Goat Thief Unrepentant
The sheriff made me apologize, but I wasn’t really sorry. I bowed my head before the farmer’s wife, and I kept my fingers crossed behind my back. As soon as I get the chance, I’ll do it again.
You’ve seen them, slit-eyed in the pasture. You’ve let your children pat and pet their bullet heads, feed them green pellets, chase them when they run. You milk them and spread the cheese on thick bread, thinking about your own good taste. You have no idea what a goat is really for.
But I knew from the time I was six years old, taking the wafer in my mouth at the little old church next to the dry goods store. I tasted the body and the blood, and I knew I served another master.
Why do you think I never married? My club foot? Please — some farmer’s blockhead son would have been glad enough to sire crooked children on me.
No, the truth is I’m waiting for my chance. Every night I walk by the pasture with its new barbed wire fence, my chalk in my pocket, my pentagram close to my heart. Under the bright moon I watch them twitch and chew and jostle, my wedding feast beating in their veins.