They Had Goat Heads

THE STORYTELLER

“Based on a True Story”

When he finished telling the story, he left my office.

He came back, told me the same story, and left again.

He came back again and told the story over, pausing to emphasize the importance of attention-grabbing introductions.

He left.

He came back a fourth time and told the story over, twice, back to back.

He left. He came back.

Halfway through the sixth elocution I said, “I think I’ve heard this story before.” He continued to the end as if there had been no interruption.

He did a clumsy pirouette and reiterated the story.

He left. He didn’t come back . . .

I looked at my computer. New email. He had sent me the story as .doc, .rtf, .pdf, and .wpd documents. He had also embedded it in the body of the email. “I hope you enjoy this story,” read the subject box. I deleted it. My phone rang. I answered it.

“I just sent you an email,” he said. “In case you didn’t receive it, I wanted to tell you something.” He told me the story.

He hung up and sprinted to my office . . .

“Hello?” I said into the phone. “Hello? Hello?”

“Hello,” he said, standing in my doorway, and told me the story . . .

I nodded.

I made understanding faces.

I smiled.

I made surprised faces.

I pushed out my lips.

I nodded again.

. . . He finished the story, turned to leave, came back and told the story, turned to leave, came back and told the story and told the story and told the story, turned to leave, and left.

I looked at my desk.

A hole formed in my office wall. A drill bit leapt through the hole. “Psst,” he said, then told me the story. Afterwards he slipped two small rolls of paper through the hole that, unfolded, revealed the story—one in shorthand, one in Sanskrit.

I put a square of duct tape over the hole. I turned off my computer. I closed and locked my office door.

There was a knock at the door.

I didn’t say anything.

There was another knock.

I said, “Nobody’s in here.”

He said, “But the sound of your voice indicates a source, i.e., voices don’t come from nowhere, or, in this case, nobody.”

I agreed with him.

“Open up,” he reminded me.

I unlocked and opened the door.

He told me the story. He was about to repeat the story when I said, “Yes, yes. It begins like this, then that happens, then it ends.”

Confused, he told me the story. I fell asleep during the climax. He woke me up and asked if I needed him to repeat the climax.

“I can tell you what happens in the climax,” I said, prompting him to repeat the climax. Then he backtracked and told the story from beginning to end. He shouted the words of the dénouement. I put in a pair of earplugs. He slapped me across the face and the earplugs flew out. I stood defiantly. He implored me to calm down and take a seat. He apologized.

He told me the story.

I told him my wife and daughter were expecting me at home.

He told me the story.

I told him I was hungry and had to go.

He told me the story. He told me the story.

I told him he had told me that very story, like, twenty-one times today, not including written accounts, and not to mention how many times he had told the story to me the day before, and the day before, and the day before . . .

He replied, “At the end of Time, in the anus of Entropy, when the universe burns out and all the stars turn into black holes, the only thing left will be my story.”

I told him I disagreed; other people told stories, too. I also wondered how his story might survive in the wake of human oblivion.

He said it was my right to disagree. He said it was human nature to wonder about things. Then he said, “Now listen to this.” And told the story. And told it again. And again, and again. Over and over. And over again . . .

Eventually he grew tired.

His neck gave and his head tipped to one side, to the other side.

His shoulders slouched.

His voice cracked and got raspy.

He fought the urge to fall to his knees.

On his knees, he fought the urge to fall to his stomach.

On his stomach, he whispered the story, with resolve at first, but his voice gradually petered out as his eyelids weakened, flickered, closed . . . He continued to mouth the story in silence for a few minutes before slipping into a deep, catatonic sleep, at which point the story may or may not have played out in his dreams, rerun after rerun, like a doorbell that goes on forever, like a curtain that perpetually rises and falls, daring the audience to set it on fire . . .

Before leaving, I called my wife and told her about my day. “He kept telling me this story,” I said. And in the calmest voice she could muster, she replied, “I know that story, darling. We’re waiting for you.”

FATHERS & SONS

“Dad’s dead,” said my father. “I better put him in the freezer.”

Grandpa lay on the kitchen floor, tightened into a fetal curl. He looked like a crumpled sheet of sandpaper. Dad picked him up and slung him over his shoulder and went downstairs.

I waited.

He came back later. “Dad’s in the freezer. I had to fold him up to get him in there. But he’s in there.”

I didn’t know what to say. “That’s good news,” I said.

He made himself a ham sandwich with American cheese. No condiments. I asked if he would make me a boloney sandwich. No cheese. He made me a peanut butter and banana sandwich. As he sliced the banana into long, precise rectangles, he explained how fruit had not always been as readily available at the supermarket as it was nowadays.

The sandwich tasted good.

“Oh.”

I stopped chewing. “Did you hear that?”

Dad shook his head. “No.”

“Somebody said ‘Oh’.”

“Ohh.”

“There it is again.”

“There’s what again?”

“That ‘Oh’ sound. It’s coming from the basement.”

“The basement,” Dad echoed, and clucked his tongue.

I put my sandwich down. My father finished his sandwich and poured a tall glass of milk. He drank it and wiped the milk mustache from his overlip with a shirtsleeve. He licked his overlip and wiped it again. Licked it again. He scrubbed it with a dishtowel. “It won’t come off!”

I squinted at him. “I don’t see anything.”

“Ohhh.”

“I better go check on that.” He put the towel down and put some Chap-Stick on and took a bite of my sandwich and said “Mmm” and went downstairs.

I waited. Much longer than last time. I looked at the clock and tried to figure out how long my father was gone. The hands of the clock taunted me, dared me. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t figure out what they meant.

He came back later, covered in dirt and sweat. His T-shirt was ripped in places. He hurried over to me and finished my sandwich in two great bites. “That tasted so nice,” he said.

“I’m glad you enjoyed it.”

“I’ll make you another one. I promise.”

“I believe you.”

“I’ve just been thinking about that peanut butter and banana sandwich for awhile, is all. Since I made it for you.”

“It’s not a problem.”

“I know.” He smiled for a long time. His neck looked stiff. I felt awkward. Then his head sort of slumped off-kilter and the smile became a slot.

“Your grandpa’s dead,” said the slot.

“What happened?”

“He’s dead. People die. It just takes time, sometimes.”

“Ok.”

He looked at the clock, then at me. “You need to learn to tell time.”

“I can tell time.”

“What time is it?”

I studied the clock. “3 a.m.,” I said in a casual, uncaring voice.

“Not quite,” said Dad. “It’s 12:30. In the p.m.”

“Hm.”

“It’s light out, for Chrissakes.” He pointed at the window.

I looked out the window. “I know.”

“You’re a big boy, goddamn it. Learn to tell the damn time.”

“Ok.”

“How old are you? You’re pretty old to not know how to tell time. You’re like in your thirties or something.”

“I’m not that old.”

“You’re old enough.”

“Ok.”

“Ok, ok. It’s settled.” He shrugged. He shrugged again, holding the shrug at its summit. He let his shoulders fall and shrugged once more. “By the way,” he said, “Dad got out of the freezer. He looked hurt. We wrestled around on the dirt floor. He told me I was a bad son. ‘Don’t ever tell your son he’s bad,’ I told him. He apologized and said he didn’t mean it. I said not to worry about it and we wrestled some more. Then I bashed his head in for awhile with a two-by-four until he stopped moving and squirming around. He lay there like the empty husk of a goddamned Junebug. I dug a hole with a garden hoe and nudged Dad into the hole with my foot and then I filled the hole back in. We need to get a gravestone. Write that down. They sell them at Wal-Mart for, like, really cheap. We also need to get the basement carpeted. Dirt floors are bullshit.”

I stared at the crumbs on my plate.

“Don’t be sore,” said my father. “He would’ve died eventually. I think he was dead. I think it was just a reflex or something.”

“Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.”

“Jesus Christ! What the f*ck is this? A f*ckin’ fairy tale?” Dad looked at me expectantly.

“What’s a fairy tale?” I said.

“Jesus.” He took off his T-shirt, looked down at his belly and studied it. Grey, bristled patches of hair marked the flabby mass. “Jesus I’m getting fat. Jesus H Christ.”

“Ohhh.”

I said, “I think Grandpa’s alive again.”

“I’ll be right back.” He poured two shots of tequila and we toasted to Good Times and slammed them. Then he went downstairs . . .

Five days might have passed. Maybe five hours. Or five minutes.

At some point I noticed Dad skulking through the kitchen. He had retrieved Grandpa and was carrying him in a Baby Björn. Grandpa’s thin, pale, liver-spotted limbs dangled lifelessly from the apparatus. He looked very clean, though: Dad must have washed him in the basement sink.

They went to the back yard. I went to the window and cranked it open. The fresh, summer air smelled good.

Dad took Grandpa out of the Björn and told him to go play. Grandpa didn’t respond; he lay on the grass as if poured there, eyes half open, ribcage slowly rising and falling. One moment Dad scolded him; the next he encouraged him. Then he put a leash on Grandpa and started dragging him around the yard. Now and then Grandpa tried to keep up, but he was too weak, and for the most part he could only let himself be dragged. His face and scalp turned purple.

One of the neighbors came over. I didn’t know his name. He wore red longjohns and construction boots. He had just killed a deer and wanted to show my father. He brought the carcass over in a wheelbarrow. He explained how he had “destroyed” the deer with his bare hands. He kept repeating the word “destroyed.” At first he and the deer merely wrestled in a playful manner, but things got dirty. The deer tried to run away but tripped over a fallen pine tree. The neighbor jumped on it and punched it in the head until it died. “Luckily it was a doe and there weren’t no antlers on it,” he said. “Otherwise I mighta cut my fists when I destroyed that crazy f*cker.”

Dad said it was a nice-looking deer, despite its mauled, almost unrecognizable head. The neighbor thanked him.

Grandpa gasped for air. He convulsed for lack of oxygen.

The neighbor wheeled the carcass back into his yard and began to skin it with a hunting knife. One strip of deerhide after another he tossed over his shoulders. The musculature of the deer was bright red. Fluorescent. It looked fake.

Dad pulled Grandpa around the yard a few more times, falling into a soft trot. Then he came back inside and lay Grandpa on the kitchen counter. His neck was inflamed, bruised and bleeding. I checked his pulse. He was alive. We stared down at him.

“I’m thirsty,” said Grandpa.

Dad made a frog face. “Thirst is part of life. People get thirsty. That’s life.”

“Respect your elders,” said Grandpa.

“Fear your offspring,” said my father, eyeballing me.

I offered Grandpa a shot of Tequila. He wanted water. I got him a glass of soda and carefully poured it into the gash of his mouth as if filling up a lawn mower with gasoline. He choked on the soda but managed to get some of it down. “That wasn’t water,” he remarked, then rolled onto his side and tightened into a fetal curl.