Name the goat. This is the most valuable information given by the inmates. If you name it, you cannot eat it. You will care for it. You will see it has a soul. The goat will become like your child. And then they will set you free.
I name the goat Chaplin. He has a short black moustache and puffy eyebrows. He looks mischievous and vulnerable and innocent all at once. The goat stays close to me. Sometimes I remove the leash so he can run, because when you love something you don’t tie it to you. But he never leaves. The goat knows I have a sack of food. The goat sees the desert and sees no food. The goat sees me and knows if he wants to eat he has to stay with me. I am to travel with the goat for one month.
The warden spit at me from the roof of the Jeep, “We’ll find you in one month. If you have the goat, you are free. If you eat the goat, you are dead. If you die…” and the Jeep sped off into the desert, rooster-tailing sand into the pale sky, the warden laughing crazily.
It has been a week and I feel strong. I share the feed with the goat. I take a handful, and the goat takes a handful. Occasionally Chaplin bleats for more, but I think he understands how finite this sack truly is. The first day I stayed in one place. I figured if I stayed in the spot where they left me they would be better able to find me. But you cannot stand in one spot for thirty days. You cannot be somewhere forever until death. Besides, on the rocks to the east I thought I saw some gauchos herding cattle. But the gauchos were more rocks. When I got to the rocks, I looked back west at where I had been, and that place seemed horrible to me. I imagined three weeks later, the Jeep driving up, the warden shooting at me in spite of my survival, and then taking Chaplin away and giving him to another inmate. I did not want to lie face down in the sand and have the vultures pick me from my bones. So I walked to the rocks in the east and I decided to keep moving east. The warden would look for me in the west, because that is where we migrate. Always west.
That is when I decided to look for real gauchos. I figured I could trade Chaplin and whatever was left of the grain for some food, maybe a ride back to a town. There was no telling how far I would have to walk. The goat is a good idea. You cannot ride a goat. The warden is a smart man.
During the day, I sleep with Chaplin. We crouch in the sand and I curl my body around his Sphinx-like pose. Sometimes the winds pick up and I shield my eyes with his fur. Chaplin is like stone but occasionally twitches. Briefly. Then we are stone again.
I know at one point the desert will turn to wiry grasses that live thousands of years on a drop of water. But I see no water. So we walk at night. I know we head in a straight line because I follow the same star. In this way it is better to walk at night, even though it is much colder. Until we find water, I will not walk during the day.
Sometimes I fear the warden finding us, and sometimes I see that Chaplin fears me. But the warden will never find us because I am not like the other men he has sought before. And Chaplin is relieved and reassured every day that I have not eaten him. Every day he must think, “Today, this man will kill me,” and afterwards he thinks, “But yesterday I thought the same and yet here I am. Today, this man will not kill me.” Soon, we will think the same thoughts.
After two weeks I do not feel strong. But I am proud of myself. A man cannot live for two weeks without water. Yet here I am. Chaplin smacks his mouth dryly. We both are here, on Earth, seeing the same things. Kilometer after kilometer of sand. This is like staying in the same spot for one month, except we will die with tired legs.
One night, three weeks in, Chaplin stops and stuffs his nose into the sand. He digs around briefly before tugging up a blade of grass. My legs fold clumsily and I dig through the sand for more grass. Chaplin searches, too. We find a few more blades. I feed them to Chaplin excitedly. He licks them quickly from my palm. I stand and tug the rope for Chaplin to follow me. We walk until the sky turns pink with the sun. Blades of grass now stand firmly out of the sand, erected like a thousand tiny flagpoles. Before the sun disappears, we are asleep in the bristly sand.
When I awake I smell rice and a hot metal pan and seared meat. It is late evening. Almost time to walk again. Chaplin is gone and a couple of gauchos are perched atop folded blankets, rifles in their laps. One holds a stick in the wood fire, stirring and sending embers flying into a dome-shaped grate over the coal. There, dripping grease to the flame, is the flank and quarters of Chaplin. His head is perched atop the dome, hairless, unidentifiable. It is cold. I sniff.
One of the gauchos is startled. He aims the rifle at me. I hold up my hands. He calls to the man tending the fire.
“He’s awake.”
“Shoot him. He’s a prisoner.”
“Prisoner? Look? What cell am I in?”
The gaucho at the fire looks at me. “You are a prisoner. You should be shot.”
“You stole my goat. You should be shot. You are a criminal. Out here I am without justice.”
“But we are not prisoners.”
I reach for the sack of grain. “Where is my food?”
“Your food? We fed it to the cattle. There was not much left.”
“Can I at least have some of the meat? Or the rice?”
“You are a prisoner. You will be shot.”
“Do you work for the warden?”
The men laugh. They seem to laugh forever. My knees sink into the sand.
“You were hired to kill me. He knew I’d head east.”
The men laugh harder. The man closest to me puts down the rifle.
“You really are a prisoner!”
“Yes, of course. You don’t work for the warden?”
“Tell us what you did. Then we’ll tell you if we work for the warden.”
“What I did? I swore innocence. But here I am.”
He raises the rifle again. “We are all innocent.”
The men laugh again, their throats barking into the sky. Their eyes wet with tears that turn the dust to mud. They look like elephants with their thick skin. The rifle goes off and fires into the sand in front of my face. I squint. The gauchos bark louder. Their eyes slammed shut. I jump to my feet, pulled towards them by the vortex created from their barking. I grab the rifle from the gaucho and strike his head with the butt. The other man laughs until he realizes he is alone in his laughter. He wipes his eyes and looks at me. I aim the rifle at him.
“I am a prisoner because I killed a man who deserved it. To be free I only needed to keep my goat alive. And you have killed my goat.”
“We are only drunk. He was drunk. He didn’t mean to fire.”
“I am not drunk,” I pull the trigger and nothing happens. The gaucho cackles. Embarrassed, I march to the gaucho and swing the rifle furiously. There is a deep, satisfying crack, it massages my arms up to my chest. The gauchos sleep in the sand and Chaplin cooks over the flames. Half a kilometer away the cattle graze quietly in a lush patch of grass. A horse tied to a stake sits in the middle of them all. Perhaps I have half an hour before the gauchos wake. Their heads will throb, but they will track me as I flee. They are good trackers. It was not a good idea to attack the gauchos.
I am hungry and so I eat the goat. The gauchos carry a pouch of wine and a few jugs of water. I drink the water and wine together with the meat and rice. I leave some meat on the grill to dry so I can carry it with me. I search exhaustively for the ammunition. There are no bullets in any of the things they carry. There is only one rifle. Nothing to clean it with. Then I notice a bulge in the hip pocket of one of the gauchos. I pull out three bullets that are for the rifle, but there are two smaller bullets for a pistol. There is no pistol on either man. I check their pants, their underwear, and their jackets. I take all the bullets to be safe and prepare a pouch.
The gauchos have carried shackles for anyone caught trying to steal the cattle. When I see the shackles dangling from the horse, I realize the men were making fun of me. They never thought I was a threat to them, to their cattle. I walk the horse to the gauchos and put one leg of each man in a shackle, then throw the key in the fire. I take the hot poker out of the fire and stab the horse’s ass with it. The horse bolts. The gauchos begin to wake as the horse tramples the earth dangerously close to their skulls. Their yells fade as the horse becomes a speck. Their voices turn to wind. I load a cow with food and water and we begin to walk. It is just turning dark. I can walk all night.
It has been one month and I am a free man. I have heard nothing from the gauchos or the warden. The cow is my partner now, but she has no name.
We walk for a week before I run out of food, the cow grazes whenever she feels like it. The cow is used to following the gauchos, so it stays close to me and hurries to catch me when I leave it behind. I do not love this cow the way I loved Chaplin. I would let this cow wander off, but it carries the food and water. I will shoot the cow before I let it walk off with my sustenance.
When I am out of food I go a day without drinking. And I resume the habit of drinking and walking at night. I have the gauchos’ wine, but I am afraid to drink it even at night. Perhaps if I am dying, I will drink the wine and the last hours I spend here will be bloated with misperception and undue happiness.
I drink a small sip every hour. At this rate running out of water will come as a surprise rather than a calculation. When I have half a container left, I take sips only to wet my mouth. Once or twice a night. We have been walking on grassy plains for a week. There has been no water. Only grass that grows up thickly through the sand.
One morning, before I lay down in the grass to sleep, I see a rodent running through the grass. I raise the rifle to shoot, but then I decide to follow it. It takes me across the plains for a mile, and then a small wooded area comes into view. The cow follows but cannot keep up with me. I have heard that a rodent’s heart beats more in a day than a whale’s does in a lifetime. There is so much blood pumping through this rodent it should explode. When I stop, I am in a swamp. The rodent has ducked under a log. Swamp was the wrong word. I am on wet sand with tall reeds around me. A plum tree with shriveled up fruit. I reach for the fruit and it falls. It is infested with worms. I leave it and search for a rivulet, a stream, just a trickle. There is a clear puddle deeper in the woods. I take a few laps from the water and stop. I want to keep lapping it up, but there is no way to tell if it is safe except to wait a few hours. I lay to nap by the puddle as I hear the cow approach me. It settles in the cool mud and soon we are both asleep.
When I wake I am not sick. It is noon. I lap up more of the water until there is only silt left in the hole. I am close to someone’s home. Here, if there is water, there will be a home. I have only to walk until I find it.
After two days I come across a fire pit. It is massive—you could fit a car inside it. The ash is a foot thick. I am so close to the world I once knew. I feel my heart pump as fast as the rodent’s. I take the cow with me as we walk down what looks like an occasionally used road. A couple of ruts are mostly overgrown with weeds.
We come to an intersection, two overgrown ruts crossing each other, pastures and reeds all around. I stay straight. I walk with the cow all day. When it is night I am too anxious to sleep so we continue the walk. When the night is most dense, I see the small structures ahead of me. Small shacks—cantinas, houses—there is no telling which.
The shacks are empty. The first one has no windows, and looking in from the doorway there is no floor, either. The next one is wired for electricity. At least, there is a cable attached to a pole, but the cable is frayed and dangles against the side of the shack. Most of the buildings are like this. This is an abandoned place. There is no one here. There is no smell like life. Only wood that is bleached by the sun.
Disappointed, I take the cow to a lean-to shelter and I collapse in the dirt. In the morning, I plan to disassemble one of the shacks and build a fire to roast the cow. Then I will drink all the wine and in this abandoned place I will let myself die.
I sleep for two days. In my sleep, I am afraid my organs shut down one by one and that I am dying without being drunk. But the lean-to is quiet, and with the cow I stay warm at night, and in the day it keeps the sun from boiling me. I sleep for two days and in my dreams I am a free man. A truly free man. And in my dreams there is no warden. Whether he is dead or never existed I do not know. But I have still killed the man who deserved it—the man who came to shore on a boat with a hundred men just like him who poured into the bar and petted our women like animals. He took my wife and poured and punched himself into her until she bled, her throat bruised and voice weak. In the dream, these things have happened but there is no one else. All the places that are familiar to me are abandoned. It is only me, and I am in the desert, and there will never be another person. It is not unlike the life I had hoped to forget with sleep. When I wake, I still expect to eat my cow and drink my wine and be dead within a couple of days.
The building I plan to tear down for my fire has a crude map painted on it. It says that five kilometers away is the town that was supposed to be here. I take the cow and the wine and we walk to town. My legs feel heavy. To date, they have been numb, and they have burned, and they have dragged, but they have never felt heavy as if weighted. My feet are like anchors. I am stuck. Five kilometers is impossible. I make a switch out of a bamboo reed and mount the cow, whipping it occasionally to keep it in a straight line.
I let the cow stop when it wants. It is a small price to pay to have the cow do my work for me. Four hours later, the cow has walked me to the edge of the new town. This place smells like life. I smell meat cooking. I smell the stench of compost and feces. These are welcome smells. For too long I have smelled the lifeless dust of the desert. I dismount the cow, my legs still heavy.
I stop in the first apartment I see, a shack with a plywood wall between the living areas. A woman nursing a child is half asleep. She turns her head to the door when I open it, but she does not open her eyes.
“Where is the sheriff?”
“At the jail.”
“And the jail?”
“It’s the stone building. The only stone building. Do you want to sell your cow?”
“No, the cow stays with me.”
I leave the woman and continue through town. There is no mistaking the jail. In a city of third-hand wood buildings, the stone and mortar stands out, though it is pale from the sun.
I tie the cow to a hitching post and walk inside with my rifle. The booking officer puts his hand on his pistol and I hold out the rifle to him. He takes it and sits back down.
“I need to talk to the sheriff.”
“So talk to me.”
“I have been in the desert for a month.”
“Alone?”
“With a goat. I was a prisoner.”
“I didn’t put you there.”
“I need to know if I am free.”
“Looks that way.”
“I don’t want to be hunted.”
He studies the rifle. “I see. Do you still have the goat?”
“No. But I have a cow.”
“I see. Is it stolen?”
“No. It was a trade.”
“For a goat?”
“And some feed.”
“And you have a rifle. You stole something.”
“I have what is rightfully mine.”
He nods and hands me back the rifle.
“Tell me where you’re from. Name of the sheriff. I’ll see to contacting him.”
I give him my information and he doesn’t write it down. Only nods.
“Where will you be? So I can find you.”
“Is there a bar nearby?”
“There is. Last building on the main road.”
“I will be there all day.”
The sheriff hands me my rifle and I back slowly out of the jail. When I am on the street, I see some boys have been teasing the cow. I raise the rifle and yell at them. They scatter but turn back to throw rocks at the cow.
I take the cow to the end of the road. The bar is not open yet, but there is a thin old man sitting out front with a bottle of liquor and a small glass.
“When does the bar open?”
“When I feel like it. When I’m done with my drink.”
“Are you the owner?”
“I am,” he takes a shot of the liquor.
“I want a beer. But I have no money.”
“But you have a cow.”
“Exactly. I also have some wine I can share. Do you have a grill?”
“One big enough for the whole cow.”
Slowly, men and women gather around the old man’s bar. The old man finishes the wine as he builds a colossal fire out of driftwood. He slathers an iron grate with lard. Black soot roils around our heads. My clothes are dingy with the smell of char and the gray cloud of grease. I open my first beer and a bubble forms around the rim; it expands slowly before popping and a small white cloud escapes. Coins plink into the glass jar on the wobbly counter. Men sit around me drinking their sweaty beers. I keep the rifle between my legs. By evening the cow is done cooking. I have had many beers. I cannot stop urinating. I disappear every ten minutes into the room with the plants and piss on a different plant each time, trying to manage with one hand while the other waves around the rifle. When I come back, a plate is piled high with pieces of meat at my place. A fresh pint of beer. Everyone is waiting for me. When I sit, the men and women cheer. We start eating. I finish the plate and they offer me another. This cow produces enough meat to feed this village. Someone has brought sausage, a chicken, and some small greens and vegetables.
The sheriff interrupts the party well into the night. The cow is long gone and dogs chew on the cracked open bones, licking whatever marrow is left. Most of the men and women have left, but a few are still around, laughing, eating, and drinking beer. I have nothing but the rifle and my cold beer. The sheriff sits down next to me. Someone pats me on the shoulder. I look up expecting to see a friendly face, but I only see the sand-grated faces of the two gauchos.
“The warden says you are not a free man. You were supposed to keep the goat. It was stolen. And killed. And you ate it.”
“These men stole my goat. They killed it.”
“And you didn’t eat it?”
“How could I waste it?”
“The warden says you are to be killed. It has been a month and you have failed.”
“These men interfered.”
“You stole their cow. And these dogs eat its bones.”
“I am a free man. I have lived a month in the desert. Others would have died within days. I worked for my life,” I caress the stock of the rifle, carefully hidden under the bar.
“But now you are here, and you have broken the law.”
When I was married, I had a job. I loaded a crucible with steel and poured it into black sand, the orange metal waterfall splashing near my feet. At the end of each day I marveled how I hadn’t fallen into the vat of metal, at how many gallons of water I drank in the Hell-hot barn, at how I wanted to do this work every day, because I was a married man. Though at work she was like a figment, a vague memory. She existed, and I told myself I didn’t pour the steel for me; I did it for her. The day she died I entered the desert.
I squeeze the trigger. The rifle explodes from beneath the counter. The sheriff’s face freezes and blood sprays the gauchos. What he has realized, and what I am about to make the gauchos realize, is that from now on I will no longer live in the desert. The gauchos raise their hands to their scuffed faces to wipe away the blood. I have killed two men who deserved it and I will kill many more who deserve it. The gauchos see it, too. I am a free man.
______
Photo credit: Ahmed ElHusseiny / Foter / Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)