Andy Stallings

Behind Brandon Ray’s house were woods
we occupied, afternoons. A circuit of trails
we’d scratched through underbrush
spread downhill to a sheer dirt bluff
giving over a gully. Down in the gully,
bogs. One day beside the bluff we discovered a rope
hung from the low branch of a hemlock.
The rope was muscular,
several inches thick, the sort used
to hitch a tug to a logging barge.
No one wanted to be the one to try, but it was clear
the rope was meant to swing out past the bluff
and over the bogs.
                                  Michael Leck was the one
who mentioned the goats. There were dozens of goats
loose in the woods in those days – turned out
to graze the hills one afternoon and not
thought of again. We fetched a yellow sledding saucer
and three lengths of jumping rope, then lassoed
one old goat, which we tugged behind us back
to the hemlock tree.
                                      It was a billy, gnarled,
with little stubs of horns. Shag hair hung
like lemon pulp from his belly. He didn’t give
much of a damn what we intended.
When we pelted him with pinecones,
he didn’t give a bleat or a sidelong glance.
With jumping rope, we hitched the sled so it slung
from the ship-strength swinging rope. With another rope,
we trussed the billy’s hind legs up, and nudged him,
half-seated, to the center of the sled. I helped Brandon
pull the billy back until the rope held taut.
Michael soaked the shag with kerosene
and struck a match. We let go.
                                                      When the saucer
tipped, the goat shot out from the bluff. For a moment,
it was beautiful: a missile, orange and white,
soaring, bleating, over the gray-brown bog below.
Then the billy scraped through brush and hit with a thud.
The fire smoldered a moment and went out, though
the goat gave off smoke for a while, like a campfire
doused. We swore an oath of secrecy at once.
Single-file and silent, we walked up the hill.

Posted 02/01/10