I saw the light go on in the house up the hill and then Ma in the window passing. So they left a light with the chairs all gone so Ma could sec to sit the floor and hitch up her shirt for the baby. The baby always goes to the one so I ask who is the other one for. She laughs. You are as bad as your pa. Get on.
There are chickens to feed and cow Maggie. Two cobs twice for Maggie. There are board fences sure to creosote and thistle to dig from the fields when it bolts before the purple crowns. I muck the stalls and soap the tack and vet Pa’s dogs they run the fields flushing birds all day. I am his girl Cricket. I climb the big oak on the hill Pa’s hill even after when it is hit and burns and the burn blacks my skin my clothes.
I work the handle some and the slack is out and I can feel the horse start to pull over the hump of gravel. He lets his long high sound. Pa says it is like a goose so Goose but 1 never heard a goose as that, so long as that it warbled, not a sound like that and never since from bird nor horse nor man. Not even when Pa hit him.
He hit him in his head. Then was a sound a girl-girl lets, queerly sung and pretty. But that was some time after. That was when we shod.
First Pa thinks to work with him when he is up and well enough and we walk him down in the sun in the heat on the road between the barns. First Pa thinks to gentle Goose to ride him days we do not plow, afternoons we do not need to hoe nor pick nor harrow. Pa went to him first going easy talking sweetly in his ear. Hope hope.
He never did hit Goose at the first the night when Ma went off up the road. She went up the hill with the baby quick her hair a knot on her brightened head he reached for when she rested. First it was me Ma reached for. Then after me she rested. I took the strength she had, Pa said, so after me she rested.
Pa gets the hills and the oaks on the hills the old people called the farm by. Ma gets the house she climbs to, her shoes tapping bright on the road. Our ma gets the boy not yet a boy for Pa to need to work the fields while he is weak and small. She gets the way he smells the way he gums her how he coos.
Goose lets his long high sound. I feel him shudder across the gravel the ratchet clicking slow. I sec him rest if I rest and flutter his nose but Ma will have something fixed for us and sits her chair to watch for us and sheets on the floor she has spread for us and the light is gone from the barn. They have loosed it from its socket hung from the spavined wall of the barn. Get up.
I taut the line some. I bring him easy.
I haul up the traps in the muck by and by from the bank where the old people left them. The dogs come to drink from the pond. They beat out a flattened path in the weeds in the burrs that catch and mat my hair flown loose when first I found one. First how we knew to look at all was once I heard Pa’s dog. She had her paw snapped up in the mouth of the trap in the gone-by weeds that mark the pond in the rattling pods come winter. Summer coming to its close. The fescue stiffly yellowed. And in the night Pa’s dog cries out from the drawn-back lip of the pond.
Be slow. Our Goose.
See the road slopes up. Take your time to calm you.
His breath comes weak and shallows. I let the line slack. He throws himself to kneeling and his bones knock against the road. He shoves his muzzle down on the road to rest so his thick head saws above. Pa touches his flank with the gun. I case up I think I am easing up, the line gone slack to tap the road but I can never see Goose quite. I can scarcely see him stand but to see the yellow of his eye swing up and the white of his face against the road.
So he is up. I hear Pa humming to him slow and the coins in his pants when he moves to him going, Ho, going, Hope hope ho.
Pa ought to have a sugar cube, a cigarette to give him.
He throws his head up. The stripe in his head when he throws it streaks and see the dark will bleed it free, will from him in the darkness wick the whiteness clean away. It is like our pa has thrown it — how his bird dogs quake and trill.
You goose. First she called Pa so to tease him. But then Ma called the baby goose and by and by each name for Pa I used to hear her call him by she picked to name the baby with and mine I had forgotten. Now we are only Pa to her and Pa and his girl Cricket. Moving slowly in the road.
He throws his head up. It is like our pa has thrown it, gone from the trees from the creek where he likes to work his dogs to the field. Good dogs.
We can do with him what we want to. Sell him off quick on the hoof if we like to grind his bones to give the dogs the inly tubes and organs keep them fed and fit and strong. They are field dogs, bird dogs all. Pa throws them the wing of the cut-away goose in the falling dark and the dogs at his feet and they stay they stay, the wing dipping down until he moves his hand to school them.
And then his long high sound. And so Pa named him Goose for the goose for the wing he throws his dogs.
Goose lunges at Pa so much as he can but I have got him looped up still, Pa tripping back with his gun at his chest so I ratchet the line to hold him. I cannot hold Pa. Only watch him slowly falling. He takes a long time falling.
Pa’s dogs bed down and whinge. You quit. But they are thinking what will happen what is next to come?
Time comes Pa thinks to ride him. Out between the barns. He rides to the oaks the lightning hits along the fence cow Maggie rubs to leaning while she fattens. Past the coop the chickens pecking slowly at their corn. Past Pa’s prize yellow rooster learned to blind his favored hens.
Pa’s dogs, they are bird dogs all — but are they bird enough to guess at him? At Pa’s prize yellow rooster? Who appeared in a fluff in the barn — the day Goose rode Pa past and every day thereafter. And sat his back thereafter. Who flew his coop to bide his days sitting Goose’s withers — could they guess at such as him?
And at the day we shod him?
And of the bees Pa plowed?
I am not one to picture it not nearly even half of it not Main her chair past autumn not the wrangled plow. Nor Goose. The rooster shyly by him. Pa’s. And then the rooster Goose’s. Only walking back to rooster pecking gently at his hens.
Nor that. I had not pictured that. And not the picked-over eyes of the hens bright as the yolks of the eggs we take left seeping in their feathers.
Not the blood the baby lets not the milk the baby lets, Ma’s shirt run pinkly through. Nor that. Him plumping at her bosom.
Time was I was Ma’s. Nor that. Nor time was Pa was also.
Not Pa when I come upon him. He has dragged across the pond.
I am not cut to picture. To stand at the bank and puzzle out I am cut to cut and run.
The gun fires when he wallops the road. Then Goose is up and hanging.
The old people have come. I thought Goose had seen the old people come rolling home to claim him.
And so he hung there. What to do.
I touched the line once. They couldn’t loose him. They could go on back from wherever they’d come and forget they ever saw him stood and pawing where they left him in a heap upon the road.
They could find another. There are others after Goose. There are Mouse and Pepper, Blue, Prim Sue and Candysara. Cribbing at the barn.
I tie Pa’s bootstrings every morning. Did his bootstrings loose I tied for him did his pantlegs make him fall?
Ma takes one pair and me another. We hem the legs on Pa’s short side from the time when Pa was a boy my size and crumpled in his bed. Get up. And Pa could not get up and not. And not for a long time after. So is it mine or Ma’s dread cross? Who take one pair and one another. We are not much with our needles. And Pa is fallen across the road.