"He’s sick," my daughter’s boyfriend said, when he met Cocoa for the first time.
"How do you know?" I asked, doubting he could be in-the-know
about a goat he just met, the first goat he has ever met.
"I can hear him wheezing."
I rely on my eyes, my ears kaput, forgot what wheezing sounds like.
A sudden memory of my brother’s asthma, his gasping for air,
a rush to the hospital. My husband’s asthma, turning blue,
another hospital.
I can’t see if Cocoa is turning blue. His fur, the color of coffee lightened
with hazelnut creamer, a white arc stretched across his side,
and the proud angle of his horns squared like a pint-sized
Texas longhorn, hide any such evidence.
I slide a collar around his throat, take him for goat-dog walks, feel the vibration
of his labored breath, feel it through the collar, feel it through the leash
like a message through a string telephone, feel it through the tremor
of my hand in sync with the leash’s strum.
I believe this communication between us is private.
The vet has been by a few times.
Meds help a little.
Very little.
Cocoa was one of three babies born to a nanny who didn’t want three, might
only have wanted one, in any case one too many, kicked him, bit his ear,
threw him across the pen. He would slip between his two brothers,
hide his scent among theirs, and somehow survived.
One brother became his surrogate mother, the one he went to for solace
and protection, the one with whom, over the years after joining
a neighbor’s small herd, he foraged side by side,
slept rump-to-rump.
One wet winter, when he was still small, he jumped into the water trough, didn’t know
how to get back out. I grabbed him as his mother stared, cupped his shivering self
between my two hands, held him until his body warmed, whispered to him,
"You’re okay, you’re fine, you have worth."
When he was a year old, his mother only had to glare—he would retreat
to a corner of the pen, his head lowered, his spirit crushed. I watched
as his guardian brother, Nutmeg, approached him, sniffed him,
"You’re okay, you’re fine, you have worth."
Nutmeg, the alpha male of this makeshift herd, passed a few months ago. The herd
attacks Cocoa regularly now, no need to hold back. He dodges horns, teeth
on his bony back. I take him out of the pen, go for walks, give him
cookies and carrots, let him forage on weeds with yellow flowers.
Together we’ve watched the old field where this herd used to graze develop
into a stately home, a long driveway covering the wild grasses
where crickets once feasted, where rains had brought floods
and the occasional mountain lion prowled.
Today he seems to know I’m sad, recognizes my struggle to fit in with my own herd.
He leans a thin shoulder against my thigh. I feel the crushing sound
of his unstable breath, watch him gasp for air, stroke
his coarsening fur, notice the dryness of his skin.
He looks up at me, a kindness in his gaze, sniffs me with a runny nose,
as if to convey, "You’re okay, you’re fine, you have worth."
