowy Mountains northwards across the granite hills. As it tears over paddocks, any moisture in the turf, after the driest autumn in living memory, gets blown out or frozen. Roman-nosed sheep huddle in cloudy flocks. Heedless of the tempest, they nibble tufts between the stones and occasionally wonder in their woolly minds what all the fuss is about.

In the wind’s path lies a farmhouse with an identity crisis created by generations of home builders. The outside laundry has sunk half a foot into the knotty rise, like a cow pat returning to the earth. Every chimney is a mess of different bricks. In the farmhouse kitchen, a mother cooks at an enamel stove. Close by, as it’s a small kitchen, her husband leans on a table recently painted to cover up the woodlice holes. His face a picture of concentration on last week’s newspaper crossword salvaged that morning when the fire was being made.

‘Are you stuck?’ Mum asks, as she stirs the foamy porridge. Dad makes to write a word while counting with his fingers.

‘Why don’t you give me a clue,’ says Mum.

‘Alright. Six letters.’ Dad licks the stub of his pencil. ‘Northern wind spirit, starts with the letter—’

‘—boreas.’

Dad says something inaudible and begins erasing his first two answers as our breakfast is brought to the table. From a blue and white bowl cloaked with a bucolic Dutch scene and stamped made in China, I spoon a heavy coating of brown sugar over the surface of my porridge until the oats vanish. As I consider the lava beneath the benign toffee like crust, the half-read book on my bedside table enters my mind. Now’s a good time to finish it before I’ll be game to start breakfast. Across the table, Dad digs into his with abandon. His mouth’s asbestos lining explains why his beard is red, yet his crown remains black.

Heedless of the bubbling food approaching his mouth, he says as the spoon goes in, ‘I’ll fix that woolshed gutter today. It’s a shame we missed that last lot of rain.’

Dad freezes long enough to suck air through his full mouth.

‘What little… there…was of it.’

‘Terry said that nanny goat is ready to collect,’ says Mum, in that matter-of-fact way to remind Dad of an ignored topic. I know it well. I just can’t ever remember the reasons she’s used it on me.

Dad’s not good at signs, though. HMAS Dad turns his bow into the approaching gale. Well, at least half into the storm because he won’t look up from his crossword.

‘Before I get to the gutter, I’ll have to fix the ladder. The bottom rung’s ready to break any moment.’

Mum’s now staring at him. ‘Terry said she’s pregnant. That’ll mean we’ll have goat’s milk.’

I’m close enough to read the made-up word Dad’s scribbling into three across.

‘Not sure I have the right timber,’ he mutters. ‘Might have to drive into town.’

‘Terry said you can collect her today.’

‘I’ve never tried goat’s milk,’ I hear myself say.

Dad gives me the side eye just as a log rolls out of the fire in a shower of sparks. It narrowly misses the sleeping dogs, one of which is a poddy lamb, although you couldn’t convince him otherwise. Orphaned the night of his birth he’s spent the first fortnight of his life in the company of our sheepdogs, Jack, and Daniel. As far as he’s concerned, he’s just a dog that loves milk.

Singed hair adds to the closed atmosphere of the kitchen. Without thinking, I dig into my breakfast and instantly remove the lining of my mouth.

‘You agreed to a goat for my birthday,’ says Mum, with the edge of a skinning knife.

‘We know nothing about keeping goats!’ Dad pleads.

‘And before we came here, we knew nothing about sheep, either. We’ve survived.’

Dad makes to look as though he’s about to solve a word. ‘I suppose I can tie it to the back of the truck. No need to get Terry to run her over in his cattle truck.’

Mum sniffs. ‘She might not like that.’

Dad spends the next hour straightening nails he’s recovered from rotten fence posts. If possible, everything is reused on our farm. The nails under his attention were made in the last century and have been recycled to the point of becoming needles. Finally straightened they’re duly driven into an equally ancient piece of pine I found in the dump behind the chook yard. By the time dad has finished repairing the ladder there’s more metal than timber and his left thumb sports a band-aid. I was there at the birth of a profanity when a nail, struck with unusual accuracy, split the wood, ricocheted off its mates, and ended its journey deep underneath his fingernail. This newborn expletive got stored with the others I’ve picked up from Mum over the years, most of which having been muttered moments before a tiger snake received a kiss from her shotgun.

As is usually the case, Mum’s right. Terry’s nanny goat doesn’t like the idea of our truck, and she’s dead against being manacled to it. She’s a huge French Saanen; four feet high at the shoulder, ghost white with saffron eyes, and has a belly the size of the chook shed water barrel. Her chiselled hooves splinter the makeshift ramp as the three of us push from behind until eventually Terry springs up and yanks her by the horns. Four quick twists with a rope and she’s secure enough for him to let go. In defiance, an upraised tail feeds a stream of pellets onto the tray of our truck.

‘What do I owe you?’ says Dad, as he catches his breath.

‘Don’t worry ‘bout it now, Gary. You’d better head off. That’s not the best piece of rope.’

‘I can’t just take her, Terry.’

An expression crosses Terry O’Mara’s face I’ve never seen before. He thrusts a hand in Dad’s direction, and beams, ‘Din’t you say this old girl’s for Jane’s birthday? Consider ‘er a present from the O’Mara family!’

Above us the nanny goat stomps and tests the rope, which appears to be Terry’s signal to board his ute, where his son and heir fills the cabin behind the wheel. A thick freckled lad, two years my senior and scholastically six years my junior, sporting ears like the cover of a Mad comic. Within a year of leaving school, Justin O’Mara will be arrested for cattle rustling.

Before Dad could say thanks, they were off.

The drive home from Terry’s takes fifteen minutes. Only a brief trip along heavily corrugated roads, yet by the time we get to our sheep yards ramp, the nanny’s eyes are bloodshot, and a new vein has appeared across her forehead. Mum is instantly smitten. As she places her hands on the goat’s swollen flank the animal calms, perhaps drawn by a connection between mothers. Dad gets up to undo the rope which breaks the maternal spell and nearly costs him an eye from a horn. Sensing the rising anxiety, Mum suggests we head over to Dorothy’s and see whether she has any nail shears because between the nanny’s horns and her hooves someone was going to get injured.

Unlike Terry, Dorothy is a true neighbour in the sense that we share a boundary fence. Not that you could tell as a fair portion of her flock spend their days eating our grass rather than hers, thanks to handily broken fences. Dad parks the truck under a healthy gum tree sporting hanging hooks used to hold carcasses for skinning and gutting. I plan to stay in the vehicle until he waves at me to follow him. Together, we head towards an oily shed with a geriatric grey tractor outside. As we approach, I spy legs from beneath the engine and figure Dorothy’s old-jobs man, Vic Tremble, is labouring to bring the Massey into its sixtieth year of service. For want of a better target, Dad addresses the motionless legs.

‘Is that you, Vic?’

There’s no response. In the distance, chickens cluck in a garden. Dad taps his boot against a shoe. He turns to me. I shrug, step forward, and kick the sole.

‘Whut’s zat!’

‘Morning, Vic!’

Vic worms his way out from under the machine. He’s devoid of grease or any sign of work on his person. As he blinks up at us, I ponder, which is the older. The man or the tractor.

‘Oh! ’allo Gary. G’day, Will,’ says Vic, who has a good-natured heart.

‘Is Dorothy about, Vic?’ Dad asks.

On cue, Mrs Dorothy Fitzpatrick appears at a steel gate. Contrary to her shape, the current owner of nine hundred acres of thistled hills covers the gap across the yard in a flash. Her land has been in the Fitzpatrick family for generations. Like her ancestors, Dorothy is a staunch catholic and amateur thief. Dorothy has produced seven children and didn’t appear to be stopping until one day her husband Eric failed to return from a town trip. The story was he’d joined a carnival and was spotted selling tickets outside a circus tent in Canberra. While a fitting career for anyone with a drop of Fitzpatrick blood in their veins, a more likely account, eagerly spread by our Anglican priest and advocate of birth control, was that Eric Fitzpatrick now languished in Goulburn’s high security gaol for attempted uxoricide. The priest’s version was no stretch of the imagination as the likelihood of Eric wanting to kill his wife was high, with the chance of him succeeding, vanishingly low. Born a scion of the convict Sykes family, Dorothy was to the core a daughter of the clan and unlikely to die at another’s hands. Liver failure was more probable.

Mrs Fitzpatrick stands before us breathing heavily from a short fat round body packed into a cardigan, every button of which is under considerable pressure from the contents. Taking full advantage of her four feet six inches, she squints menacingly at us, even though dad and I are six feet apart, on account of her wonky right eye being on my side.

‘Wha’ d’you want?’

‘Would you happen to have nail shears I may borrow, please Dorothy?’ Dad oozes like an overfull grease nipple.

My dad is a staunch believer that good grammar and an authoritative tone works wonders on simple people. Which is true when applied to anyone but the Irish and their descendants.

‘Bugger ‘orf!’

‘Don’t be like that, Dorothy. I’ve got a goat for Jane’s birthday. She needs her nails clipped before I’ll try milking her.’ He now turns the oil tap fully open. ‘I was hoping you might help, being so experienced in such matters.’

The Fitzpatrick eyes gleam. She comes close and looks up at him.

‘You ever milk a goat, Gazza?’

Dad straightens. ‘I can’t say I have. But I imagine it’s not too difficult.’

Dorothy curls her fingers into suggestive fleshy tubes. ‘Ya don’t just yank! You gotta squeeze along the teat, nice and firm like.’ She moves her hands as though climbing an invisible ladder.

‘Increase the pressure until you get to the end…then it comes out in a rush! That’s how ya milk ‘em.’

She pushes towards him what may have been her chest. It’s impossible to tell where her bosom ends, and the rest of Dorothy begins. A row of gappy teeth appear wrapped in a leer.

‘Caress ‘em, now. Nice ‘n slow.’

Dad takes a step back. ‘I’m sure Jane will get the hang of it in no time.’

I try to remember ever seeing anything on the Fitzpatrick property able to be milked. Only dehydrated cows many seasons past their prime, come to mind.

Dad ploughs on. ‘Do you have shears I can borrow?’

The excited Fitzpatrick deflates a little. ‘Yeah. I got shears you can ‘ave.’ She points a filthy finger at the bridge of Dad’s nose. ‘You make sure they come back sharp!’

Heading home, I wonder how Dad plans to return the shears sharpened. He’s good at a great many things, although maintaining an edge isn’t one of them. Tins filled with blunt butchering knives wait patiently in the shed for a cutler to emerge and resurrect them. Maybe he will not bother. A few acres of stolen grass seem like fair compensation for a pair of blunt shears.

A week later, Mum’s goat gave birth to twin does. One was all white, like their mother, and the other patchy. Mum gives her a week until she tries milking. Her reason being the nanny will be easier to handle while her babies are still around. I’m not sure where that idea came from. Maybe one of those books about goat husbandry she’d borrowed from the town library. Published back in the late ‘50s a warning sign should have been the single return date stamp on the inside cover.

When milking day comes, Mum snaps a branch from a lucerne tree and calls her darlings from across the paddock. With unbridled love, the goat and kids follow Mum into the yards, while I close the gate making sure I remain on the outside. She takes a little coaxing, but the goat eventually enters the narrow sheep race, where two planks are quickly slotted behind her. While keeping her eyes on Mum and mind on her soothing voice, dad puts an ice cream container beneath the heaving udder and squats into place. He takes hold and squeezes. There’s an almighty bleat, and a hoof smashes into his shoulder.

‘Be careful!’ Mum cries.

‘What do you think I’m doing!’ growls Dad. ‘It’s a sod, I couldn’t get those hooves cut first.’ He rubs the bruise for a moment, then squats to take hold again. The instant a finger touches a teat, the same leg kicks him to the ground.

‘Stop upsetting her!’

‘I’m not flipping trying to!’

‘Terry said she’s been milked before. You’re just not doing it properly. Maybe tie that leg closest to you against the panel.’ Mum scratches the top of the goat’s head and returns to making cooing noises.

‘Bloody good idea,’ Dad mumbles, as he heads to the shed. A moment later, he returns with the rope we use to pull down trees.

‘There wasn’t anything thinner?’

‘It’s all I could find,’ Dad lies.

After a couple of attempts to get her leg through the loop, Dad finally secures her against the sheep race. A growl rises from the depths of the goat’s stomach.

‘I didn’t know goats could growl,’ I say, from my sanctuary outside the yards.

Dad waits for the goat to settle, then against his will an image of Dorothy’s hands enters his mind. He shuts his eyes, and a stream of milk hits the container. And another. Then three long white streams. Beads of sweat begin to show on his brow. He keeps going. Perhaps smelling the milk, the kids start bleating from their yard.

‘The darling’s getting the hang of it,’ Mum whispers.

‘So am I,’ says Dad, as a puddle takes shape in the makeshift bucket. ‘How long do I keep going?’

‘Keep it up until she wants it stopped,’ says Mum.

Which turns out to be now. First, the nanny pulls her leg out of the knot, which is a ball the size of dad’s fists, then she slams it into the tray so hard it splits in half. Conveniently, Dad happens to be at horn level, which makes the next part of head-butting him easy.

With bulging eyes and foaming mouth, the goat breaks the timber race, crosses the yard in two strides, and effortlessly clears the palings between her and her babies. As I watch on, my ears lock away the stream of brand-new expletives Dad’s screaming. Judging by their sound, I’d say most have their roots in anatomy.

Sadly, just as it was becoming fun, the milking day appears to be over. By the time Dad can stand upright, Mum has released the goats into the paddock and is collecting the ice cream container. I keep a safe distance behind the old man as he staggers down to the house, clutching his forehead.

Back on that fateful milking, Dad and the goat reached an understanding. What I think is called an impasse, but I don’t get to learn many foreign words at school. If the goat is at a gate we’re about to drive through, under the terms of the amnesty, Dad refuses to get out of the truck. Even if I’m the one driving. Most times when I open the gate, the nanny walks right up and lets me scratch the spot between her horns. I can’t tell which she enjoys more, the scratching, or the greasy stare she gives Dad.

Speaking of horns, Mum thought a buck might take the edge off her. I’ve no idea where that idea came from. Probably another one of those books from the library written by people who’ve never owned a real goat. The same twits who claim goats will eat blackberry bushes. Which they won’t, even if the alternative is rocks. Trust me, we tried. The only buck we could get our hands on was ancient and stank of wee and that other stuff from his pizzle. Both of which he regularly rolled in. After a fortnight of lustful approaches, Dad suspected he finally got lucky because the next day he was dead. I’m waiting for his carcass to stop rotting so I can collect his enormous corkscrew horns. They’ll look good on the bookcase in my room.

And in case you’re wondering, Dorothy never got her shears back.