3. The GOAT
3
The GOAT
“Usually, the team that scores the most points wins the game.”
-John Madden
Dylan
“Is that a baby crying?” Coach asked. “Why do you have a crying baby, Callahan?”
“Uh, just a commercial! Got to go!” I hung up on Coach. I’d probably be doing laps until he was tired for that, but there was no way I was going to be able to explain a baby.
Especially not right after he’d made me promise to be picture-perfect and scandal-free.
The baby wasn’t as loud as I had expected. I had a little experience with toddlers, and they could scream. The baby wasn’t so bad. Or at least that’s what I told myself as I reached into the box and picked up the screaming bundle. In the process, I did figure out it was a girl.
She had minimal head control and her head lolled back as I picked her up. It didn’t seem to hurt her, but it did make her cry more.
“You can’t even hold your own head up?” I asked her, carefully tucking my hand under her delicate head. I had no idea how to hold a baby. I wanted to hold her at arms length, but she needed so much support I didn’t dare hold her too far away.
So I tucked her in my arm like a football, keeping her close to my body. She stopped screaming, but she didn’t go back to sleep. Instead she just stared up at me with big gray-blue eyes and a tiny rosebud mouth.
I had a feeling that this quiet wouldn’t last long. I didn’t know much about babies, but I did know that they needed food and diapers, both things a single twenty-seven-year-old man did not have in his house.
So, that meant I had to do what I always did when I needed something. I called my assistant.
“Hey, Alex, what do you know about babies?” I asked when he picked up.
“Do you have any idea how early it is?” Alex asked with an audible yawn. “I thought you were sleeping in today since it’s your rest day.”
I looked at the baby in my arms. Why did I get the sinking feeling I would never sleep again?
“Yeah, I woke up to work out,” I replied. “But, babies. What do you know about babies?”
“Well, when a mommy and a daddy love each other very much--” Alex started.
“I mean how to take care of one,” I cut him off.
“Not a clue.”
“Well, I need you to get over here and help me figure out how to take care of a baby.” I started to pace, keeping the baby pressed into my body. Her eyes did heavy sleepy blinks and I desperately hoped she would fall back asleep.
“Excuse me, what?” Alex sounded as confused as I felt.
“Just get over here,” I told him. “I’ll explain when you get here.”
Alex made it to my apartment in record time. He lived with his mom only a few miles away, but I was still impressed at the speed he got here.
“Why are you asking me about babies?” he asked, barging through the front door. We’d been friends since high school, so when I’d hit it big, I had hired him to handle all my day-to-day things. He liked it better than working at a regular job.
“Shhh!” I hissed at him, pointing to the baby in my arms.
Alex’s eyes went wide. He looked at the baby, then up at me, then back at the baby, then up at me.
“How do you have a baby?” he asked. “ Why do you have a baby?”
“She came in a box,” I explained, pointing to the box still on the kitchen table.
“Babies aren’t something you can order off Amazon,” Alex replied. He moved to the box, looking at it like it might bite him if he got too close.
I sighed. “No, her mom left her on my front door in a box,” I amended. “There’s a note saying that I’m her dad.”
“Shit, man.” Alex stared at me.
“Yeah. I know.” I sighed, but kept pacing. As long as I kept moving, the baby stayed asleep. As soon as I stopped walking, her little eyes would start to open and I figured she was probably getting hungry by now. Every time she woke up a little, she smacked her lips and looked like she was looking for something to suck on.
“I need something to feed her,” I told Alex. “And diapers. Baby stuff.”
“Okay.” Alex nodded. “Where do you think they sell that stuff?”
I stared at him. “You’re supposed to be my assistant. Where do you buy my food?”
“My mom helps,” Alex admitted. “She knows all the organic shit you like.”
“So you’re telling me I should be paying your mom?” I narrowed my eyes at him.
“No, I do the work. I put it in your fridge. I am also the one who makes sure you have clean clothes. Mom refuses to do your laundry.” Alex shrugged and I wasn’t sure if he was kidding about his mom and the laundry. “Also, I’m the one who hooked you up with the recruiter and got you on the team. And bailed you out of jail that one time.”
“Yeah, and you never let me forget it,” I mumbled. I took a deep breath. “I need you to get me baby stuff.”
“Sure.” Alex shrugged. “I’ll text my cousin. She has tons of kids and will know everything.”
“Hold up.” I crossed the room as fast as I could and stopped Alex before he could call his cousin. “This cannot get out. Coach has me on probation, not just for the dropping balls at practice but for all the bad press too. No one can know about this. I will lose my spot on the team if it gets out.”
Alex looked at the baby in my arms. She was starting to wiggle since I wasn’t moving.
“I don’t know how long that’s gonna last,” Alex informed me. “Babies are hard. And noisy. I swear my cousin Sheila broke windows with her crying. You don’t think anyone is going to notice you suddenly have a tiny infant?”
Panic clawed at my chest, but I forced it down.
“I just need some time. I need a lawyer. I need my agent on this,” I told him. “But those will both take time. Right now, I really need something to feed this kid. I think she’s hungry.”
“You know, I remember reading that goat’s milk is the closest thing to human milk,” Alex informed me.
“Sure. Goat’s milk is really good for muscle repair,” I replied with a nod. “My trainer is always talking about how good it is. Also, if we’re feeding her, we’ll probably need some diapers.”
“We?” Alex raised an eyebrow at me. “Are we co-parenting here? I didn’t exactly get to participate in the creation process.”
“You’ll help me unless you want to be out of a job,” I reminded him. “If I get kicked off the team, your salary goes along with my career.”
“Right. Cool. How many do you think you’ll need?” Alex asked. “Like, ten?”
I shrugged. “She’s tiny. We probably don’t even need that many right away. How many diapers could a baby possibly need? I only go through one pair of underwear a day.”
“Okay. Milk and diapers. I’ll ask my mom about baby stuff, but I’ll make sure she doesn’t suspect anything,” Alex promised. “I’ll be back in ten minutes. They have to have something at that new convenience store down the street.”
“Go fast Alex.” I looked down at the sleeping baby in my arms and knew that I didn’t have long.
I never properly learned the words to the Itsy Bitsy Spider. Luckily, the baby didn’t seem to know or care. But that’s probably because she hated my singing more than the wrong lyrics.
Alex had been gone for seven minutes and thirty-six seconds when the baby woke up. I tried to get her to go back to sleep with the walking, but she was done. She kept turning her head and opening her mouth like a little fish trying to catch a hook. When there wasn’t anything there to catch, she started to cry.
I tried rocking her. I tried singing.
She did not appreciate either.
My girl was hungry, and now it was becoming apparent, she was also hangry.
If I wasn’t sure of her parentage, that certainly helped convince me. I got angry when hungry as well.
“Come on, kiddo,” I whispered. “Please, just be quiet. Uncle Alex will be here any minute with something super tasty for you. Promise.”
She looked at me with huge blue eyes, then screwed up her face, opened her mouth, and started to scream.
“Come on, it’s not that bad,” I tried to convince her. I turned on the TV, but she didn’t care. She didn’t want football or the kids’ show with blue dogs that every parent seemed to be in love with.
“Well, your apartment has good soundproofing,” Alex announced coming in the front door. “I didn’t hear her out in the hallway.”
“That’s good,” I said, turning to greet him with a desperate hope.
So you can imagine my surprise when, instead of much needed supplies, he brought in a goat.
A real-life, hairy, white goat.
“Why do you have a goat?” I asked, the baby still crying. She didn’t care there was a barnyard animal in my house.
“For goat’s milk, obviously,” Alex replied. He tugged on the rope tied around the goat’s neck and pulled it into my apartment. “And I got some diapers.”
“How did you get a goat? We’re in the middle of a city.” Sure, Omaha wasn’t exactly New York City big, but it wasn’t the middle of farm country Nebraska either. I stared at the creature. It was a dirty gray color and about the size of a very large dog. The goat stared at me with devil eyes. “Also, are you sure it’s a girl goat? It has horns.”
“All goats have horns,” Alex replied loftily. He tied the rope around one of the kitchen table legs. “I’m surprised you didn’t know that. This is a milking goat. An Alpine goat, which is a breed known for their milking abilities.”
“The person you bought that from told you that, didn’t they?”
Alex deflated a little bit. “Yeah, but still, how lucky are we? What are the odds that I would find someone selling a goat right outside the gas station?”
“I should probably buy a lottery ticket,” I agreed. “But did this person show you how to milk the goat?”
The baby was still crying. I had no idea how to milk a cow, let alone how to milk a goat.
Alex’s face fell a little bit. “No. And I just realized I didn’t get any bottles. Do you think the baby would just nurse off the goat directly?”
We both stared at the goat, tilting our heads to look at her udder.
“It’s too big,” I said after a moment. “Besides, she can barely hold her head steady. There’s no way she could sit and eat off of it.”
“I’m sorry, man.” Alex sighed. “Not quite as amazing as I had hoped.”
“It’s okay,” I assured him. “We just need to practice. I’m sure all new parents go through this.”
“Yeah...” Alex agreed. He frowned, looking thoughtful. “I don’t remember Auntie June having a goat, though.”
“You got diapers?” I asked, changing the subject.
Alex held up a small plastic wrapped cube. “They didn’t have much, but they did have these swim diapers. That should work, right?”
“It’ll be fine. At least until I can figure out what to do,” I replied. I hesitated. “Have you ever changed a diaper before?”
“Do I look like I’ve changed a diaper before?” Alex asked me.
“You at least have siblings,” I countered. “I’m an only child.”
“Yeah. Older siblings,” he replied. He shrugged. “I could call my mom?”
“Do not call your mother.” I wished this baby would stop crying so I could think. “We’re smart men. It can’t be that hard. Human beings have done this for centuries. We can do it too.”
Alex nodded weakly, giving the baby an unsure look.
I took her to the rug in the living room by the couch and lay her down. She screamed even harder, her little fists balling up and her face going red.
“It’ll be okay,” I promised. There were little button snaps on the bottom of her shirt, so I unsnapped them and pulled up the cloth. The diaper she had on looked completely different than the one Alex was handing me.
But I was a smart guy. I undid the little Velcro straps and opened her very full diaper. Luckily, it looked like it was just pee and I made sure to tell Alex to add wipes to his shopping list. I wrapped the icky diaper up.
“I’ll go throw this away,” Alex said. He picked it up like it was a live bomb about to explode as he took it to the trash chute in the hallway.
The swim diaper did not have little Velcro straps. It was more like underwear. It took me a couple of tries to get her wiggly little legs into the correct holes, but I had her in a clean diaper in less time than I thought.
I could do this.
I picked her up. She was still screaming mad, but at least she wasn’t wet anymore.
“Okay, let’s figure out how to get you something to eat,” I told her, patting her back. She seemed a little calmer now that she wasn’t wearing a sopping wet diaper.
I looked at the kitchen, the open apartment door, and sighed. I did not want to be quoting Jurassic Park, yet I had to say it.
“Where’s the goat?”