Goat (11 page)

You better wash that shit down, he says. Points. Looks at himself in the mirror, brushes his red hair with a black plastic comb and leans forward. He presses two fingers against his cheek and mashes a pimple. Fuck, he says, looking at the blood he’s left on his hands. He takes some toilet paper and blots his face on his way out.

THE CUPS ARE clean and dry when we bring them back to the brother. He says good work, goats, takes the top cup from the stack and spits tobacco over the lip. It streaks brown the whole way down and the brother tells us to leave, that he appreciates it mightily. There’s only one other brother at home on the third floor and he’s studying so he doesn’t want anything.

WE LEAVE DANIEL HALL tired and filthy from the work, stumble into the thick air and Will turns, looks at me and breathes a long sigh. Places his hands on his slim hips and says that Ben Moore is a real bastard. I nod.

Fuck him, I say.

Yeah, Will says. Fuck him. He’s a shitfuck.

What?

Shitfuck. Nothing. Nevermind.

I look at him and grin, give a feeble wave of my hand and turn to go up to my room.

That night I dream of shadows. Nothing coherent, just this darkness at the doors and windows. I wake up sweating, still dirty from the hall check. Heart pounding. Go over to the window and check to see if it’s shut. Check the door lock. The television flashing. I sit on my bed and stare at the colors and I know then that it was the smile and the breath I was dreaming about. Or brothers. Whichever. But it doesn’t really matter. They’re the same thing.

I wait for sunlight before I sleep.

IT’S MY SECOND week and the fraternity owns me. The brothers are everywhere, waiting for me to slip. I walk to class and look for brothers. I eat and look for brothers. I’m in my room waiting on the phone to ring or for a fist to pound on my door. I sleep and now the smile and the breath are always in my dreams, dark and faceless, screaming, leering down at me and I am a quivering breathless child.

Late in the afternoon I dress in a navy blue sport coat (the only one I own), a white oxford shirt that fits loosely on my shoulders, a red tie and brown loafers. This is what we’re supposed to wear. Personal appearance is important. The pledge master tells us that he doesn’t want to see any fucking sloppy pledges and that brown shoes are correct, white or blue shirts are correct, solid or striped ties are correct, but, above all, he doesn’t want to see any jeans or shorts or hats or any other weird shit because those are for Yankee fucks and faggots. We wear these things like we are soldiers, like they are holy, like we have never known any other clothes before.

I LEAVE MY room at six o’clock and hurry over to Tillman Hall. Tillman is the most recognizable spot on campus. Its clock tower looks over the burnt-orange brick buildings and can be seen from any point on campus. It rings out the hours in dull one-note clangs. I climb the stairs to the second floor and find room two sixteen. I have the number scribbled on my palm. Most of my pledge brothers are standing around nervously, still wary of any place we are told to gather. The air inside the room heavy like an old church. Dust moves through the room’s muffled light like tiny dancing cells and every time I step on the faded green carpet clouds sprout behind my feet. Portraits of old men with white hair and black robes line the walls. They surround us, each of them austere and brilliant, their eyes fixed on every person here and we cannot move, we cannot breathe without someone watching us.

Will Fitch stands by himself behind the other fifteen pledges, pacing around a brown wooden chair. Eyes fixed on the floor. His blue shirt is wrinkled and his tie dangles loosely from the buttoned collar. His cheeks glow like he’s been facing a stiff wind. I sit down in the chair and he continues to pace around me. He doesn’t look up.

So, I say. Are you okay, man? He keeps walking. The circles become wider. He shrugs his shoulders.

Yeah, he says, brings a hand to his head, weaves fingers through thick blond hair. I’m just, I don’t know, this is hard. I feel weird.

I don’t know what to say. I want to tell him that I feel weird too, that my stomach is in knots but I just watch him pace and say nothing. I cross my arms over my chest. Dave Reed talking quietly to another pledge. Everyone speaking in hushed tones. Like we are in the presence of something holy. It fills the room in a low hum.

Patrick Wells enters the room from a door directly in front of me between two glaring old men. The door falls shut behind him and he just stands there looking at us. Everyone turns to face him. Our hands fall to our fronts, palms laid flat over each other, and we are standing and breathing the heavy air, waiting for his mouth to open and for words to part the silent room.

Patrick leads us into a large white room. Sunlight streams through the tall windows, lands in shafts on the floor. A crowd of brothers stands at the back and they follow us with their eyes, thirty heads turning at once. The pledge master is standing at the front of the room underneath a large portrait of an old man. White hair pulled back. Black robe. Mouth in a slit. A gold plate beneath the picture says Thomas Green Clemson. He was the founder of the university. The look on his face says it all. That this is sacred. There is a pulpit directly below the portrait with what looks like a Bible laid open. Will in front of me. Every so often I see his right hand twitch at his side. We march in, all seventeen pledges, until Patrick stops the line and we turn to face the front. I can feel the brothers’ stares and I wonder if Brett is there burning holes in our backs like everyone else. I do not listen when the pledge master begins to talk. The air is pulsing and I know that I should be listening solemnly but all I can think of is how the words mean nothing, that somehow this is all wrong.

All of the pledges bend down to one knee and huddle shoulder to shoulder in a circle. There’s an open Bible on the floor in the middle of us, and we all place our hands together on top of it. Our eyes closed, the Bible underneath all the sweaty palms. We swear allegiance to God and Kappa Sigma and I crack one eyelid slightly even though I know someone might see. Will mouths the words, his dry lips shift against each other awkwardly like he can’t keep up. His eyes flutter.

I close my eyes again and move my lips like I mean every word.

The pledge class says amen and stands. We all turn around at the same time and face the brothers at the back of the room. The brothers clap, all smiles. One by one a brother takes a pledge aside and sticks a pin onto his lapel. No one comes for me and Brett is nowhere. My pledge brothers spread away from me and at the end I am the only one standing, looking from face to face, at the ground, at anything to break the awkwardness of standing alone in the center of a room. Patrick Wells touches Dave Reed on the back and I see Dave jerk then smile. Patrick comes over and pulls me aside.

Listen, Robert Tinsley, he’s your big brother, he couldn’t make it today, class or something, so I’m gonna pin you, he says. I don’t even know Robert Tinsley, and can’t figure out why someone who knows me isn’t my big brother. Patrick’s meaty hands fish around through his jacket and he pulls out a pin, pulls my right lapel forward a bit and weaves the pin through the thick navy blue cloth. Pats it gently with an open palm, looks me over and says that it looks damn good on me. I look down, rub the pin softly with my thumb. It is so small. I look for Brett again. I look at Patrick.

Where’s Brett? I say.

You know him, he says. He does what he wants to. I guess he didn’t want to come.

I nod. And then I squint through the bent shaft of light that is still heating my face and shoulders, look out the window, trying to find my dorm but everything is white and dense and I can’t make it past the windowsill.

EVERYONE BUT WILL FITCH is gone when I step outside of Tillman into the late afternoon. He’s sitting on the front steps. Loosening his tie. I plop down next to him. He looks at me and nods.

Who’s your big brother? I say.

Chance McInnis, he says. Still looking straight ahead. I nod and he doesn’t say anything back.

Mine wasn’t here today, I say. Class or something.

Will picks up a leaf from beneath his feet. Starts tearing one side. Picks at the leaf delicately like he’s performing surgery and I see his right hand twitch again. He holds the leaf in his left hand and shakes his right one a few times. I don’t say anything about the twitching. I just figure if he wanted to he’d tell me. The sun, a tangerine slit on the horizon, looks like it’s being stretched on both sides. It spills over the small hills behind Lake Hartwell, casting long shadows, and everything seems to be exhaling. After a silence Will turns and looks at me.

Do you think you can do this? he says. I don’t know what to say.

Well, I say, I don’t know. I mean it’s hard.

Really hard, he says, leaning back into the steps. School is hard enough without all this.

Quit, I say suddenly, like it’s that easy. He finishes with the leaf and throws the bare stem down.

I can’t quit, he says.

Why?

Because I just can’t. The same reasons you don’t quit.

I don’t know why I don’t quit.

Yes, you do. Everybody does. If you quit what’s left? Studying? All you are is that guy who couldn’t do it and everywhere you go that’s what people are gonna think.

Not everybody.

I know not everybody but everywhere you go they’re gonna be there. It’s unavoidable. You can’t go to a party without seeing them and besides, who wants to go to the parties that they’re not at?

Lots of people.

That’s bullshit and you know it, he says. People that don’t matter go to those parties. These guys matter around here. He bends down and pulls his socks up around his pale ankles. I mean what would I be without this? he says. It’s the first time girls have paid attention to me like they do, you know? I nod because I know exactly what he means. It’s not like I’ve never had girlfriends before, he says, but with this it’s different. I know it’s shallow but I don’t think I’d be much if I didn’t go all the way through, and anyway pledging’s only three months and after that you can do whatever you want.

You’re right, I say and he is. Will stands up and brushes himself off.

I gotta go, he says. I look up and squint against the fading light.

Gotta study, he says, reaching out his hand. I clasp it firmly and it doesn’t twitch. He walks down the steps and disappears around the side of Tillman. I bend down and take the bare stem that fell near my feet. Put it in my right pocket and for a long time I sit on the steps and let the orange light warm my face.

8

I OPEN THE DOOR to the Kappa Sigma hall quietly. Press in the silver bar gently and push forward. The outside air rushing in behind me. My pledge brother Kevin Brehm is leaning along the doorway of Dixon’s jumbled room, arms crossed, skinny legs peeking through his frayed olive shorts. Dixon calls him a faggot. Says that he hates him. Kevin takes his words like gifts. Dixon tells him to get the fuck out of his doorway.

Bother someone else, he says when I pass by, his right hand swatting the air. I try not to look, walk with my head down but I can’t help glancing up. Something in me wants to see what will happen but Dixon doesn’t even look at me. I move quickly like I’ve avoided an accident and my heart is pounding against my rib cage and each step is in slow motion. I keep telling myself to just breathe and walk.

When I reach Brett’s room I look back down toward Kevin and he waves, smiles a toothy grin, and I nod back but it’s a short nod because I’m scared of the hall. I wonder how he’s so at ease here. All smiles. He looks like a clothes hanger with his skinny neck and wide shoulders.

I can see Dave Reed hovering in the doorway of Ben Moore’s room asking for an interview. A pledge has to interview all the brothers by the end of pledge season. The interview consists of simple questions: Who is your favorite band? What is your favorite color? Most brothers use this to get pledges to do something, like clean their rooms or fold their clothes. Dave’s clutching his composition notebook tightly against his chest like he’s holding a baby. Ben tells Dave that he’s a faggot just like all his faggot pledge brothers but that he’s especially a faggot because his hair makes him look like a bitch and he is laughing and yelling that Dave is a fucking faggot faggot faggot. The truth is that Dave is a faggot with hair like a girl because Ben Moore says it’s so and we are pledges and there is nothing else.

IN HIS ROOM Brett plays the Refreshments on his stereo and it’s good because it’s minor chords and girls and drinking and being lonely and because sometimes it’s good to be sad. Brett lights a cigarette, pulls on it hard, flicks red ash into a beer can and leans back into his burnt-red couch. Smoke fills the room. Filters into sunlight that streams through his grimy window, curls like thick fingers toward the ceiling. I reach for a tuft of smoke and it drips between my fingers.

Brett looks at me like I’m crazy then turns back toward the cracked wall. He stares a lot. At walls. People. Anything. Something will catch his eye and he’ll just sit there with this look like it hurts and it’s not just his eyes but everything, his clenched mouth and hands, his curved back. I lean against his wardrobe.

So, I say, looking around the room.

So what? he says. Smoke leaks from his mouth.

So how are you?

Me? I’m okay. He doesn’t look okay but I don’t tell him. He lays his left hand flat on one leg and with his other hand starts tracing the grooves between his knuckles. We just sit there and everything is quiet except for the music and the hum of his air conditioner.

I want to leave, he says, never looking up from his hands.

Leave? Leave where? I say.

Here. This place. I’m so bored with myself. With everything.

But you can’t leave.

He looks at me for a moment and then turns back toward his knuckles.

I can, he says. Leans back and pulls from his cigarette, holds the smoke in his chest like he wants every bit. The look on his face scares me because I know that it’s the truth. I know he can leave if he wants.

All right, motherfuckers, Dixon yells. I look around my brother’s doorway and then back at Brett hoping he’ll know what’s about to happen but he keeps staring at the wall and blowing smoke.

Every one of you fuckers hiding needs to come out right now, he says. Dixon’s voice bouncing off the walls. I step out into the hall and see Dave lingering in Ben Moore’s doorway. I look at him like he needs to be out here with me but he just peeks around the corner and pulls back. Dave gets shoved out of the room, comes stumbling toward me. Drops his notebook and it makes a grinding sound skirting across the dirt in the hall. Dixon has Kevin by his skinny neck, one hand locked just below the ears, the other held straight up like he’s about to say something important and Kevin is still smiling.

Line up, faggots, Dixon says. Ben Moore watches Dave bend to pick up his notebook. He knocks it from him again, and laughs, and this time it flies toward Dixon, who kicks it. The notebook opens in a flurry of white pages.

There are four of us. Me, Dave Reed, Will Fitch and Kevin Brehm and we all stand in the hall, clustered together, looking around and waiting for something bad to happen.

DIXON HAS A football. He says we’re playing Goat Invaders, a game, he explains, created long ago which has survived because it’s so much fun and this is how it goes:

We stand four feet apart, single file, all facing Dixon. We move our arms and legs in slow jumping jacks and bounce back and forth from wall to wall. It’s supposed to look like Space Invaders. We bah like goats as we move and I don’t know if the brothers are actually going to throw a football at us or if this is just meant to be scary. But what I do know is that Dixon says we better not fucking duck when he throws at us and that I feel stupid for moving like this waiting for a football to find me.

My feet grinding across the floor and I am third in line wedged between Will at my front and Dave at my back.

Don’t you fucking flinch, Dixon says. He cocks one arm back and concentrates like it’s the most important pass he’s ever thrown. Ben Moore is behind us and he says come on, Dixon, throw the fucking ball. Claps his hands together. I turn my head slightly back toward Brett’s room. He looks at me and stands and then he shuts his door.

THE FIRST BALL skims Dave’s head and bounces off the wall.

Oh, bad throw, Dixon says. Snaps his fingers. He claps his hands, bends down and leans on his knees and says, all right, Ben, let’s see what you got.

I know the ball will hit the back of my head and I am waiting on it but Ben Moore has a good arm and he is not aiming for me. Will winces when the ball hits the middle of his back. The veins in his neck stand up. He keeps moving.

Sorry, goat, I was aiming for the bitch right in front of me, he says, and he’s lying but it works because I can hear Dave start breathing harder behind me and he knows that it will hurt with Ben only five feet behind him.

Kevin kicks Dixon the ball that’s settled at his feet. Dixon takes his time again and the ball makes a dull thump when it hits Kevin’s head. He doesn’t pretend he’s aiming somewhere else, he just looks straight at Kevin and throws. Kevin stumbles a bit, pauses and then goes limp. He drops down to his knees and slumps against the wall. Dixon calls him a pussy and tells us to keep moving and not to worry about our little bitch of a pledge brother and we keep going back and forth until I hear the ball smack something and the air behind me moves and I know that Will’s hit the ground. Ben Moore laughs behind us and he’s on top of Will telling him to get his sorry goat ass up, get the fuck up, he says, what’s wrong, your pussy hurt, huh, your fucking pussy hurt? I keep moving and don’t look back because I’m supposed to do what the brothers say.

Game over, Dixon says. He drops the football and walks back into his room. Dave and I stop moving and I look down at Will, and Ben is still standing over him, reaching beneath his armpits, trying to pull him up. He tries to stand but his legs wobble and he falls again. Ben slaps his head.

Pussy, he says and walks back into his room. Dixon leans back out because we are still standing around. He says to get the fuck off the hall. Will moves to his knees, lays his hands out in front of him and shakes his head like it’s full of static. I grab his arm, help him up, but nobody helps Kevin. He’s still sitting with his back turned, slumped against the wall. I open the door to leave and look back at Kevin. He’s turned over, back flat against the wall, he’s looking up at the ceiling and smiling.

OUTSIDE WILL IS still dazed and has to sit down on the front steps. I sit down beside him and Dave sits on his other side.

You okay? I say. Will puts his face in his hands. Right hand twitching.

Yeah, Will says, I’m okay, just a little dizzy. Dave shoves his hands through his hair. Stands up. I watch him walk across the quad and Will and I sit on the brick steps until his head is clear and he can walk without falling.

I START TALKING to myself. Walking to class, in the shower, in the cafeteria sometimes. I do it because there is no one else. It is eleven on a Monday night and I am thinking about the pledge test we’ll have in a few weeks and about Will and the way his hand shakes and the air is heavy and wet around the white concrete staircase that leads up to my dorm room. The football stadium at my back all lit like a holiday. I climb the stairs and start talking.

Why are you doing this? I say.

You know.

No, I don’t know.

Yes, you fucking do, you know it’s all there is.

I am more than that.

Wrong again, that’s the wrong fucking answer, think, just think for a minute.

I pass a short dark-haired girl on the second flight and bite my bottom lip.

No, don’t look at her, she can’t help you.

It always happens like this. I can get to the point where I’m about to tell myself the answer, why I’m doing this, and then it just slips away.

I open the door to my room expecting to find my roommate plopped down on his futon smoking cigarettes. I close the door behind me and the room is filled with alcohol like someone’s sweating bourbon. I put my books down on my bed and step on a hand. It crunches beneath my foot and I expect to hear a whine but when I turn around I’m still standing on the hand and the body connected to it doesn’t move. One of my roommate’s pledge brothers is lying on the futon all curled up like a baby. His right hand over the edge. Dark hair spilled over his eyes. I can’t remember his name. He’s snoring. I take my foot from his hand and sit down on my small bed. I stare at this boy who is drooling, all wrinkled and dressed in a coat and loosened tie and just then I decide that I hate him simply because he is alone inside his muffled head and I have to sit and listen to myself. I put my foot back on his hand and move it around, press it down into the floor to grind the bones but he doesn’t move. I slap his head. He shifts a bit and then I go next door to get Mark.

Mark is from Kentucky and he’s the biggest man I’ve ever seen. We talk in the bathroom when we shave sometimes, and I don’t know why I am going to get him, but it just seems like the right thing to do. After I knock once he opens the door to his room and smiles. He has a forty-pound dumbbell in one hand, wears a blue tank top.

What’s up, he says, one hand on the doorframe.

Nothing, I say, just that there’s this drunk guy in my room and I’ve tried to get him up but he just keeps sleeping. I want you to scare him, I say.

Hold on, he says, turns into his room, places the dumbbell down at the head of his perfectly made bed. He leans down beside his bed and tells me to go on back to my room and just wait a second. I go and sit back down on my bed and stare at the boy who hasn’t moved. Mark comes in with his shirt off, this long knife in one hand. He leans down close to the boy’s ear. Mark is quiet like he’s thinking really hard. And then he yells. It makes me flinch because I didn’t know he could sound like this. I only thought he was big. But the boy stirs and Mark is yelling that he better get the fuck out of his room, that he is going to cut somebody. The boy’s eyes peel open. He looks up at Mark. He doesn’t know what’s going on and for a second he just sits there and blinks at shirtless Mark clutching his knife and yelling for him to get his skinny ass the fuck out of his room. The boy rises and stumbles a bit, wipes his forehead and Mark is inches from his face, asking if he heard what the fuck he just said. His knuckles go white when he squeezes the knife. The boy looks at me and then at Mark. He is pale. Eyes bloodshot and then he is gone.

MARK AND I both laugh but mine is a sad laugh because I know the shadows I dream about, the smile and the breath, the brothers, they’re filling me up. Mark clutches my hand as he leaves. I thank him.

Nothing to it, he says, I can’t stand motherfuckers in my room either.

I WAKE UP when I hear the thump coming from downstairs. I stare at the clock and it says one-thirty and my eyes feel heavy even though I haven’t really been asleep. I’m still dressed and I get up and walk to the door and press my ear against the cold metal. Gaze through the peephole and then I open the door and no one is on the third floor but the music is rising through the tiles under my feet. I can hear people moving. The brothers are having a party on the other side of the small dorm like they do on most Monday nights but I have chosen to stay away. It won’t look good to the brothers but I have been shaking all day. I had almost fallen asleep but I’m always scared of my dreams or that someone will come pounding on my door at three
A.M.

——

I LET THE door at the end of my floor fall behind me and walk the hallway that connects both sides of the dorm. I open the door on the Kappa Sigma side slowly and look down the hall. The third floor is quiet. I glance down the stairwell. Someone moves below me and I pull back and then I hear footsteps and no voices but someone is coming up and for some reason I just stand there. My heart pounding. A girl named Natalie drags her hands along the rail and wobbles a bit, turns her ankle sideways when she takes a step and falls down to her knees. She is still holding the chipped railing when she looks up. She reaches behind her and pulls each of her black high heels off. Her dress is black and short, cut low in the front and when she bends over her breasts spill out. She has both her shoes in one hand, straps wrapped around her middle finger and when she looks at me again I see her eyes for the first time. Swimming, teetering a bit as she blinks. She stands up and steps toward me.

Natalie is inches from my face and I can smell the alcohol on her hot breath. She sticks her tongue in my mouth and puts her hands around my hips. I pull away and look at her and we don’t say anything. I take her hand and lead her down the hall toward my room and she drops her shoes on the way and doesn’t look back.