August 29, 2015

Barn Schizophrenia

Four years ago a retired man who had somehow managed to

hustle a cute, young wife gave Michelle her first goats. He had lived
an up and down life; he had even for some reason spent time in jail. He
and his young wife liked to wander, so they might end up living in this
or that house, often while the houses were up for sale. Jimmy had tried
to remember how Michelle met this man and his young wife. He thought
he had written something about them in his journal, but he hadnt been
able to find a word. He remembered that he and Michelle had spent an
afternoon with them. It was late winter, mud season, and they had parked
at the end of a long, uphill driveway. The young wife baked the most
wondrous tasting muffin cakes. The old man watched proudly. She didnt
care for philosophy with the dialogue, preferred it straight out. They must
have made the journal. He had wanted a story to blame the catastrophe
named goating on. But his journal in those days was a giant green book
with thousands of extra paper clipped pages. Finding anything specific in
it was luck, hit or miss. What added up was nowhere found, and what
would never add up he found in paragraph after paragraph. So the history of the retired man and cute, sweet, adorable young wife remained a
mystery, and Jimmy could never properly condemn them to a thousand
consecutive sentences in hell without parole.
Anyway, the young wife and Michelle, when she and Jimmy first moved
to Maine, became acquainted. Michelle often collected acquaintances. Too
bad Michelle was married, everyone thought, who would want to get to
know the weird guy? In fact, Jimmy depended on Michelle for acquaintance collection; she brought that color into his life. Jimmy liked them,
young, old, unmarried, called them Adam and Eve behind their backs. It
was funny how they lived. Young women often have lots to do, and the

old man might not be too happy getting dragged out of his easy chair.
Hed go off around the corner, cussing. But by-and-by he returned to his
young wife in the usual overjoyed state, and he tagged along where ever
she went. The house they were living in was only a mile or so around the
next hill. When they dropped by, the old man and Jimmy usually spent the
visit studying the Ford Econoline van he drove. In his US Delivery days
Jimmy had owned one, and he had acquired wisdom on how to keep them
on the road. Other than elderly hoses and frayed belts the engine looked
fine, no apparent coolant or oil leaks that Jimmy could see, which tended
to put you broke down on the side of the road fast. But Jimmy had not
yet learned the Maine way of auto repair, which was drive it till it broke,
and he still adhered to the big city philosophy of preventive maintenance.
The old man nodded, grunted, got sick of hearing about it. A dead shock
absorber meant nothing to him. Jimmy would soon learn the art of junker
driving as it was practiced in Maine. The old man knew he would not have
to teach Jimmy. That was one thing you learned soon enough. Instead, he
seemed preoccupied with the young wife; when she was out of his sight,
he was just another old man, but give him a picture of her walking toward him smiling and he was thirty years younger. They often wandered
around cross-country to family and friends and points unknown. One day
he and young wife drove in. They got out, old man and smiling youngster,
and they went around and opened the van and two saggy old four legged
animals popped out. Old man and young wife led them on bailing twine
leashes in front of the house. What were they? Existential dread comes to
mind.
Michelle popped out the door like a kid on Christmas morning. Theyre
goats, you nut, she scolded Jimmy, clapping her hands.
Whatever, they were the skankest looking four legged things Jimmy
ever saw. He had finished building Michelle a twenty-by-twenty shed for
a barn. He built it for love, thinking love would get him somewhere. In
spite of it all, he wouldnt mind if she got pregnant again, but instead it
got him nowhere. Some chickens she said, maybe pigs, there was already
a Holstein cow in one of the stalls, wandering around a fenced in acre. She
had once thought about raising Irish Setters. They were gorgeous dogs
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and they went for five-hundred apiece. These two things standing in the
driveway in front of him could not be the future! Jimmy fell backward in
a sweat. Already he loved the barn at the same time as he hated the barn.
Barn schizophrenia! Existential dread being by far too vague a phraseology.
The old man explained, A friend of ours used them to brush a field.
Michelle said she might want them. What the hell, theyre free.
Oh, I dont think so, Jimmy said, wandering toward them from the
porch, garden spade in hand. It was spring. He was heading outside early,
thinking about dirt with plenty of worms in it. He had some serious dirt
round this house with plenty of worms in it.
Michelle dived off the porch past him, jumped most of the steps, I
love the floppy ears, she shouted.
The young wife smiled. She wanted to get rid of them to a good
home. She was more sensible than Michelle.
Theyre Nubian crosses, Michelle said. Oh theyll be fine for now.
Where we got them, explained the old man, he said they had been
in with a buck. He said they were probably due soon. The meat is a great
delicacy.
The previous summer Michelle had experimented with sheep. Neither he nor she knew anything about raising animals. Everything was a
fight and a struggle. The two sheep had died. A nearby farmer, who was
talkative and enthusiastic, taking a liking to Michelle, came around now
and then, offering free advice. He was a big guy, hands like hams, he liked
holding little animals in his arms. Mainers will drop by to check on you
when you are new to see that you are not overwhelmed, still capable of
getting somewhere, as Maine life, with the harsh winters, can get confusing at times. Finally, a baby Holstein heifer was born on Michelles farm.
George Brett came over to help pull the calf out, which then lay half-dead
on the clean pine shavings. But Michelle knew exactly what to do, cleared
the nostrils, toweled the poor devil, who was now awakening into hard,
bitter life, and soon the calf was standing shakily, big dark eyes blank in
the strange bright light, looking for a teat to suck on. George said, tersely,
Might be worth something someday.
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All of this was to Jimmy a mystery. Michelle seemed to get it; she was
the farmer. There was a stone wall called farming in front of Jimmys eyes,
and as hard as he rammed his head against it, he could never get past
it into comprehension. Immanuel Kant on metaphysics was more understandable to him than a slime soaked, new born calf, flopping around in
a bed of shavings. How did the calf know to get up and start looking for
a teat? And then suck on it to get milk out of it? Or was a farmer not
supposed to think about such things?
The baby heifer and mother did eventually go to a nearby dairy farm
for a tantalizing sum. It spurred Michelle on. She didnt care about money,
she never cared about money, she wanted to make a dollar or two, enough
to carry on with. Piglets were going for fifty bucks apiece. And so on.
Before the goats pigs became attached to Jimmy, unknown why. One
dark, cold, snowy night a sow was pigging. Jimmy had to go to work.
Michelle, Bama,he named them after US statesis pigging. Go out
in the barn and check that the piglets are making it under the heat lamp.
He came back from work. Bama had ten piglets, only four still alive,
the others dead from having been too groggy at first to find their way on
their own to the pen in which were the heat lamps. Jimmy had insisted
on pigs. He read Louis Bromfields books. There were always pigs in his
books. Bromfield said, If you cant make money raising pigs, get out of
farming. A big true fact about farming brutally stated.
But to hell with advice from the real world. Michelle had farmers logic.
She forged onward. Pigs and sheep were a bore: no personality. Rabbits
reproduced themselves with unbelievable rapidity. How do you keep all
this reproduction under control? The market for rabbit flesh was down.
Chickens were an interesting flirtation. Michelle sold eggs to the neighbors. She got out of the house; it was a social event. She established herself
in the neighborhood, collected rumors, made friends with everybody. The
animals frightened Jimmy because they were all mouth, all helpless need.
Jimmys world was best straight and simple. Auto repair, for instance,
was straight and simple. Animals were a mess, animals had to be fed,
watered, cleaned. They got sick; like children they got into things which
tended to spiral out of control fast unless you insisted on fences and or5

der. When disorder first appeared in the Garden of Eden, disorder walked
out of the barn. Adam must have built a barn. Once disorder established
himself, preening and strutting in the orchard, he gathered the serpent,
and all was lost. Jimmy was sure goats must have been somewhere in the
equation. Take the story of Joseph, son of Rachel and Jacob. Jimmy would
bet anything that Joseph was good with the goats, and goating played an
important part in Josephs story. Fearing for the future, Jimmy watched
Michelle load the two goats in a spare pen in the barn. Not long, goats
jumped out, and were running around the dooryard. Took six of them,
cussing old dude, young wife, Jimmy, already in a panic about the future,
Michelle and Dwight and Dawn, whom Michelle had rousted out of bed,
to help corral them. Dawn, who often took Jimmys part in this animal
thing of her mothers, was soon cussing in concert with the old dude.
Dont reckon theyll like being indoors, predicted the old dude, easily winded.
Oh, Im sure theyll like being here, eventually, the young wife said,
optimistically, and theyll get used to it.
How do you catch them to milk them? Michelle wondered with
farmers simple logic, a logic that always amazed Jimmy with its ability
to throw aside distractions like the big picture and zero in whatever pinhead of reality was about to be smashed into.
You milk them? Dawn said. Who the hell would wanna do that?
Dwight said, They have teats, you pull on their teats, dummy, and the
milk comes out.
You are shitting me. Every day?
Course, like cows, morning and evening, or they dry up.
Watch your language, Michelle said, we have company.
Theyre goats, the old man shrugged, meaning they deserve every
cuss word they get.
Eventually, the two fools had hopped and sprinted themselves into exhaustion. Dwight caught one, and the other was afraid to be alone, and
then Dwight caught her. Jimmy nailed boards up almost to the ceiling.
They went into amazing hysterics in a wild attempt to get out, gave up
after a time and settled down miserably.
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Wonder if theyll go in with the cow and calf? Jimmy said.

Sure, in a week or so. Give them some company, Michelle said.
Well haveta feed them separate some kind of way.
Ma, this is crazy. Dawn pointed at her head. Dawn liked to remain
on friendly terms with the obvious. She could not rest till she had taken
care of or at least given expression to everything about the obvious.
Michelle shrugged. Farmers logic had vanished. That was another
odd thing about farmers logic. Somehow it had the ability to vanish as if
into the fabric of nature. Whereupon, if inspired it oozed out again.
She went to the young wife, thanked her profusely, and quivvered with
delight and leaned over and hugged her.
In a week the goats had calmed down. They let Michelle walk in the
pen, pet them and make friends. They almost acted like normal barn yard
animals. Jimmy took them out on the electric fencing, and they apparently
knew what it was all about, because they would not go near the wire even
out of curiosity. So Jimmy let them free in the pasture with the cow. They
got along fine from the first, kept their distance. Michelle bought another
calf, a beef, an Angus, and young Brett advised her to bottle feed both
calves. She bought the Angus cheap on a chance. It had the runs. If she
could nurse it round and it grew to good size, he would be worth big
money. He hung on for awhile, then died. Took all of an afternoon for
Jimmy to dig a hole big enough to bury the carcass in. But a math teacher
from the high school who became interested in dairy farming dropped
by to see the Holsteins, baby heifer and cow. Once Michelle weaned the
calf, he wanted to buy them both. The money pleased Michelle. What
remained in the bucket after milking the young cow, once the calves were
fed, she brought in the house to drink. Everybody agreed that it was better
than store bought. Soon the goats came to Jimmy when he walked out to
them in the field with a bucket of grain. Theyd freshen as soon as they
kidded. The young cow was in the barn long enough that they missed
her. The cows went and Michelle sold off the pigs and she began to fill the
barnyard with goats.
Michelle got all sorts of clarifying info from the other goat ladies in
the neighborhood. This began the process in which there were goat peo7

ple, who were worth knowing, and otherwise all the rest of the worlds
scalawags, who were not worth knowing. Dawn had, to please her mother,
joined the 4H, and she went to the meetings in Lockes Mills for a short
time. Dawn quickly became uninterested in both 4H and the meetings.
Theyre just a bunch of kids jumping through hoops over animals. The
gardening might be okay for the disabled or mentally deficient. To Dawn
all of these rural concerns brought up images of stubborn lame men, inbreeding and mental deficiency. But Michelle immediately became friends
with the 4H leader, Esther Cole, because she had Nubian goats. Dwight,
a beginning teenager at that time, replaced Dawn at the 4H meetings.
Dwight stayed with 4H all through high school, and he became one of
the best showmen at the fairs, his mothers pride and joy.
From Esther and Dwight Jimmy ended up with plans for a milking
room, doors to and from, and a milking stand, which would hold the doe
in place while Michelle was milking. She declared that these free girls
free as in any way you want to think about themwere not promising,
but they did have udders which were expanding, and that meant that they
were pregnant and would kid soon. And Jimmy must keep his eyes open
for any such event.
Then a few days after these announcements, Michelle went into town
with Dawn grocery shopping. Before she left, she stood in front of him,
gathered up his eyes, and said gravely, Be aware, Jimmy, I dont think it
will be much longer. What did that mean? Somebody was gonna die?
He didnt care what it meant. He returned to clearing land for a garden.
All this went straight over Jimmys head. That those poor souls could
reproduce was beyond his comprehension. He could sit with Plato and
Socrates all day exploring the starry realms sooner than understand that
those long-legged creatures off in the distance under the trees looking like
insects could reproduce. Farmers ineffable logic suddenly reappeared,
How do you think they have survived for all these thousands of years?
Michelle said.
No kidding, he replied, these arent the first ones?
These were Michelles pronouncements. They were similar to Michelles
usual pronouncements; they were not debatable. Jimmy, on the other
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hand, amused himself with the thought that goats had appeared suchlike
at a specific moment in nature and likewise would disappear as suddenly,
like the dinosaurs or whatever else had happened to evolve out of existence, hopefully sooner than later.
He went around his normal details, which this time of year was collecting firewood and clearing garden space, and he happened to be working
nearby, and he looked over and one of them, the one he called Charity,
which had two white front stockings, was standing over a thing on the
ground, licking it. What the fuck is that? Jimmy thought, irritated to
be disturbed. So he wandered over, and there was a tiny, brown little
kid in the grass, more like a stick figure, who was struggling to stand up.
Hysterical terror was his first thought. Where was Michelle? Where was
Dawn? Dawn was with Michelle gone to town in the old VW. What was
he supposed to do? It must die if he did nothing? He decided that he
had to do something, though unclear about why he did not want it to die.
There was Clyde Gimbal down the street where Michelle bought the grain
and the farming tools, for which she paid extra in order to have a person
nearby to get advice from. Jimmy ran inside the house. It never once occurred to him that he was acting like a fool. Hands shaking, he dialed Mr
Gimbals number.
Mr Gimbol, something has happened, Jimmy started. I dont know
what to do.
Barn set afire, Gimbol said. Ill be right up.
No, not that. Theres a thing in the field in the grass. One of the goats.
Huh, oh that. Thats even worse. In fact, Id take a fire any day before
that should happen. Done now, though.
What am I supposed to do?
You can watch out she dont eat it. They do that, after all the energy
they used up they just might get some hungry. Gimbol got so much attached to this idea as a possibility that he settled down and fell right into it.
Shell clean it off some before though. Wont hurt her none. Take awhile,
then they eat em for a snack aside the brush and stuff.
Jimmy was half taken in but then it got too ridiculous.
Naww, come on. What do I do?
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So Gimbol burst out chuckling. Jimmy suddenly hoped this conversation would not end up returning to him after a trip around the neighborhood, which of course it did.
Well, if you hang on and do not a thing I expect the kid might eventually jump up and start looking around for the proverbial teat. Let her get
a good drink. Colostrum has got antibodies what not in it.
Jimmy returned to the site of nature happening, gave it a good distance,
squatted down, so as to take a low profile and not disturb the doe. Every
now and then Charity glanced in his direction, fidgeted, but remained by
the kid, who was now standing on its own, though wobblingly. Jimmy
sighed, wondering why he should care, but there it was, goats. He had
never cared to the point of getting nervous about it when any other animal
had been born, unless it died, then he cared, because he had to dig a hole in
the tough Maine sod to bury it in. What is that? He said aloud. A warm
mushy feeling in his breast, the fault of his wife. He put his hand over
his heart to push it down. He stood and went back to chopping firewood.
Something had just happened that would use up a big part of the rest of
his life.

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