getting my goat

Sometimes I sit down to write, wanting to bring some new insight to the internet table, and I feel just blank. Not wise or witty or funny or perturbed - just blank. When this happens, I can either get up and go somewhere else, or I can dig into the past - start writing a story in the hope that some kernel of wholesome goodness will emerge.

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Every Saturday, my brother Jo-Ben, sister Hannah and I got to take turns going on "adventures". Dad would hoist us up onto his 200cc Suzuki on/off road motorcycle, and together we would ride off on the hot, dusty jungle roads in search of some new thing. Helmets, boots, and thick long clothing - the prerequisites for safe riding - were a joke in the choking humidity of the amazon, so we rode free into boundless possibilities.

One Saturday of mine, we started early. We rode out of our yard and up the main road. Orestes waved, grabbed the handle that pulled open the gate, and saw us off. There had been a light shower already, but the roads were quickly drying, so the red dirt under our tires wavered in that perfect moment of balance between sloppy impassability and all-permeating dustiness. The rain punched up all the smells and the electron-buzz of still-lingering lightning clouds promised that this was going to be a good one.

We rode, then, through Callao: past Ronco's, the mechanic/tire repairman rumored to spread nails in front of his shop, past the scintillating smells of restaurants like "Orlando's" and "El Alamo", where squat, smiling men proved daily that Peruvians were the best cooks in the world. Then it was onto concrete-block pavement for the short stretch into Pucallpa, weaving in and out of the ants' nest of pedestrians, moto-taxis, scooters, and dilapidatedantiquated trucks belching deisel fumes and wobbling along on a prayer and a stick of chewing gum.

It was a dirty frontier town, but there was a frantic, humming life to this population at the end of the twenty-four hour highway from Lima. Like a bees nest on the end of a stick it throbbed, and we wove delicately, burstingly through the melee to emerge, slightly ruffled, on the other side. Shaking off the tension of the moment, dad opened the throttle and we shot up the highway west, straight towards the mountains.

This was early in my time there, before the influence of the terrorist groups of the MRTA and the Sendero Luminoso had fomented such angry, anti-NorthAmerican sentiment that it was hard for a white person to make it through without catching an angry word, or a rock. Peruvians were more like themselves then, a lively, freindly people, bursting with stories and enthusiasms and quick to forgive the indecencies of American Imperialism.

Dad and I smiled wide, letting the bugs thwap into our teeth. At Kilometer Fifteen, we turned left off the highway, dipping down and then up between orderly rows of fifteen-foot rubber trees towards a large barn - a long, low structure of poles and a corrugated tin roof that radiated a pungent odor I'd never smelled before. We were early, but could hear a chorus of bleating through the bushes and mango trees and in a few minutes there came bursting into the feild by the barn what appeared to my six year old self to be a thousand and one goats. Big ones, small ones, goats of every color, shape and size. Goats walking, running, and even little kid goats being carried in shoulder-bags by big ones.

They "flocked" under the tin roof, where food and water awaited them, and dad and I waded into the riotous goat-mess, poking and prodding until we found a young one we coulg agree upon. "Esta cabra esta bueno", he told the man, and after pockets were dug into we wrapped the bleating thing in a burlap bag, tied it onto the motorcycle between us, and rode back through the bustle of Pucallpa and Callao, homeagainhomeagain to free our little poop machine into the new corral and shed dad had fixed up.

She was a beaut - light brown, with white patches on her sides and a black strip down her nose.
Jo-Ben and Hannah gathered close, petting and ooing and awwing as I tried my hardest to make them jealous by regaling them with tales of the massive barn and millions of goats.

Later, we borrowed a truck and picked up a male and a few females from the goat farm, and before you knew it we had more than twenty-five goats running around, eating the laundry and pooping up a storm. Jo-Ben and I watered and fed them every day (Hannah was only three), and spent saturdays shoveling out the five-inch thick layer of poop in their shed, watching carefully for the diamond-like crystals that formed through the rules of scatological alchemy. Then we walked the quarter-mile up to the carpenter shop with empty burlap sacks, which we filled with shavings and sawdust from the planer and table saws. When we were done we'd trudge the bags home on our backs, one by one, and spread out a new layer for the goats to poop on. Or, if dad was feeling nice, we'd call and he would go borrow a truck again, bringing them all home at once.

I know, it sounds like a whole lot of work. And it was. But it was also filled with moments of magic - like when birthings went wrong and mom would stand there reading to dad from the goat book while he lay on the floor with his cheek in the mess and rooted his soaped-up arm around inside a disturbed-looking expectant mother, trying to sort out a tangle of legs, heads, and umbilical cords. Or when one of the goats was not producing enough milk for her two kids, so the smaller one found our irish setter, who'd just had puppies, and set to suckling on her.

Along with the blisters, I developed character, a love for the smell of goats, and a burning desire to never own another one for as long as I live and breathe.

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So after all this, I have to look back over what I've written and wonder, what's the point? I write this stuff, but has it mattered? I mean, I got in a good dig against Americans, and a thumbs-up to Peruvian cooking, but I still feel blank. I guess I just have to content myself with feeling ecclesiastical and hoping that you, at least, are amused.