Chapter 4: Goat Man

His Arkansas drawl was thick like rich molasses, slow and easy. Ezekial Patterson seemed ageless; tall, slightly hunch-shouldered, and he shuffled along with a slight limp. "Patch," as folks called him, was as much a part of the 300-acre river-bottoms as the fields, the willows, and the cottonwood trees. His best pal Purdy dressed all in black with a floppy black hat. Patch wore blue denim that went unwashed once he put it on new from the General Store. The jacket and trousers were crusted with months of grime from living among his milking goats. He once answered a discourteous remark about his laundry habits with a stern denial: "'Course I washes 'em. Ain't a summer goes by that I don't fall in the river!"

His fedora hat was shabby and sweat-stained. Sparkling eyes peered from under that tattered brim, set in a craggy face wrinkled by years of sun and work. Behind his eyes one could sense a sadness, a sorrowful secret. Graydon would learn that Patch had been in the "Great War" and had survived trench warfare and poison gas. He returned home never to speak of it, wanting only to forget. Patch abandoned his roots in the Ozarks to settle in the high Cascade Mountain country of the Methow Valley.

He survived on a small pension and creamery money. He milked several dozen goats out of a herd of more than a hundred, ran their milk through a cream separator, and once a week loaded the cream cans into a battered Model A truck to deliver it to the creamery in Winthrop. His pal Purdy usually rode with him to town. The spectacle of the two bachelors, one short and slight, dressed all in black; one tall and gangling, in grimy blue, was a "normal" eccentricity of Methow Valley life.

Patch was leaning against the cracked fender of his Model A truck, offering to sell Dee Johns three good milking goats and their kids for $35. It would be a strain for Dee's purse, but it was more than a fair price for good milkers.

"Missus Johns, you cain't go far wrong with these nannies. They're right good milkers, 'specially ol' Spot here. She's been givin' me near two gallons a day since she come fresh in March. An' that little Nubian she's about as good, but she's young yet. Give her another season and she'll be a top producer."

Dee considered how much milk and cream she'd get for her family, how much cottage cheese she could make, and how much cream she might sell in town. There would be meat, when they butchered the wethers, the castrated male goats. Every male kid would be "elastrated" to prevent musk and aggression problems as they grew. Few animals are as unpleasant as a mature billy goat. Patch kept one for breeding, confined to a high, strong enclosure separate from the milking herd.

"Thank you, Patch," she said, reaching into her apron pocket for the folded bills taken from her "cookie jar" in the kitchen pantry, hidden away from her husband's thieving fingers.

Graydon became a goat-herd and milk maid, charged with husbanding three milking nannies and their five kids. They'd keep the yearling nannies for milkers and in late fall would butcher the yearling males.

Spot, leader of the herd, wore a leather collar and a bell. The bell would jangle and her udder, heavy with two monstrous teats, would swing ludicrously between her back legs when she ran. The younger nannies gamboled beside her, bleating excitedly. The goats were in heaven at Dee's homestead, with rampant brush, thickets of wild roses, ditch willows, volunteer alfalfa growth, and Canadian thistle with huge purple seed heads. And, oh joy!, just inside the fence by the house stood a tall spray of yellow homestead roses. Spot's palate craved thistle heads and rose blossoms. The yellow roses were irresistable.

Spot nudged the yard gate open, wrapped her curling, grasping tongue around a glorious yellow rose, snapped it off and chomped it, rolling it around in her baggy cheek. Her eyes reflected pure joy. In moments she snagged and ate three more roses. Her joy was not to last. Dee came charging off the back porch with a broom held high overhead, screaming!

"Get away, you filthy beast! Get away from my roses!" Spot fled away through the gate, bleating indignantly, her udder flopping and swinging. She ran splay-legged in an ungainly, lurching gait. Dee ran hard at her heels, swinging her broom from side to side, swatting Spot's flanks.