Extraits

Chapter One Goat Man taught Ellis how to do bongs when Ellis was eleven. At the time, Goat Man was thirty-six, a veteran pot-smoker with a chunky voice and tarry lungs. Ellis's lungs were pink and fresh back then.     They sat at a swirly glass table in the pool house, with the air conditioner blasting away the white June sun streaming through the windows. The bong they used was fashioned from a tennis ball can and some aluminum foil.     "Put your thumb over that little hole and breathe deep," Goat Man said. "If the smoke's too hot, lift your face and take in some air."     Ellis raised the homemade bong to his mouth and inhaled. Goat Man held the lighter. Ellis had wanted to use the pipe he had always watched Goat Man smoke, the long wooden one that looked like an Indian's peace pipe, but Goat Man thought Ellis's first time should be gratifying, so he explained the cooling effect of the water and rigged up the bong. The bowl glowed as Ellis filled his lungs. The ice cubes clinked and the water bubbled pleasantly. There was no need for him to lift his face; the smoke was mild and sat comfortably in his chest. No coughing or burning, and it tasted like the desert smells after it rains.     "Now keep it in there as long as you can," Goat Man said.     Ellis remembered once holding his breath for almost two minutes in his friend's pool. He had held it longer than anyone else at the birthday party--way longer.     He felt the smoke in his lungs. It occupied space, pushed up against his ribs. He imagined it seeping slowly into the crinkles of his brain. He let it out in one big rush, followed by a few mildly grating coughs. The cloud that he created was bigger than he had imagined it would be, and thicker, too. Goat Man, nodding and clapping lightly, was barely visible from behind it.     "You're a pro," Goat Man said. "An expert."     "Thanks," Ellis said.     Two hits later, Ellis's face locked into a grin. He tried to knead it down with his fingers, but his cheeks and lips were rubber--they'd snap back into the stupid smile.     "Don't fight it," Goat Man said. "You're stoned, man. You're lucky, too. Most people don't get stoned their first time. Then again, most people don't start with my special hybrid."     Goat Man lived in their pool house, a small adobe bungalow with a kitchen and fashionably crude Mexican tile throughout. He tended to the landscaping--mostly Xeriscaping, just rocks and cacti arranged into groupings here and there. He also kept the pool clear and blue, and free of waterlogged rabbits and lizards. In exchange, Ellis's languid mother Wendy gave him food, the pool house, and a meager salary. She also provided him with a place to keep his goats.     The goat pen was just a token: slabs of dry, gray wood and snatched real-estate signs haphazardly nailed together. It was at the bottom of a hill below the house, edging a sandy arroyo that rarely filled with water. The goats could jump the fence, or squeeze through holes whenever they felt like it. It wasn't often that they felt like it, though. The four of them hung out, jumped on the roof of the adjoining shack, or kneeled in the shade of the faded green palo verde trees. A few times, after a squabble or a monsoon, one or two of the goats did stray. Ellis was the one who fetched them. Goat Man couldn't be bothered; he knew they'd be home sooner or later.     Once, when Ellis was in fifth grade, as he stepped off the school bus, he spied Freida, a large doe with swollen teats--the most majestic and conceited goat of the small herd. She was standing near the street sign bleating, almost crying. When she saw Ellis, she trotted up to him, hooves clicking and crunching the gravel on the hot asphalt. She nibbled on a loose strap that hung from Ellis's backpack as he patted her plump side.     Aubrey, a sixth grader who wore a bra and had a boyfriend who drove a big truck, swaggered up to Ellis and Freida. "My mother says Goat Man knows his goats in the biblical sense," she said.     "What?" Ellis asked.     "It means he fucks them, moron."     Ellis looked up at her: bangs sprayed into a tall shield, smears of blue eyeshadow, and a thick coat of wet lip gloss. She looked like a lady, a mean lady. He punched her right in the jaw.     Freida didn't like violence. She jumped around, squealing like a baby, teats swaying, leaking drops of milk. Aubrey was on top of Ellis, digging her press-on nails into his neck and periodically slapping his face, trying to get him to admit that he, too, knew the goats in the biblical sense. Ellis watched Aubrey's nostrils flare and contract as she yelled. He felt the gravel grinding into the back of his head.     "Say it. Say `I, Ellis Whitman, fuck goats.'" She grabbed a pointy rock and scraped it across his forehead and down his cheek.     He never said it. * * *     "Aubrey from down the street?" Goat Man asked later.     "Yeah, her," Ellis said.     Ellis lay on the diving board while Goat Man tended to his cuts and scrapes. "This one over your eye is kind of deep. What'd she use?"     "A rock," Ellis said. "A plain old rock."     "Why didn't you kick her ass?"     "Punched her first. That's all she deserved."     "I see," Goat Man said. He broke a piece from the aloe plant near the filter pump and dripped globs of it into Ellis's wound.     "Ouch!" Ellis yelled.     "This will make it heal faster."     "It stings."     "Ignore the pain," Goat Man said.     "How?"     "Try to think of the last song you heard today." Goat Man squeezed another glob of aloe into the cut and smoothed it with his thumb. "And play it over in your head."     Ellis thought about it. He hadn't heard any songs at school. The last song he had heard must have been an advertising jingle from the twenty minutes of TV he had watched that morning during breakfast. Ace is the place with the helpful hardware man . "The last song I heard was from an Ace Hardware commercial," Ellis said.     "That sucks," Goat Man said, "but I'm done with your wounds."     "Thanks, Goat Man."     The cut scabbed over in the shape of the letter C. Part of Ellis's eyebrow never grew back. Copyright © 2001 Mark Jude Poirier. All rights reserved.