August 29, 2015

1

Barn Schizophrenia

Four years ago a retired man who had somehow managed tohustle a cute, young wife gave Michelle her first goats. He had livedan up and down life; he had even for some reason spent time in jail. Heand his young wife liked to wander, so they might end up living in thisor that house, often while the houses were up for sale. Jimmy had triedto remember how Michelle met this man and his young wife. He thoughthe had written something about them in his journal, but he hadn’t beenable to find a word. He remembered that he and Michelle had spent anafternoon with them. It was late winter, mud season, and they had parkedat the end of a long, uphill driveway. The young wife baked the mostwondrous tasting muffin cakes. The old man watched proudly. She didn’tcare for philosophy with the dialogue, preferred it straight out. They musthave made the journal. He had wanted a story to blame the catastrophenamed goating on. But his journal in those days was a giant green bookwith thousands of extra paper clipped pages. Finding anything specific init was luck, hit or miss. What added up was nowhere found, and whatwould never add up he found in paragraph after paragraph. So the his-tory of the retired man and cute, sweet, adorable young wife remained amystery, and Jimmy could never properly condemn them to a thousandconsecutive sentences in hell without parole.

Anyway, the young wife and Michelle, when she and Jimmy first movedto Maine, became acquainted. Michelle often collected acquaintances. Toobad Michelle was married, everyone thought, who would want to get toknow the weird guy? In fact, Jimmy depended on Michelle for acquain-tance collection; she brought that color into his life. Jimmy liked them,young, old, unmarried, called them Adam and Eve behind their backs. Itwas funny how they lived. Young women often have lots to do, and the

2

old man might not be too happy getting dragged out of his easy chair.He’d go off around the corner, cussing. But by-and-by he returned to hisyoung wife in the usual overjoyed state, and he tagged along where evershe went. The house they were living in was only a mile or so around thenext hill. When they dropped by, the old man and Jimmy usually spent thevisit studying the Ford Econoline van he drove. In his US Delivery daysJimmy had owned one, and he had acquired wisdom on how to keep themon the road. Other than elderly hoses and frayed belts the engine lookedfine, no apparent coolant or oil leaks that Jimmy could see, which tendedto put you broke down on the side of the road fast. But Jimmy had notyet 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 shockabsorber meant nothing to him. Jimmy would soon learn the art of junkerdriving as it was practiced in Maine. The old man knew he would not haveto teach Jimmy. That was one thing you learned soon enough. Instead, heseemed 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 to-ward him smiling and he was thirty years younger. They often wanderedaround cross-country to family and friends and points unknown. One dayhe 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 leggedanimals popped out. Old man and young wife led them on bailing twineleashes in front of the house. What were they? Existential dread comes tomind.

Michelle popped out the door like a kid on Christmas morning. “They’regoats, you nut,” she scolded Jimmy, clapping her hands.

Whatever, they were the skankest looking four legged things Jimmyever saw. He had finished building Michelle a twenty-by-twenty shed fora barn. He built it for love, thinking love would get him somewhere. Inspite of it all, he wouldn’t mind if she got pregnant again, but instead itgot him nowhere. Some chickens she said, maybe pigs, there was alreadya Holstein cow in one of the stalls, wandering around a fenced in acre. Shehad once thought about raising Irish Setters. They were gorgeous dogs

3

and they went for five-hundred apiece. These two things standing in thedriveway in front of him could not be the future! Jimmy fell backward ina 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 phraseol-ogy.

The old man explained, “A friend of ours used them to brush a field.Michelle said she might want them. What the hell, they’re free.”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” Jimmy said, wandering toward them from theporch, 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 dirtround this house with plenty of worms in it.

Michelle dived off the porch past him, jumped most of the steps, “Ilove the floppy ears,” she shouted.

The young wife smiled. She wanted to get rid of them to a “goodhome”. She was more sensible than Michelle.

“They’re Nubian crosses,” Michelle said. “Oh they’ll 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 greatdelicacy.”

The previous summer Michelle had experimented with sheep. Nei-ther he nor she knew anything about raising animals. Everything was afight and a struggle. The two sheep had died. A nearby farmer, who wastalkative and enthusiastic, taking a liking to Michelle, came around nowand then, offering free advice. He was a big guy, hands like hams, he likedholding little animals in his arms. Mainers will drop by to check on youwhen you are new to see that you are not overwhelmed, still capable ofgetting somewhere, as Maine life, with the harsh winters, can get confus-ing at times. Finally, a baby Holstein heifer was born on Michelle’s farm.George Brett came over to help pull the calf out, which then lay half-deadon the clean pine shavings. But Michelle knew exactly what to do, clearedthe nostrils, toweled the poor devil, who was now awakening into hard,bitter life, and soon the calf was standing shakily, big dark eyes blank inthe strange bright light, looking for a teat to suck on. George said, tersely,“Might be worth something someday.”

4

All of this was to Jimmy a mystery. Michelle seemed to get it; she wasthe farmer. There was a stone wall called farming in front of Jimmy’s eyes,and as hard as he rammed his head against it, he could never get pastit into comprehension. Immanuel Kant on metaphysics was more under-standable to him than a slime soaked, new born calf, flopping around ina bed of shavings. How did the calf know to get up and start looking fora teat? And then suck on it to get milk out of it? Or was a farmer notsupposed to think about such things?

The baby heifer and mother did eventually go to a nearby dairy farmfor a tantalizing sum. It spurred Michelle on. She didn’t care about money,she never cared about money, she wanted to make a dollar or two, enoughto carry on with. Piglets were going for fifty bucks apiece. And so on.

Before the goats pigs became attached to Jimmy, unknown why. Onedark, cold, snowy night a sow was pigging. Jimmy had to go to work.“Michelle, ’Bama,”—he named them after US states—“is pigging. Go outin 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 ontheir own to the pen in which were the heat lamps. Jimmy had insistedon pigs. He read Louis Bromfield’s books. There were always pigs in hisbooks. Bromfield said, “If you can’t make money raising pigs, get out offarming.” 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. Rabbitsreproduced themselves with unbelievable rapidity. How do you keep allthis reproduction under control? The market for rabbit flesh was down.Chickens were an interesting flirtation. Michelle sold eggs to the neigh-bors. She got out of the house; it was a social event. She established herselfin the neighborhood, collected rumors, made friends with everybody. Theanimals frightened Jimmy because they were all mouth, all helpless need.Jimmy’s 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 whichtended to spiral out of control fast unless you insisted on fences and or-

5

der. When disorder first appeared in the Garden of Eden, disorder walkedout of the barn. Adam must have built a barn. Once disorder establishedhimself, preening and strutting in the orchard, he gathered the serpent,and all was lost. Jimmy was sure goats must have been somewhere in theequation. Take the story of Joseph, son of Rachel and Jacob. Jimmy wouldbet anything that Joseph was good with the goats, and goating played animportant part in Joseph’s story. Fearing for the future, Jimmy watchedMichelle load the two goats in a spare pen in the “barn”. Not long, goatsjumped 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 Jimmy’s part in this animalthing of her mother’s, was soon cussing in concert with the old dude.

“Don’t reckon they’ll like being indoors,” predicted the old dude, eas-ily winded.

“Oh, I’m sure they’ll like being here, eventually,” the young wife said,optimistically, “and they’ll get used to it.”

“How do you catch them to milk them?” Michelle wondered withfarmers’ simple logic, a logic that always amazed Jimmy with its abilityto throw aside distractions like the big picture and zero in whatever pin-head 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.”“They’re goats,” the old man shrugged, meaning they deserve every

cuss word they get.Eventually, the two fools had hopped and sprinted themselves into ex-

haustion. Dwight caught one, and the other was afraid to be alone, andthen Dwight caught her. Jimmy nailed boards up almost to the ceiling.They went into amazing hysterics in a wild attempt to get out, gave upafter a time and settled down miserably.

6

“Wonder if they’ll go in with the cow and calf?” Jimmy said.“Sure, in a week or so. Give them some company,” Michelle said.

“We’ll 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 takencare of or at least given expression to everything about the obvious.

Michelle shrugged. Farmers’ logic had vanished. That was anotherodd thing about farmers’ logic. Somehow it had the ability to vanish as ifinto the fabric of nature. Whereupon, if inspired it oozed out again.

She went to the young wife, thanked her profusely, and quivvered withdelight and leaned over and hugged her.

In a week the goats had calmed down. They let Michelle walk in thepen, pet them and make friends. They almost acted like normal barn yardanimals. Jimmy took them out on the electric fencing, and they apparentlyknew what it was all about, because they would not go near the wire evenout of curiosity. So Jimmy let them free in the pasture with the cow. Theygot along fine from the first, kept their distance. Michelle bought anothercalf, a beef, an Angus, and young Brett advised her to bottle feed bothcalves. She bought the Angus cheap on a chance. It had the runs. If shecould nurse it round and it grew to good size, he would be worth bigmoney. He hung on for awhile, then died. Took all of an afternoon forJimmy to dig a hole big enough to bury the carcass in. But a math teacherfrom the high school who became interested in dairy farming droppedby to see the Holsteins, baby heifer and cow. Once Michelle weaned thecalf, he wanted to buy them both. The money pleased Michelle. Whatremained in the bucket after milking the young cow, once the calves werefed, she brought in the house to drink. Everybody agreed that it was betterthan store bought. Soon the goats came to Jimmy when he walked out tothem in the field with a bucket of grain. They’d freshen as soon as theykidded. The young cow was in the barn long enough that they missedher. The cows went and Michelle sold off the pigs and she began to fill thebarnyard with goats.

Michelle got all sorts of clarifying info from the other goat ladies inthe neighborhood. This began the process in which there were goat peo-

7

ple, who were worth knowing, and otherwise all the rest of the world’sscalawags, who were not worth knowing. Dawn had, to please her mother,joined the 4H, and she went to the meetings in Locke’s Mills for a shorttime. Dawn quickly became uninterested in both 4H and the meetings.“They’re just a bunch of kids jumping through hoops over animals. Thegardening might be okay for the disabled or mentally deficient.” To Dawnall of these rural concerns brought up images of stubborn lame men, in-breeding and mental deficiency. But Michelle immediately became friendswith 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 ofthe best showmen at the fairs, his mother’s pride and joy.

From Esther and Dwight Jimmy ended up with plans for a milkingroom, doors to and from, and a milking stand, which would hold the doein place while Michelle was milking. She declared that these free girls—free as in any way you want to think about them—were not “promising”,but they did have udders which were expanding, and that meant that theywere pregnant and would kid soon. And Jimmy must keep his eyes openfor any such event.

Then a few days after these announcements, Michelle went into townwith Dawn grocery shopping. Before she left, she stood in front of him,gathered up his eyes, and said gravely, “Be aware, Jimmy, I don’t think itwill be much longer.” What did that mean? Somebody was gonna die?He didn’t care what it meant. He returned to clearing land for a garden.

All this went straight over Jimmy’s head. That those poor souls couldreproduce was beyond his comprehension. He could sit with Plato andSocrates all day exploring the starry realms sooner than understand thatthose long-legged creatures off in the distance under the trees looking likeinsects 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 aren’t the first ones?”These were Michelle’s pronouncements. They were similar to Michelle’s

usual pronouncements; they were not debatable. Jimmy, on the other

8

hand, amused himself with the thought that goats had appeared suchlikeat a specific moment in nature and likewise would disappear as suddenly,like the dinosaurs or whatever else had happened to evolve out of exis-tence, hopefully sooner than later.

He went around his normal details, which this time of year was collect-ing firewood and clearing garden space, and he happened to be workingnearby, 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 theground, licking it. “What the fuck is that?” Jimmy thought, irritated tobe disturbed. So he wandered over, and there was a tiny, brown littlekid in the grass, more like a stick figure, who was struggling to stand up.Hysterical terror was his first thought. Where was Michelle? Where wasDawn? Dawn was with Michelle gone to town in the old VW. What washe supposed to do? It must die if he did nothing? He decided that hehad 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 grainand the farming tools, for which she paid extra in order to have a personnearby to get advice from. Jimmy ran inside the house. It never once oc-curred to him that he was acting like a fool. Hands shaking, he dialed MrGimbal’s number.

“Mr Gimbol, something has happened,” Jimmy started. “I don’t knowwhat to do.”

“Barn set afire,” Gimbol said. “I’ll be right up.”“No, not that. There’s a thing in the field in the grass. One of the goats.”“Huh, oh that. That’s even worse. In fact, I’d take a fire any day before

that should happen. Done now, though.”“What am I supposed to do?”“You can watch out she don’t eat it. They do that, after all the energy

they used up they just might get some hungry.” Gimbol got so much at-tached to this idea as a possibility that he settled down and fell right into it.“She’ll clean it off some before though. Won’t 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?”

9

So Gimbol burst out chuckling. Jimmy suddenly hoped this conversa-tion would not end up returning to him after a trip around the neighbor-hood, which of course it did.

“Well, if you hang on and do not a thing I expect the kid might eventu-ally jump up and start looking around for the proverbial teat. Let her geta 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. Everynow and then Charity glanced in his direction, fidgeted, but remained bythe kid, who was now standing on its own, though wobblingly. Jimmysighed, wondering why he should care, but there it was, goats. He hadnever cared to the point of getting nervous about it when any other animalhad been born, unless it died, then he cared, because he had to dig a hole inthe tough Maine sod to bury it in. “What is that?” He said aloud. A warmmushy feeling in his breast, the fault of his wife. He put his hand overhis 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 ofhis life.

10