We moved in, and stayed.
There was case after case of canned goods in the cellar. There was a drum of coal oil for the lamps and the two stoves. There was a water well with an inside pump at the sink. There wasn't any electricity or telephone or radio or anything like that; we were shut off from everything, as though we were in another world. But we had everything else, and ourselves. So we stayed.
The days drifted by, and I wondered what she was waiting for. And there was nothing to do… except what could be done with ourselves. And I seemed to be shrinking more and more, getting weaker and littler while she got stronger and bigger. And I began to think maybe she was going to do it that way.
Some nights, afterwards, when I wasn't too weak and sick to do it, I'd stand at the window, staring out at the fields with their jungle of weeds and vines. The wind rippled through them, making them sway and wiggle and squirm. And there was a howling and a shrieking in my ears-but after while it went away. Everywhere, everywhere I looked, the jungle swayed and wiggled and squirmed. It shook that thing at me. There was something sort of hypnotic about it, and I'd still be weak and sick, but I wouldn't notice it. There wouldn't be a thing in my mind but that thing, and I'd wake her up again. And then it was like I was running a race, I was trying to get to something, get something, before the howling came back. Because when I heard that I had to stop.
But all I ever got was that thing. Not the other, whatever the other was.
The goats always won.
22
The days drifted by, and she knew that I knew, of course, but we never talked about it. We never talked about anything much because we were cut off from everything, and after a while everything was said that we could say and it would have been like talking to yourself. So we talked less and less, and pretty soon we were hardly talking at all. And then we
It was like we'd never known how to talk.
It began to get pretty cold, so we shut off all the upstairs rooms and stayed downstairs. And it got colder and we shut off all the rooms but the living room and the kitchen. And it got colder and we shut off all the rooms but the kitchen. We lived there, never more than a few feet away from each other. It was always right close by, that thing was, and outside… it was out there too. It seemed to edge in closer and closer, from all sides, and there was no way to get away from it. And I didn't want to get away. I kept getting weaker and littler, but I couldn't stop. There was nothing else to think about, so I kept taking that thing. I'd go for it fast, trying to win the race against the goats. And I never did, but I kept on trying. I had to.
Afterwards, when the howling began to get so bad I couldn't stand it, I'd go outside looking for the goats. I'd go running and screaming and clawing my way through the fields, wanting to get my hands on just one of them. And I never did, of course, because the fields weren't really the place to find the goats.
23
I couldn't eat much of anything. The basement was loaded with food and whiskey, but I had a hard time getting any down. I'd eaten less and less ever since that first day when I'd raised up the trap door that was set flush with the kitchen floor and gone down the steep narrow steps.
I'd gone down them, taking a lantern with me, and I'd looked all along the shelves, packed tight with bottles and packages and canned goods. I'd circled around the room, looking, and I came to a sort of setback in the walls-a doorless closet, kind of. And the entrance to it was blocked off, stacked almost to the ceiling with empty bottles.
I wondered why in hell they'd been dumped there instead of outside, because it would be stupid of a guy to drink the stuff upstairs, where he naturally would drink it, and then bring the bottles back down here. As long as he was up there, why hadn't he…?
24
I said we never talked, but we did. We talked all the time to the goats. I talked to them while she slept and she talked to them while I slept. Or maybe it was the other way around. Anyway, I did my share of talking.
I said we lived in the one room, but we didn't. We lived in all the rooms, but they were all the same. And wherever we were the goats were always there. I couldn't ever catch them but I knew they were there. They'd come up out of the fields and moved in with us, and sometimes I'd almost get my hands on them but they always got away. She'd get in my way before I could grab them.
I thought and I thought about it, and finally I knew how it must be. They'd been there all along. Right there, hiding inside of her. So it wasn't any wonder I could never win the race.
I knew they were in her, where else could they be, but I had to make sure. And I couldn't.
I couldn't touch her. She didn't sleep with me any more. She ate a lot, enough for two people, and sometimes in the morning she vomited.
It was right after the vomiting started that she began walking. I mean, really walking, not using the crutch.
She'd tuck her dress up around her waist, so that it wouldn't be in the way, and walk back and forth on one knee and that little foot. She got to where she could walk pretty good. She'd hold her good foot up behind her with one hand, making a stump out of the knee. it came just about even, then, with that little baby foot and she could get around pretty fast.
She'd walk for an hour at a time with her dress tucked up and everything she had showing, but you'd never have known I was there from the way she acted. She..
Hell, she talked to me. She explained to me. We'd been talking all the time, and not to the goats either, because of course there weren't any goats, and…
She walked on the little foot, exercising the goats. And at night they sat on my chest howling.
25
I stayed in the basement as much as I could. She couldn't get me down there. She wasn't good enough on that little foot and knee to come down the stairs. And somehow I had to hang on.
The last race was over, and I'd lost them all, but still I hung on. I seemed to be right on the point of finding something… of finding out something. And until I did I couldn't leave.
I found out one evening when I was coming up out of the basement. I came even with the floor and turned sideways on the steps, putting down the stuff I'd brought up. And I'd brought a pretty big load because I didn't want to come up any more often than I had to; and I was kind of dizzy. I leaned my arms on the floor, steadying myself. And then my eyes cleared, and there was the little foot and leg right in front of me. Braced.
The axe flashed. My hand, my right hand, jumped and kind of leaped away from me, sliced off clean. And she swung again and all my left hand was gone but the thumb. She moved in closer, raising the axe for another swing.
And so, at last, I knew.
26
Back there. Back to the place I'd come from. And, hell, I'd never been wanted there to begin with.
'… but where else, my friend? Where a more logical retreat in this tightening circle of frustration?'
She was swinging wild. My right shoulder was hanging by a thread, and the spouting forearm dangled from it. And my scalp, my scalp and the left side of my face was dangling, and… and I didn't have a nose… or a chin… or…
I went over backwards, then down and down and down, turning so slowly in the air it seemed that I was hardly moving. I didn't know it when I hit the bottom. I was simply there, looking up as I'd been looking on the way down.
