“Honey,” the woman said, “I was wondering if you happen to sell ice cream.”
“Oh,” Callie said. As if the words hadn’t sunk in, she looked over at Henry where he sat in the corner booth picking at a piece of apple pie. (Jimmy was back in the house, taking his nap.) The woman turned, following Callie’s glance, and Callie looked back at her quickly. The woman was still smiling. She was fat, in an unhealthy, poor woman’s way, especially below the belt. It was possible that she was pregnant.
Henry said very solemnly, like a minister, “We do have ice cream. Yes’m.”
“Why, that’s your hubby,” the woman said, delighted — even proud, one would have thought, as if she’d mistaken Callie for one of her own. When she laughed, her mouth seemed to slip right up behind her nose. “He’s sure nice and plump!”
Henry scowled.
The goat smell and the stench of her sweat were everywhere, and Callie had to concentrate to keep from being sick.
“Apple pie!” The woman rolled her eyes at Callie, suddenly coy as a schoolgirl. “I ain’t et apple pie in years. When I was six years old I was out in the orchid one time where my daddy was picking — my true daddy: he was a deputy sheriff — and you’ll never guess!”
Callie waited.
She leaned far toward Callie, leering. “I set down on a bushel crate and wee-weed all over ’em!” She wrung her hands and drew her tan, flat face back and sideways, giggling, and above the motionless, patient-looking layers of clothing the fat, cracked and shiny flesh of her throat rippled. Tears washed down her cheeks and into the curls sticking out in front of her bonnet and then, when she threw her head forward in her ecstasy, rolled down her nose and hung in a great gray drop at the end, like a pearl. Henry leaned his forehead onto the heel of his hand.
“What kind of ice cream did you want?” Callie said.
The woman climbed up on the counter stool, still giggling, turning again, after she was settled, to look over at Henry as before. She got herself into control and looked up at the ice cream flavors sign hungrily, sniffing, wiping the tears from her eyes with the backs of both hands, then went off on a giggling fit worse than the last. “I wish you could of seen his face,” she said. She turned again to giggle at Henry. Again she got herself in control. “I’ll have choc’late,” she said. The decision appeared to surprise and please her. Callie turned away.
“Honey,” the woman said behind her, coy again now, “did you ever hear the name of Buddy Blatt?” She was lighting a cigarette.
Callie hesitated, the goat smell and cigarette smell mingling unpleasantly with the ice cream smell in the freezer.
“Buddy Blatt’s my boy,” the woman said. “I been looking for him.”
Callie put the scoop back carefully, as though it might blow up in her hand if she jarred it, and covered the freezer again. She slid the dish of ice cream onto the counter-top, along with a napkin and spoon, then remembered to fill a water glass. “I don’t think I’ve heard that name,” she said, and after a minute, “Henry?”
Henry shook his head and looked out the window.
“He sent for me,” she said. She coughed, and smashed out the cigarette almost untouched. She dipped her spoon into the ice cream and lifted her lips away from her teeth, then sucked a little off the spoon and let the rest slide back for the next bite. “Mmmm!” she said. She reached down inside her collar and half-scratched, half-rubbed. Callie listened to the fans. No air stirred.
Then for the hundredth time, because like everyone she met they were the kind of people that would understand a mother’s feelings, she told her story. Old Man Judkins came in in time to hear the last of it. It was the second time around for him. He’d heard it secondhand from Bill Llewellyn in New Carthage less than an hour ago. But it was only this time, hearing it from her own mouth, that he believed it.
“They all been real kind,” she said. She tucked her chin in and giggled. “Down in Olean the police helped me strip out my goats.”
“The police?” Henry said. It was the first sign he’d shown that he was listening.
“They was a green place right in the middle of the city, it was just as green as anything, with flowers in the middle, and I pulled up there. It was milking time. And the p’lice come over and talked awhile and then helped me.”
Henry looked out the window again, and Old Man Judkins picked his teeth.
“I got the cart fixed up so I can sleep in it, but I ain’t had to yet,” she said. “Every night but one I’ve slept in somebody’s house, and the one night I didn’t was because down in Endicott they let me sleep in the jail. They been very kind.”
Callie said matter-of-factly, “And you really think you’ll find him.” She wondered whether the woman would pay for her ice cream.
The Goat Lady smiled, her upper lip vanishing again, her few teeth jagged and yellow in her black mouth. “It’s a small world,” she said. Perhaps the question made her nervous, or perhaps it merely reminded her of her business. She got down off the stool and gave a grotesquely formal little bow, smiling again. “I surely appreciate your kindness.” Then, to Henry: “It’s been real nice talking to you.”
Henry turned, covering his mouth with his hand, studying her. At last he nodded. He said, “Good luck.” It was as if for him she was gone already.
Callie stood at the door with Old Man Judkins, watching her climb up into her seat and start up the goats. She didn’t pay, she realized at last. The cart was halfway up the hill by now, the clank of the bells far away enough to be pleasant.
Old Man Judkins said solemnly, tipping his head to one side, “It’s like a pilgrimage. A mother in search of her son.” He pulled at his ear.
Callie said, “I better go see if Jimmy’s awake from his nap.”
4
That was the last Henry Soames ever saw of the Goat Lady, though it wasn’t by any means the last he heard. She was gone from the county the following day: some people said she’d moved on north; some said they’d seen her heading east, toward the resorts where the Jews were. Wherever she’d gone, she’d gone completely; it was as if she’d been swallowed up by a mountain, like any other gnome. Lou Millet wondered if maybe she hadn’t run into foul play, and they speculated on that for a time; but after a week certain word came, by way of a letter George Loomis said he’d gotten from a relative, that she’d been given money by the Methodist Church in Remsen.
For a week more people swapped stories about her when they came to the diner. But gradually the talk died out.
Henry Soames was the first. He would go whole days without saying a word about the Goat Lady or anything else to anyone, even Callie. Often he wouldn’t bother to get up in the morning. Doc Cathey would find him propped up on six pillows, in his undershirt, his eyes shut behind the steel-rimmed glasses, and his hair, what there was left of it, pasted to his scalp with sweat. If his mouth was closed and he wasn’t snoring, it was hard to tell at first glance if he was living or dead. On the spindly table between his bed and the glass-knobbed dresser he had a red plastic glass of water and his little white pills. Beside him on the bed he had Oreo cookies.
“Are you trying to die?” Doc Cathey said. (Despite the weather he wore the black suit he always wore, his neck and head rising out of his collar like a brown, withered stalk.)