rats and they were trying to protect their young. You can understand that, can’t you? the owner said and I said that I could. When I saw the goat I was disappointed. I was hoping she’d be big and helping deliver her baby wouldn’t be too difficult. I was hoping this delivery wouldn’t turn out like the last one, but the goat was very small. The owner said, I hadn’t planned on breeding her, because she was so small, but one day the farmhand let the male goat out with the nannies by mistake. I put my hand inside the goat. I could feel how the legs were presented first. I pushed one leg back to turn the goat around, headfirst. I explained to the owner while I was doing it how my children wanted a pet rat, but that my wife was against it. Jen thought that rats smelled. It was not so easy. There was not much room inside the goat. At one point I felt something hard, and realized I was feeling the baby goat’s teeth and then I was able to pull the baby goat’s head down, where it ought to be. This delivery would not be like the last one. The mother goat was able to push on her own now. I would not need my.38 today.
RESULT: The baby goat was born and the afterbirth delivered and I washed my hands with cold water from a hose while the mother goat licked her baby. The owner, on the way out as we walked through the barn, tried to give me a rat as payment. She picked up a cage and tried to make my hand hold the metal handle on the top of the cage. Oh no, I said. My wife would kill me.
THOUGHTS ON DRIVE HOME: They shouldn’t have lowered the gasoline prices. They should have kept them the way they were, and all the extra money could have been put toward a slush fund for the development of alternative energy sources.
WHAT THE CHILDREN SAID WHEN I GOT HOME: Poppy’s home! They ran to me. Sarah jumped on my back. Sam gave me a hug. Mia grabbed on to my leg.
WHAT I SAID TO THE CHILDREN: I almost got you a pet rat, but I knew your mother wouldn’t have liked it.
WHAT THE WIFE SAID: Rats stink.
WHAT THE CHILDREN SAID: A pet rat! We want a pet rat! Can we have a pet rat please?
WHAT I SAID: If you keep a rat’s cage clean, then it won’t stink.
WHAT THE WIFE SAID: Yeah, well, we have a rabbit and nobody’s cleaned the cage in days, and the rabbit cage stinks, so why do you think these kids are going to remember to clean a rat’s cage? No, I would end up having to clean the rat’s cage, Jen said. Maybe going to space would not be such a bad idea after all, she said. There I would not have to clean the rat’s cage. I would not have to carry wood. I would not have to cook the meals, pick up the dirty socks, the wet towels…
WHAT WE DID: We attacked the wife. We all ran up to her and hugged her. I kissed her where I could, she was shaking her head so much, not wanting to be kissed. I felt generous. I wanted to give her whatever I could, the way I gave my kidney away. I felt I had evolved, and up to the task of unquestionably helping fellow mankind. A lung. Could I give her a lung? Could she breathe deeply then, relax, love being touched? Sarah tickled her sides. Mia kissed her on the belly. The wife began to laugh. Leave me alone, Jen yelled, laughing. Oh, going off to space without us, we said. No way, we said. We’re going, too. We half picked her up and half pushed her out the door. We stood in bright sunshine right outside the door, slipping on the melting ice dirty and matted with New-foundland hair from where the dogs sometimes sat and kept watch, looking down our driveway and out over our field to the pond. We managed to get Jen over to the field beneath the apple tree, where there was still a patch of snow. We threw her onto it. We landed on her. The dogs joined in, barking and grabbing at our sleeves with their tails wagging, wondering if they should stop what was happening or let it continue because it was fun. The snow wasn’t so soft, but more like gritty crystals that stayed in Jen’s hair as she lay, still laughing, on the snow. Sunlight came through the branches of the apple tree and the children, breathless, lay back on the snow beside Jen and let the sun hit their faces. I lay back too and we all closed our eyes. What I heard was the sound of Bruce and Nelly panting as they lay next to us, and farther away I heard the sound of a car driving on the slick muddied road, its tires sending up the top layer of brown water and making a splashing sound.
We were quiet for the longest time. Even though the windows were closed I could hear the cluster flies in the house buzzing in the corners of the window frames. They were active and happy with all the solar heat circulating in our rooms that faced south. I let my thoughts wander. I thought about gravity again-how it wasn’t really a force and how its effect was caused by the curvature of space-objects inside of space spun in the same way a marble would spin inside the curved sides of a bowl, always going down. I thought about Einstein, how only twelve people were left alive who understood his theory of relativity, and I thought how I would devote the rest of my life to understanding it, just so there would be thirteen. I felt grandiose. It would be my debt to society to understand it fully. Jen and the children might someday come to understand why I would do it. Why I would give up on the calls, why I would give up on the substitute teaching, why I… and then Bruce licked my face. It was horrible. His breath stank. His tongue was huge and slobbering. He then moved to my ears, using his front teeth very gently to nibble and clean out whatever wax embedded in my conch-like swirling cartilage he could find. Besides being horrible, it tickled. I laughed then, too. I could not help myself. I tried to push Bruce away, but the more I did, the more he pressed his 150 pounds into me, intent on my ear. When I caught my breath, I said, Damn you Bruce, get away!
WHAT DRIVES UP THE DRIVEWAY WHEN I AM AT HOME ALONE WITH SAM: A loud pickup truck.
WHAT COMES OUT OF THE TRUCK: A man.
WHAT I SHOULD DO: Go outside and greet the man, but I already know what the man wants. I already know who the man is the way his eyes are cast down, the way his wife remains in the truck, staring straight ahead. I already know who he is by the way he knocks quietly on the glass of our front door. This is the man who shot my son.
WHAT I DO: I open the door and the man tells me who he is. I am Jason Lane. This is my wife, Carol, in the truck, he says, and he motions toward his truck. I know who she is. I have seen her before in the post office. She has retrieved her mail from a box that is right next to mine. We are postbox neighbors.
Jason Lane has a mustache whose top hairs are lighter than the rest, probably bleached by the sun. He is a man who has spent most of his days outdoors. Jason Lane shakes his head. Even in coming here it’s like I’m doing it for myself, doing it because I can’t stand the guilt, he says. He smells like chain saw oil. I haven’t hunted since then, he says. I won’t hunt again. It’s not enough for you, is it? It would not be enough for me if I were the father of your boy.
WHAT I THINK IS FUNNY: That for so long I wanted an apology from this man and now I don’t want to hear him say anything more. His wife in the car, Carol, looks out over where our garden grows in warmer weather. Jason Lane nods his head. It sure would not be enough, he says, and then he says, Call the police now. His eyes are bloodshot and blue, the kind of blue that either goes right through you or the kind you think they are so clear blue there is nothing behind them, no intelligence in the man. Or I’ll call them, or she will, he says, nodding his head toward his wife. So where is the phone? he says and he makes his way past me into the house. Bruce and Nelly are on him in a second, wagging their tails, getting in his way, slobbering on his coat front because to them everyone who walks through our door is a friend. Then Sam comes downstairs. Sam is tall for his age and is strong from all the swimming he has been doing. His shoulders are wide, and he does not look like he has spent time in a hospital bed cocooned in a pale blue blanket with legs that were once as skinny as arms.
This is Jason Lane. This is the man who shot you, I say to Sam. Sam holds out his hand. I’m Sam, pleased to meet you, he says, and I know how Sam has a strong handshake, I have felt him practicing it on me before and I have felt the bones in my hand grinding against one another when he does it.
Jason Lane shakes his head. This is all wrong. This isn’t the way I planned. If you’d just give me the phone, I could get this over with the way it should be gotten over with. I could turn myself in, he says.
How did it happen? Sam says, excited by a hunting story. Did you hear the grouse first, did you lead your gun just by hearing where it was he flew up from and then there I was sitting in my camo in the tree stand?
Yes, that’s how it was. I lead the grouse right after I hear them, they are so loud when they beat their wings. I’ve been hunting all my life. I know just the right amount of distance to aim in front of them, he says.
Then Carol, his wife, is at the door. I open it for her but she does not look at me. She looks at her husband. Did you do it? she says to him.
Yes, he’s made the call, I say to her. Go on home now, I say to Jason Lane.
Go on back to the car, he says to his wife and she leaves.
Jason Lane turns to me. There is more he wants to say to me, but I don’t want to hear it. The day is warming
