The Goats Read online

  “Mom? I got your number from Miss Haskell at camp.”

  “Yes, that was the right thing to do. I’m so glad you thought of that. But where are you, Laura? Please tell me.”

  “Miss Haskell said that Howie has to stay at camp. That he can’t come home with me.”

  “That’s not true, darling. She doesn’t know. He is coming. I promise.”

  “We’ve got to stay together, Mom.” Laura’s voice was thin and stretched.

  “I promise, I promise. He is coming home with us. I’ll steal him, anything. Just tell me where you are. I want you so much.”

  There was a long pause. Maddy felt afraid. She tried to stop crying so she could hear.

  “I don’t know, Mom. Don’t cry.” Her voice faded and grew strong again, as if she had looked away from the telephone. “It’s pretty here. There’re trees, and a river. There’s an old man, too. He lent us some money so I could call you.”

  “But …” Maddy tried to think. “Is it a pay phone? What’s the number? It should be right there. Right where you dial.”

  “There isn’t one. Somebody scratched it off.” Laura’s voice suddenly sounded very tired. As if things had become too hard. Too hard to try anymore.

  “I’m sorry that things didn’t work out at camp, Mom. I really tried.”

  “That doesn’t matter, darling. Not anymore. Just stay where you are. Promise me that, Laura. I’ll find you. Just stay where you are.”

  There was a series of sharp clicks, and a woman’s voice, clear and impersonal, said, “Please deposit five cents. Five cents. Please deposit five cents.”

  “Mom?” Maddy heard Laura say, and then there was nothing at all.

  Miss Gallagher took the phone from her hand. “Dial 911, Laura,” she said confidently into the dead receiver. “Dial 911.” The silence was replaced by a dial tone.

  Miss Gallagher listened for a moment, her eyes staring into Maddy’s. She hung up the phone. “Where is she, Mrs. Golden? What did she say?”

  Maddy could hardly see her. The world seemed to be drowning in a pool of her own tears.

  “She didn’t know. There was a river. Trees.” What did it mean? It was a state full of rivers and trees, going on forever.

  “A pay phone. Don’t forget that.” Miss Gallagher looked thoughtful. She opened her white wicker handbag and took out a map. She unfolded it and spread it on the bed. Here, she explained, is where the truck was found. They couldn’t have gone too far on foot. This must be the river that Laura mentioned. As her blunt finger rooted through the tangle of red-and-blue lines, Maddy began to feel some hope.

  “She said there was an old man. He lent her some money.” How foolish that sounded. Old men weren’t fixtures. They weren’t marked on maps.

  Miss Gallagher nodded. “Lockwood. He’s got a honey stand by the bridge on County M. There’s a pay phone there, too.”

  She folded up the map in the right way, so that it fell obediently along its original creases. Maddy began to respect Miss Gallagher. She knew how to fold a map. Perhaps she knew where Laura was.

  “This is the place,” said Miss Gallagher. Maddy looked out the car window at the river, the trees, an enormous sky hazy with a long afternoon’s heat. There was a small stand by the bridge. It was painted a glistening white. One corner was sinking into a clump of goldenrod. A hand-painted sign said LOCKWOOD’S HONEY.

  There was no one there. Large plywood shutters closed off the interior of the stand as firmly as eyelids seal the eyes.

  Maddy got out of the car. Her legs were a little shaky. She was used to seeing countryside through the closed windows of a swiftly moving vehicle. It made her feel vulnerable and slow to be standing there by the side of the road. She could feel the coarse gravel through the thin soles of her shoes and the wind moving against her bare arms. She could smell the pine trees. She had forgotten that pine trees had such a rich, promising smell. She thought Laura must be very brave to have come here, to be willing to stay, even until dark.

  An old man came out of the woods behind the honey stand. He was wearing a black suit and a very white shirt, and he moved with a spry limp.

  “I’ll just open up,” he said. He picked up a long prop of peeled white wood and lifted one of the shutters. Behind it Maddy could see shelves lined with greenish-gold jars of honey.

  Miss Gallagher came around from her side of the car. “Mr. Lockwood? Have you seen a young girl and boy here? About half an hour ago. They might have used the pay phone.”

  The man paused, bending for the second prop. He was very old, with black liquid eyes in a dry face.

  “Oh yes. I seen them.” He calculated, putting out a pale tongue. “Are you going to pay me?” he asked abruptly.

  “What do you mean, pay you?” Miss Gallagher was indignant.

  The man chuckled and straightened up. As he came close to them, he extracted a folded piece of paper from the breast pocket of his jacket. It had been torn from a small spiral notebook. He smoothed it carefully with his fingers and then put it in Maddy’s hand.

  “IOU,” it said. “Sixty cents. Shadow Golden.”

  “Yes, of course I’ll pay you. I’m her mother.” Maddy fumbled for her purse.

  “Shadow’s mother?” The old man recaptured the slip of paper neatly from Maddy’s hand.

  “Don’t have to pay. You’d want the IOU then, wouldn’t you? I’d rather have the IOU.”

  He folded the small page up carefully and put it away. Maddy could hardly bear it.

  “But where are they? Where did they go?”

  The old man turned and looked off into the woods and then up at the sun, trying to get his bearings.

  “That way,” he said, waving his hand toward a dirt track that followed the bank of the river away from the highway.

  “That road? But where does it go?”

  “Not a road. Fire trail. Doesn’t go anywhere. Just up in the woods. I told them, but they seemed to know what they were doing. Sweet kids. Do you want some honey?”

  Maddy shook her head, and the old man snatched away the white wooden prop. The shutter fell down with a bang.

  “Up in the woods, it goes. That’s where they are now.”

  Overhead a helicopter was circling. As it passed low above them it made a terrific racket, its blades chopping frantically as if they meant to destroy the air itself. From their hiding place underneath an old spruce, the girl and boy watched it suddenly rise vertically into the air and sweep off to the west.

  “Do you think they’re looking for us?” she asked.

  “No. Why would they be looking for us?”

  The girl thought there might be reasons. They had done all those things. Sneaking into that motel. Stealing. They’d taken that man’s truck. They hadn’t taken it very far, but still they’d taken it, and they hadn’t asked. Would that be enough for them to send out helicopters? Were men with guns looking for them? She didn’t know. It seemed possible.

  “Well, I don’t think they saw us. I mean, if they are looking for us. Do you?”

  The boy didn’t answer. She wished he would say something. When she had told him what her mother had said, he had simply nodded and walked off along the fire trail. She didn’t know where they were going, or what he was thinking.

  It upset her that he wouldn’t talk. There were things she wanted them to think about together. She wanted to tell him that her mother had cried on the telephone. She hadn’t expected that. She had thought her mother would be mad. Trying not to show it, perhaps, but still mad underneath. Her mother wasn’t mad. She was afraid. It made the girl afraid, too.

  It frightened her to realize how much she mattered to her mother. She knew her mother loved her. She’d always known that. But she had always believed that her mother was safe. Safe from her. That she didn’t have to think about Maddy when she did something. But that wasn’t right. She had to think. She had to think because she had made her mother listen.

  When she was little and her mother wouldn’t listen
, she would punch her. She would punch her as hard as she could. Sometimes her mother had laughed, and sometimes she had been angry, but she had never cried. When the girl had been little she hadn’t been able to hurt anyone. Now she could.

  The funny thing was that, in some queer, nervous way, she felt glad. She felt very real, as if her body had suddenly gained an enormous presence and weight. She wanted to talk about that, too.

  She looked at the boy. The helicopter was gone, but he showed no inclination to move. He was sitting with his legs drawn up, one cheek resting on his knee, his arms tucked away across his chest. His eyes were open, but she couldn’t tell what he was thinking. It made her sad that she couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

  “Where are we going?”

  “I don’t know. Somewhere.” It was as if he couldn’t bring himself to tell her.

  “Mom said we should wait for her at the bridge. She said she’d find us.” She had already told him that. “She said Miss Haskell was wrong. That you could come home with us. She promised.”

  He took a deep breath and straightened up, as if he had finally decided to talk. “No, she didn’t.”

  “What do you mean? Yes, she did!”

  “No, she didn’t. She couldn’t. Miss Haskell is right.” He stood up and turned away so she couldn’t see his face. “It’s against the law.”

  “What is?”

  “I don’t know. Us.”

  “That’s crazy,” she said. She was angry now. At him. Because he was making her afraid. “That’s crazy. You’re crazy.”

  He didn’t answer, but he looked at her. He was holding his head up, and his eyes were narrow. It was as if he wanted to show her that he wasn’t crying. But he was, almost.

  “I think we should go back,” she said. “I mean, maybe you can’t come home with me right away. Then I’ll stay at camp. But I think we should go back. There’s no place else to go.”

  “Yes, there is. I’m not going back there. Not ever. You go. I didn’t say you had to come.”

  She couldn’t breathe. She was ready to cry herself. With anger, terror, she didn’t know. “I thought we were supposed to stay together.”

  “No, we aren’t. They won’t let us.” He tried to think of something to say that would make her feel everything he was afraid of. “I don’t need you. I don’t want you anymore.”

  They stared at each other over a wilderness that words had made, and then she jumped him, wrestling him to the ground and pounding at his face with her fists. He felt his glasses snap at the bridge, and relief swept over him like a wave. He was almost choking with it. He had never felt so strong in his life. He caught her hands, and twisted, forcing her over on her back so he could sit on her stomach. She didn’t give up. She didn’t seem to realize she was losing.

  “You take that back, you bastard!” she panted. “You take that back!”

  “I take it back. I didn’t mean it. You know I didn’t mean it.”

  She stopped fighting then. It was funny. He was sitting on top of her, holding her hands back over her head, but she had won.

  “I didn’t mean it,” he said again. She tried to smile, but had to sniff instead. Her face was wet, and her nose was running. He thought she looked beautiful.

  “I know. But you still can’t say that.”

  He let her go, and she sat up. They sat cross-legged, close together, their heads touching. For the moment they weren’t able to look at each other, but they fumbled with each other’s hands.

  “I’m sorry I broke your glasses.”

  “Yeah. That’s okay.”

  “Can you see all right?”

  “Yes. No, not really. Everything’s fuzzy.”

  “You can wear mine. We can take turns or something.”

  He smiled when he thought of that.

  “No, it’s okay. I’ve got some spare ones. Back at camp. Okay?”

  He felt her head nod against his.

  “Okay,” she whispered. He caught her nervous hand and held it. She gave it up to him like a gift. It wasn’t very clean. There was dirt under her nails, and there was a shiny callus on her second finger where she would hold a pencil. He was surprised again at how long her fingers were. They looked delicate, almost fragile, but he knew they weren’t.

  “Listen,” he said. “There’s something I wanted to tell you about.”

  “What?”

  “Well, it’s kind of weird. I had this idea. About us. I had this idea that just you and me could live together in the woods. Sort of like Indians. We could get what we needed from, I don’t know, fields and cottages, and no one would ever see us or bother us again. They wouldn’t be able to, because we wouldn’t ever be there when they looked for us.” He knew he wasn’t being very clear, that she wouldn’t be able to feel the magic of the idea, but that wasn’t important, really. He didn’t have to persuade her. He could let it go now.

  “I used to think about it a lot, and sometimes I wanted to tell you, but I was afraid you would think it was just crazy.” He tried to laugh, but kept his head down in case she should want to look at his face. “It is crazy, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah. Kind of. It’s nice to think about, though. We could build a raft and go down the river. Just floating along.” She sniffed and laughed at the same time. “I’d have to learn how to swim. Finally.” Her head knocked against his as she thought. “The trouble is, we couldn’t go to Greece. I really want to do that when we’re older, don’t you?”

  “Yes. We will, too.”

  “And what if one of us got sick?”

  “I don’t know.” He was genuinely surprised. “I never thought about that.”

  “Well. We would think of something. We always do.”

  Suddenly he was very sure that everything was going to be all right. He wasn’t a fool. He knew that there would be arguments and long-distance phone calls, and parents and camp counselors and policemen talking over their heads about things he didn’t understand. He would want to crawl in a hole, and she would cry. It didn’t matter. They would think of something.

  They could look at each other now and smile.

  “We better get going,” he said. “Your mom’s going to be worried.”

  “That’s okay.” Some of her toughness had come back. “She’ll get over it.”

  They climbed down to the path together and started back along the fire trail toward the bridge. The sun was shining. They could feel its warmth in their hair and on their faces. Small birds darted ahead of them, ducking and weaving, leading the way through the pines and the dry summer grass.

  “There’s Mom,” said the girl.

  Howie looked up. The woman was just a blur, coming fast. When she was close enough, he would see her face. He wondered what he would find there.

  A stump loomed in front of them, splitting the path. They drifted apart, their clasped hands rising as it came between them.

  “Hold on,” Laura said. “Hold on.”

  Discussion Questions

  1. Readers are quickly thrust into the act of a cruel and insensitive prank on the first page of The Goats. Brock Cole’s story vividly conveys Howie and Laura’s physical discomfort and embarrassment once they are alone. During the first few chapters, was it easy to empathize with Howie and Laura’s situation?

  2. Have you ever witnessed a brutal act of bullying or hazing? How did that experience compare to what Howie and Laura went through?

  3. The author crafts a story of a tender and innocent relationship that evolves between Howie and Laura, without becoming sexual. The bond they form is a positive and meaningful relationship as a result of their frightening experience. How do their feelings change for each other from the beginning of the story to the end?

  4. Humor can ease an uncomfortable and sometimes horrible situation. Discuss some examples in The Goats where the author used humor to diffuse a situation while keeping the events true-to-life for these young teens.

  5. Bullying and hazing are perpetuated as a tradition at the ca
mp in this story. Howie and Laura were specifically chosen as the victims by their peers. Why is there such a tendency to single out those who are labeled as different? What are some of the emotional and physical effects of bullying?

  6. Why have Howie and Laura been labeled as social outcasts? Laura seems to embrace it when she says, “I’m socially retarded for my age.” Do Howie and Laura really embrace their status as outcasts or reject it?

  7. Howie and Laura commit petty crimes to survive as they run away from their tormentors. They consciously mention that they will replace what they used or stole. Howie says, “We’ll pay them back. We’ll pay them back for everything.” Is Howie just talking about repaying the thefts? How do you feel about their decisions and actions while on the run?

  8. Howie wants to “walk away forever from camps, roads, motels, the sound of human voices.” He is tempted to try and live in the woods and never be found. Why do you think he dreams about this throughout the story? Why does he include Laura in his dream of escape?

  9. The adults in this story seem imperfect despite the fact that they should know better as figures of authority. Those in charge of the campers turn a blind eye to the annual Goat Island prank. In some ways Laura and Howie are more mature in their words and actions than the adults portrayed in The Goats. Discuss some of the other times the adults in the story show more vulnerability and poor judgment than the two teens.

  10. Why do you think the author chose not to give the names of Howie and Laura in the beginning of the story?

  11. Laura has two names in the story, Laura Golden and Shadow Golden. She goes by Laura so she can better fit in with her peers socially. Do you think changing her name helped her or scarred her? What are some changes kids make to fit in better?

  12. The word goat has more than one meaning in the English language. What are some of the other ways the word goat is used? Why is Goat Island an appropriate name for the place where the story begins?