A Kid in the Barn

Daddy was not a farmer. But all of his closest friends—the quiet ones who kept their secrets—were farmers.

His friends drove giant green tractors and used machinery shaped like dinosaur skeletons to harvest corn, wheat, and cotton. The farmers’ leathery skin was blistered from the summer sun, and they picked their yellow teeth with single strands of hay. Their faded denim overalls and soft plaid shirts were stained with dirt and manure. Those stains were badges of honor earned for the hard work done from sunrise to sundown.

Daddy had no trouble finding a friend who’d let him keep a nanny goat in their barn. Daddy had bought the wayward goat for ten dollars at an auction one night. She had an ear infection, and the fur on her rump was matted. One of her horns was broken. Her long pink tongue hung out of the side of her mouth, dangling like a fish on a line.

“Ten dollars too much,” Mr. Conway said with a cackle once he’d seen the scraggly goat.

Mr. Conway agreed to let Daddy keep the goat in his barn until he could build a proper pen for her. Mr. Conway’s barn was not the kind you see in pretty pictures in the free calendars the bank gave out each January. It was not the fire engine red barn, with sunflowers growing out front, printed on the five-cent seed packets sold at the Co-op. His barn was the color of an elderly man’s beard. Its windows were as black as an Angus bull. It slumped into the earth as if someone had pushed it down the hill. The tadpoles in the quiet pond out front kept all of its secrets.

Mr. Conway told Daddy he needed to fatten the goat up because she was pregnant.

“How do you know?” Daddy asked.

“A good farmer just knows, son,” Mr. Conway said, spitting a wad of Red Man Chewing Tobacco into the dirt.

“How far along?”

“Oh, she’s probably got another four months to go. I’d be surprised if she carries full term. She’s in bad shape.”

Daddy trimmed the goat’s horns to even them out. He washed and combed her fur and medicated the ear. An abscessed tooth was the reason her tongue hanging out. A local veterinarian pulled the tooth, and after the infection cleared up, the goat kept her tongue in her mouth. Daddy fed her fresh hay and feed, and he brought her kitchen scraps after supper each night. He let me name her Niblet.

Niblet slept in the old corn crib at the back of the barn, and she grazed in an abandoned chicken yard. As her health and appearance improved over the next few weeks, her belly also began to swell. Mr. Conway had been right.

One day, just before sunset, Daddy asked if I wanted to go with him to check on Niblet. I knew she was expecting any day now, so I rushed to Daddy’s pickup truck and climbed in the back for the ride to Mr. Conway’s barn. I’d never seen a baby goat.

When we got there, Niblet was not outside. Daddy said she must have already gone inside for the night. We crept through the barn as if we were two mutes. There was Niblet, but something was different about her. She was standing very still and only flinched as Daddy approached her. I looked over Daddy’s shoulder and noticed Niblet had two tiny legs jutting out of her backside. She was trying to give birth.

Daddy knelt beside her and gently pulled on the legs. A greasy mound appeared, and Daddy laid it in the hay. It glistened like the fat grub worms I often found in Momma’s garden. It began to unfold like a newborn butterfly. Daddy eased it into the world with his callused hands and let Niblet know she had a son.

Niblet turned to lick the birth from the baby. Daddy used his blue handkerchief to help clean the tiny thing. Struck with the wonderment of what I had just witnessed, I stood with my back against the corn crib door until Daddy noticed me and told me it would be alright.

I approached the trio and knelt beside them. Daddy took my hand and placed it on the baby. Its fur was wet and warm. Niblet bleated, and the baby responded with a wavering cry. I looked at Daddy, and he smiled.

Daddy shut the door to the corn crib to keep them safe inside for the night. He said he’d come back and check on them in the morning. As we crossed through the barn and cautiously passed a rusted plow, Daddy put a hand on my shoulder, urging me to stop. I looked up at him, and he held a finger to his mouth, shushing me as if the reaper was sleeping. Daddy pointed to the barn wall.

I followed his finger to the left of us and thought I saw a rope hanging between the beams. It looped up and over and back down again, an S shape turned on its side. My eyes widened because this was not a rope. It was a copperhead snake. Its head was tucked behind the wall, and I was relieved it could not see me. My heart raced. I looked at Daddy and wanted to cry. I wanted to scream and run.

He knew this, so he picked me up and ran up the hill to Mr. Conway’s house. His pace was manic, and he seemed to share my distress. He knocked, and a shirtless teenage boy appeared behind the screened door. He was a pale, skinny boy with stray hairs sprouting like weeds around his nipples. He licked at some spaghetti sauce at the corner of his mouth. Mr. Conway approached from behind the boy, wiping his own mouth with a paper towel. Daddy apologized for interrupting their supper and asked if he could borrow Mr. Conway’s pellet gun.

Daddy told me to stay back, so I waited at the bottom of the hill with Mr. Conway and his son. He ran back into the barn as if he was a fireman rushing into a burning house. When Mr. Conway asked me if something was wrong with the goat, I told him she’d given birth to her baby. He was just about to ask why Daddy needed his gun when a loud pop stung our ears.

It was sudden and sharp. It was the rip of a firecracker, the kind that echoes across the sky on the Fourth of July. Crows darted from their roosts overhead. I threw my hands up to cover my ears, but it was too late. The invaded sound was done.

The farm fell quiet again, and we waited for Daddy to emerge from the barn door. After a few minutes, he appeared. He held the gun out in front of him, and the long snake was draped over the end, swaying like a flag in a gentle breeze.

He pitched the snake on the ground in front of us, the way a cat will leave its mouse at the door. The snake’s head, what was left of it, was a bloody and stringy mess. Its body whipped back and forth and twisted around itself. It had no place to go.

“It’d make a nice belt,” the boy said, picking it up and unwinding it. He draped it around his waist with the ease of a boy trying on new school clothes.

At that moment, in a cloud of fear and awe, I wanted to be the boy—daring and shifting into a man. I wanted to have the nerve of my father, helping one life into this world and taking out another. I wanted to be Niblet or her fragile baby, safe and tucked away in the corn crib of that barn, a kid, blind to the outside, dangerous world around him.