Goat by Brad Land Read Free Book Online Page B

he says. He is old with thick glasses, he is called Dr. Deckle and usually in his office I’m bent over the table with my pants around my ankles, a nurse sticking a needle into my ass but now the nurse is holding gauze beneath my ear to catch the blood and the doctor’s looking in my ear with the small flashlight. When he’s done he steps back and tells me this is what happened:
    Fluid gathered around the broken bone in my inner ear. The incus. Shaped like a club. It gathered there until it ruptured the eardrum. Split the thin tissue and poured out.
       
    THIS IS WHAT I do:
    Take antibiotics for the infection.
    Leave cotton balls in my ear (changed every hour when soaked) for three weeks.
       
    AFTER THE FLUID and the blood stop, my left ear is silent.
       
    BRETT NEVER TELLS me that he’s going to Clemson without me. Going ahead with this plan we made four months ago. I don’t ask him either. I can’t go now and he knows it. I didn’t even fill out the application. We don’t really talk about him leaving and me staying, we just see it coming, and I hate it even though I know it’s what has to happen.
    ——
    ON NEW YEAR’S EVE I am drunk. Stumbling from the beer. I look at Leah from across the bonfire. Raising a beer to her mouth, laughing, I want to fall in front of her, put my arms around her legs. Brett is behind her, his face also lit orange. He touches her shoulder. They both turn, flame against their backs, they laugh, leave the dark gathering around them and then I see him open the door to the house. She passes in front of him. The door falls shut.
    I drop my beer into the fire and it hisses.
       
    WHEN I SEE Brett and Leah again I know. They stand a few feet apart from each other. I know what they’ve been doing. And the alcohol inside me has made me dizzy and mad, I’m running the scene over in my mind—this girl I begged to love me, my brother in a back room, mouths locked, his hands behind her back, her hands against his face. And standing there beside the fire my brother’s face is flushed red. I stare and I want him to see my eyes, I want him to know that I know what he’s been doing but he doesn’t look through the flame.
       
    I WALK AROUND the edge of the fire toward Leah after Brett walks off because I can’t stand still anymore. I put my hand around her forearm and look at her.
    What the fuck? I say. She looks at me like I’m crazy. I let my hand drop. I’m still staring at her.
    What, she says, what do you want?
    Him, I say. Point to my brother. You and him?
    Yeah, she says. Turns her eyes toward the fire. Yeah.
    Why, I mean?
    Okay. You have got to leave me alone. I’m sorry you’re sad. I’m sorry about all that happened to you. But it’s not you and me. It was just one kiss.
    I know. But my brother.
    So what? she says and my head is lolling, hands shaking, and all that comes out is mumbling, goddamn you I say goddamn you goddamn you.
    She looks at me with hard eyes.
    What?
    I said goddamn you. She turns to leave.
    No, fuck you. Fuck you. I scream it.
    Fuck fuck fuck you. Fuck you. Motherfuck you. She doesn’t turn and everyone gathered outside is staring me down. My brother comes over and I’m singing it now, fuck you, fuck you, over and over, this chant, this prayer. He takes my arm, I look at him, jerk my arm away, fuck you I say, point my finger at his face, fuck you, I throw my beer against a wall of the house. Brett grabs my arm again, tells me it’s time to leave, pulls me while I’m still muttering it, fuck you, and he opens the passenger side door to his car, ducks my head and sits me down. He pulls onto the highway and inside the car it’s dark and I’m not saying anything, I can feel his eyes on me.
    Listen, he says, and I tell him to shut his fucking mouth. He sighs, drops his palms against the steering wheel. Listen, goddammit, he says and I turn to look at him. I point.
    You knew, you fuck, I say, and you did it anyway. He shakes his head.
    I start