Mike\u2019s getting pretty good shots. The composition\u2019s solid, with the street spinning out into the distant desert. The sun\u2019s low enough that the shadows under the spider crab stretch out, weirdly beautiful. He listens to the chitinous clatter of its flight and hopes the crab makes it out of town. Mike doesn\u2019t know what a crab would do in the desert\u2014die, presumably\u2014but he doesn\u2019t know what a crab does in town, either. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gina bursts out of Pets, Pets, PETS!!! She closes the distance and the next moment she and the crab are on the ground, a tangle of limbs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The crab looks so delicate\u2014anything that spindly has to be delicate, right?\u2014but all its legs are flailing so it\u2019s probably okay. Gina wraps her arms around its body then stands. She feels like the eldritch goddess of the Central Valley, an eight-armed Kali in jeans and a T-shirt. Mike gets another shot, and then Gina turns and falls back into herself: Gina the pet-wrangler, a crab hugged against her chest. Just another day at the office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mike turns and just about trips over a goat. It stares up at him with those slit-pupil eyes and solemnly bleats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis one of yours?\u201d he asks Gina as he gets a couple shots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNope.\u201d She\u2019s trying to get the crab through the door. It\u2019s not cooperating. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The goat bleats again and butts him in the stomach, not quite knocking him on his ass. It trots past Gina and the half-in, half-out crab, heading out toward the desert the crab was unable to reach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mike\u2019s got a dark room set up in what was probably called a den by whatever real estate agent sold his parents the house. The tiny room became a big closet full of old Christmas decorations, outgrown clothes, and broken furniture and appliances, but back in high school he cleared it out and now it\u2019s his space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The crab photos, as suspected, look awesome. But he finds himself staring at the goat. The color\u2019s a bit off: the gray fur looks blueish, the white fur has a greenish undertone, and the eyes are paler than Mike remembers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He kind of forgot about goat eyes. The sideways-slit pupils are such a weird-ass thing\u2014like the absence of upper front teeth\u2014that his brain just kind of lets the knowledge go. Mike\u2019s relearned these disturbing nature facts a couple dozen times in his life. Goats are so weird.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He\u2019s got a good shot of the goat\u2019s ear tag. It looks old, the green plastic faded, but legible. There\u2019s an alphanumeric code and then a 408 phone number.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He\u2019s got nothing better to do than amble to the phone on the wall, its spiral cord a mess of tangles that anchor the caller to an arc three feet removed from the wall. The woman who answers rattles off a company name he doesn\u2019t catch, but \u201cbiotech\u201d is in there somewhere. \u201cI think I saw one of your goats out in Los Suelos,\u201d he says and, after a pause, keeps going. \u201cI got the number off the tag.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019m sorry, sir, but the company does not have any goats.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He feels his face heat up, worries she can feel it through the landline. \u201cOh, uh, sorry. Is there\u2014maybe this is a new number\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another pause, a talking-to-a-strange-man pause. Receptionists probably get a lot of weird calls. He wonders if she\u2019ll laugh about him with her work friends later, the guy who called like she\u2019s the goat police.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve had this phone number for some time. Would you like to leave your contact information?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mike knows a blow-off when he hears one but takes the opportunity to end the conversation in a dignified way. Then he retreats to the dark room, before his dad can come home and start talking about the cows he killed at the slaughterhouse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mike sees the goat again the next day. Or maybe a different goat. He\u2019s not a goat expert. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This time, the goat\u2019s roaming around a pasture. Eating grass, running with a calf, head-butting much larger cows. There\u2019s occasional mooing and Mike wonders if the cows are offended but then stops that particular train of thought. It\u2019s best not to listen too closely to the cows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
His dad says they thank him, right before the bolt between the eyes. His dad\u2019s not the only one who\u2019s heard it, which makes it better and worse. Better because, well, it\u2019s a point in favor of his dad not being completely bonkers. Worse because how fucked up is that? Not just that they\u2019re killed\u2014but that they want <\/em>to die. It\u2019s like a mass murder\/suicide, like Jonestown or Heaven\u2019s Gate, like what will probably happen at the old USGS facility. Except it\u2019s every day, in the slaughterhouse. A cow cult, and everybody just goes along with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Humans <\/em>do weird shit. Disappear into the hills, cough up more dirt than human lungs can hold. Ask their husband and son to collect it, measure it, see if it\u2019s from deep enough<\/em>, as though the type of dirt is the real problem. But cows<\/em>? Cows are supposed to be boring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Goats, on the other hand\u2026 maybe they\u2019re less boring. They eat anything, right? Even metal and other indigestible things. They trot down streets and break into pastures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mike watches the goat for a while longer and takes some more pictures. Its coat is definitely looking more greenish-blueish, and Mike\u2019s not sure that can be blamed on lighting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n At some point, the goat starts biting the cows\u2014the mooing definitely sounds offended now\u2014and then all of a sudden the goat is coming at him, faster than he can adjust his focus. It rears up and puts its cloven forehooves on the fencepost Mike\u2019s been using as a tripod.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He can\u2019t look away from those eyes. He stares so intensely the slit-pupils seem to disappear, becoming two orbs of pure pale color. It\u2019s like the goat\u2019s looking into him, windows-to-the-soul and all that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It bleats, pulling its lips back from long lower teeth. And its\u2026 top teeth? They\u2019re stubby, but present. Goats aren\u2019t supposed to have teeth there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And as quick as that, it\u2019s over. The goat\u2019s got all four feet on the ground again and it\u2019s trotting away, looking for more cows to harass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When Mike gets home, the answering machine is blinking at him. It squeals, but the plastic film doesn\u2019t melt or shred today, so he gets to hear an unfamiliar woman\u2019s voice: \u201cHello Mr. Herrera, I received your message about a goat. I\u2019m Elaine Tran, the corporate archivist. The company doesn\u2019t keep any goats now, but there used to be some in our old Irvine facility, which closed in 1984. I suspect they were used for hepatitis research, but unfortunately we don\u2019t have much documentation\u2014nothing at all, really, from the Irvine facility. It looks like the files never transferred to our main repository, so an embarrassing amount of what I know about it comes from a printout of a website one of the employees made in 1995. <\/p>\n\n\n\n “I googled it and goats only live eighteen years, so the Irvine ones would be dead by now. I\u2019m sorry I can\u2019t be more helpful about this mysterious goat of yours. But if you have any other questions, please call me back. My direct number is, uh\u2026\u201d He can hear her shuffling papers and then she rattles off ten digits that, evidently, nobody asks for or dials very often.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He pictures Elaine Tran sitting in an office in San Jose, with a computer and high-speed internet and a smart phone in her pocket, thrilled because roving goats and missing files count as big mysteries in her world. He\u2019s halfway tempted to send her photos so she can start a file called \u201cGoat Pictures\u201d or something, but it doesn\u2019t really seem like there\u2019s any point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n His dad comes in then. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAnything new at the office?\u201d Mike asks, like his mom used to. The routine calls for his dad to shake his head and pull a beer out of the fridge. He does that, but he also says: \u201cDamnedest thing. The cows didn\u2019t say thank you <\/em>today. Not one of them.\u201d He shakes his head again. \u201cDamnedest thing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Featured image by Maria Pogosyan.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Mike\u2019s getting pretty good shots. The composition\u2019s solid, with the street spinning out into the distant desert.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":2988,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[86],"class_list":["post-3172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories","tag-first"],"yoast_head":"\n
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