Everything I love starts here. Her face is round, her mouth thin, her lips almost invisible when she is not speaking, her eyes, gray, storming gray, calm gray, neutral to all the wickedly wild things I bring to her. Her throat. The way it trembles when she laughs, swells, when she is mad, the way its opens wide and yawns like a pit as she gives birth. Her hair, flat and falling like a curtain. Hair tucked behind her ears creating bunting for those curtains. That smile is crooked she tells me. It has been said about her too, but I cannot see it. I am tied up in that mouth when she smiles, I only see the emotion and the happiness she is experiencing.
Now, not smiling.
Now her mouth is moving, saying words. Words she has been saying all week. Okay, if I said that out loud she would give me a lift of her very faint eyebrows. She is saying words she has been saying to me for two months. Two months while we planned the 6th Annual Festival of Goats. “They are going to come. This is not stupid. What do we say?” She looks at me and this is the part I have been waiting for. These are the words she always says to me, and makes me say back to her.
“The Goats always work,” we say in unison.
They are coming in now. I can see the first of them walking across the lawn. The front door is open. The glass door wide and inviting. Four people. Three from one family and one of another. They are talking on the grass. I have to get away.
The hallway is devoured by my work boots. Brown scuffed, never dirty, or used in any shop. Never worn to anything but Walmart and date night. I slap the bedroom door open and try to close it quiet but it slams. I’m in front of the mirror and gasping. “Not going to work. This is crazy. How do people ever talk themselves into coming to these fucking things?” My shaved head is covered with a severe, black do rag. It’s huge, tied up in the back like the headscarf of a pirate. The vest we made with hundreds of tiny goats looks wrong every time I put it on. The face, bearded, panicking. Not unhandsome. Not unpretty. Not even a little bit okay with what we are doing.
I step back. Shake out the legs, the pants look twisted. Shake out the arms of the T shirt, no they are hiked up, the sleeves are hiked up, pull them down, fix them. Chain wallet, should I be wearing a chain wallet, is that too street to be fantasy? Is that barbarian enough? I can’t ask her. I have asked her four times. Rings. I need rings. My tatted fingers will be covered though. No one will notice before, but they might ask after. ASDF JKL; knuckle tats, proof to anyone paying any attention that I am a writer. I look into my eyes and try to smile. Fuck smiling. I try to look serious. Will I believe it more if I am smiling, or if I am serious?
“The Goats never fail. The Goats always work.”
I’m out of my bedroom door and back down the hall. Weird that a hall this long doesn’t have pictures hanging in it. Man, that is an odd thing to think about right now. My mind is frantic and grasping. The living room comes up suddenly. Before I step into it I look right. Out the door more people walking across my lawn. I know them, can’t place a few of them. Friends from years ago. I turn to the living room. I am struck again with the floor. It’s been fourteen years I have lived on this floor but the furniture is usually in the way. With everything pulled away the massive gleaming hardwood of the living room is blinding. There are people moving around me. I shake hands. I laugh. I watch myself talk to them. All manner of dress. Some are dressed up. Some dressed down. Some in costume. They look nervous. Someone hands me a host gift. I stare at it for a while. It’s a bottle, blue, no, the sleeve wrapped round it is blue. Is this wine? Champagne? Why in the world would someone bring a host gift to the Festival of Goats? I have to find her now.
In the kitchen there are people everywhere. Some have white paper bowls, crackers, all variety of cracker, all shapes, different colors, cracker dust and splinters, goat chili, even goat cheese spooned in and eating. She is bent half over the table. Her skirt flowing as she stands still. Her peasant blouse perfect on her body. She is concentrating, she is writing something down. I walk up to her. “Um, hunny, ah, I need you to, someone brought a-”
She looks up at me. She is busy. She is always so damn busy at these things. She looks up, her face shifting from serious, to calm and comforting. I hold out the host gift.
“Okay.” She is talking slow. She is trying to calm me down. “Who brought this?” I turn. The woman was standing right behind me. I point stunned. I do not know this person in my kitchen. My wife turns to me. “Get yourself something to eat. You have to eat something. You haven’t been able to eat all day.” She points at the bowls, waves toward the chili. “You are going to drink a lot of beer tonight. Eat.” She turns to the woman in my kitchen. “Hi, I’m Bekah, thanks for coming. You brought this? How thoughtful. Sonia, is this a friend of yours?”
The chili should smell good. I think it probably does. It is rich with multicolored beans, corn, the meat has been broken up too much. I like chunks, but that will never matter. I spoon. Someone else should be doing this. I am slopping. I look up. T, my best friend. She takes the bowl from my unsteady hands. She smiles at me. It’s her T, calm down you got this smile.
“Do you want crackers?” Her face is kind, round, she knows the answer before she asks it. She nods as I stare. Someone just clapped my shoulder. I turn, I see a back. Non-descript, walking away. Who are all these people?
I turn back to T. She is handing me a bowl with chili and crackers. She slips a clear plastic spoon in my hand. It is small, too light, the scoop too small. “Go in Bekah’s office and stand in the corner and eat this,” T says. “Eat slow.”
This is a corner of the house that is off the main drag. It is small, busy, with papers stacked on slipping piles, and too many chairs. Empty boxes with packing material, crinkled up finger paintings from the kids elementary years spanning the walls. I am eating chili. It is hot but T did put a little cheese in here.
Downstairs. Everything is moving. Groups and clumps of people are talking. Carpeting that I have vacuumed is being walked on. The color looks right, off white, almost gray but there are so many other things. The room is huge. It never seems this fucking big, but with all the furniture pushed to the walls, or around the drum kit, this room is massive. There are folded camp chairs, and opened camp chairs. Folded and standing, thin and hungry, folded and lying, calm and preparing for a long night. There are people sitting alone, some in groups. A guy I’ve known since I was sixteen, 34 years ago, is tuning his guitar. There are so many people everywhere. I turn. I know that wet bar. There are too many people in it. There are crock pots with chili in them. There are platters of goat cheese. There are people scooting around each other and sticking their heads in my fridge. They are everywhere. People everywhere.
I am walking into the middle of the room now. I turn to face the front wall. I step back, out of the light of the projector. The white sheet was stapled up by my kid and their friend. I usually do it but Willow is taking over a lot of things lately. There on the screen (it’s a sheet) is the cover of the book. One tiny goat with huge eyes. Willow drew that six years ago. Above and below printed are the words.
The Goats of
Breastion
My song. The First Wonder of my Work.
Joy. Every face is poised for joy. There is living in this room. A live beat of light and hope. There is an apprehension. That hangs over all of it, drips onto all of it. An apprehension, yes, and excitement, that rolls out like a wave, then back from the walls to the other corners. Apprehension and anticipation. Everyone is talking. People are talking to me. Everyone is buzzing. As I look across the light and the rumble of words and the colors, people are tuning instruments, and sitting down on the camp chairs they have brought with them, there are no dark shades. No brooding. There is no one in this room that is experiencing anything other than happiness or nervous excitement. No one but me.
Is there such thing as “terrified joy?”
“Now hunny, we have to get started.”
It is placed in my hand. Cordless. A microphone. I am moving. I walk slow, wanting to hide I see the switch. I slap it off. The room dims. The wet bar still shining. The projector firm and resolute. I am moving back to the front of the room now. Off to the side of the screen. I say something into the mic. People laugh.
Then like watching water slide down a drain they all come in. From outside the back door where they are mashing half smoked cigarettes. From the wet bar with bowls and mugs in their hands. From all corners of the room they move, from upstairs. I watch stupefied as they come swirling from all corners of the room, to drop to a rest in their camp chairs. Faces. All staring wide eyed at me. Me with the mic.
There is a hush forming now, here sits twenty five people, all pausing their lives, all drawing in close, from all over the city, all over the state, all across the Midwest. Here stretched out across the expanse of this room, across the landscape of this vacuumed carpet, sits every flavor of friend and family member, from every speck of my life.
All eyes. This room is filled with eyes, with memories of thousands of thousands of things I have done and said. If the eyes in this room could talk, if they wanted to, they could speak out a story of my life that would shame the tiny dramas that I have bound up in all of my novels.
All of them have come. They are here. They are watching. Every eye that matters in this moment is here. Right here on the edge of this hand. All lining up right here in this hand, all waiting on the tip of this microphone.
“Alright you crazy bastards you are here now.” I say. Every bit of that nervous, edged up doubter is gone. The moment is here, and they have all come. “I have you now. You came here. You are with me and we are going to be at this for two hours.
“Welcome to the Goats of Breastion. If this is your first time let me say: This is a 65 verse barbarian drinking song about goats. It pops up a few times in the barbarian series I wrote, and my wife in all her wicked designs forced me to write it.”
I motion to the back of the room. “Willow on the drums and the rest of his band will play, and you will meekly sing for the first fifteen minutes. Sing for the next five. Sing loudly for about twenty more minutes.” I step forward. It is here now. All of the fear is gone. I am in my element now. I know no fear. “After that God help you, you will roar out one verse and chorus after the next. This song takes two hours to sing. After every chorus you will take a drink. Free keg behind me. Lemonade, soda, and I think Kool Aid,” I twist my neck to ask a question I already know the answer to. “Kool aid hunny?”
“Yup!” Bekah chimes.
“Kool Aid.” I look at all of them. “We are going to pass out bells, a cow bell, a tambourine. I will hand them to anyone who wants one. I even have a wooden frog and a mallet thing.
“Sixty verses, five bridges. Every verse is about a different goat. Every verse has the goat’s name. a little bit about its personality, and how the matron cooked it. If you are paying attention you can see that I had to come up with 60 names, for sixty different goats. Sixty personalities, for sixty different goats, and sixty different recipes, for sixty different goats.
“You will sing them all by the end of the night. After the verse we sing the chorus. We will pause. I will let everyone drink. Then I will yell out the first two words of the next verse. ‘There was-‘ In order to make sure we all hit the goat’s name at the same time, and we all start the verse at the same time, please let me start it with those two words. Then we are off. I will be on the bass in the back, freaking out and yelling to you crazy bastards. If you have never been a barbarian before, by the end of the next forty minutes, and then on into the night you will be.
“Good luck. Hold on tight. Then when you are ready. Let go!”
I drop in my seat, in the back, gloss black bass in my lap, mic in front of me. The projector flips to the first verse.
“There was…!” I yell, not as loud as I will, but louder than I should.
They all join in, timid, but not for long:
…Fire we called him
With coat red as a brand.
He was tall as a woman,
As mean as a man,
With horns sharp and twisted
And a bite like a bear.
With a sauce flame-kissed,
We ate him with care.
Jesse Teller 
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