Chapter 21
SLOANE
The truck reverses through the gate just after four and Maggie stands a few feet back from it, waving the truck in.
The driver — a man in his fifties with a gray beard and mirrored sunglasses — has his head twisted around watching his mirrors.
He inches back. Stops. Pulls forward. Inches back again.
Hank is watching from the far end of the paddock with his one good eye.
"Bit more," Maggie calls. "Bit more. Stop. That's it."
The truck stops right against the paddock gate and the driver cuts the engine and climbs down. He stretches, pulls his cap off, runs a hand through his hair, and puts the cap back on.
"Afternoon," Maggie says. "Are you Don?"
"Yeah. Maggie?" He smiles when she nods, then wipes the sweat off his brow. "It's a hot one today."
"Sure is."
I'm standing off to the side feeling useless. This is not a situation I know how to be helpful in.
Maggie walks over to Don and they have a quiet conversation. He hands her a clipboard and she flips through it, nods, signs at the bottom. He takes it back and slots it into a pouch on the side of the trailer.
Then Maggie walks past me, disappears around the side of the barn, and comes back two minutes later carrying three folding chairs under one arm and, in her other hand, a six-pack of beer and a can of soda.
She sets up the chairs in a loose semicircle about fifteen feet from the trailer doors.
Near enough to see, far enough not to be in the way.
Don walks to the back of the trailer, slides out a metal ramp from underneath, and sets it against the open tailgate.
He unhooks the bolt on the rear doors and swings both of them open, then steps away from the opening and comes back to the chairs.
Maggie hands him the soda without a word. He cracks it open one-handed.
"Sit," she says to me, and holds out a beer.
"Are we — sorry, are we just going to watch?"
"We're going to wait. Could be ten minutes. Could be an hour."
I take the beer. It's cold and I immediately press it against the back of my neck because the afternoon has not let up and I've been sweating since lunch.
I sit down. I could probably make myself more useful, but I'm not going to say no to a cold drink and a break, even if the cold drink is a beer and I'm about to drink it straight from the bottle for the first time in my life.
Don takes the third chair. He takes a long pull on his soda and stares at the trailer.
I can hear them in there — a shifting of straw, a soft thump. I put my beer down and start to stand up to have a look.
"Leave them." Maggie gestures for me to sit back down without turning her head. "We don't want to scare them. They'll be traumatized enough by the trip." She turns to Don. "How've they been on the drive?"
"Quiet. Drummed a bit out of Tulare. Settled after twenty minutes."
"Any issues loading?"
"Not too bad. They're used to people — the owner had them from chicks apparently. Makes a difference."
"Good." Maggie leans back in her chair and sips her beer.
After a minute, the goats appear.
They come from the other side of the yard in a small group, four of them.
Beyoncé is leading. She's smaller than the others but she walks like she's in charge.
Derek is behind her. He's the one who headbutts things he doesn't approve of and I prefer to stay out of his way.
The other two are Lorraine and Patsy. Somehow I've learned their names. I'm not sure when that happened.
They line up, facing the trailer, and stare.
"The audience has arrived," Maggie says.
"Do you think they know something's happening?"
"They know everything. Goats are gossips."
Hank has moved closer and I've been around Hank enough now to know that when he stands this still it means he's seriously interested.
We wait while we sip our beers and make small talk. The best thing about Don is that he has no idea who I am.
"Does it always take this long?" I ask after we've covered several topics from the hot weather to the price of diesel and the fact that Don's wife makes her own sourdough and has won a ribbon for it.
"Depends on the animal. Horses take about fifteen minutes. Goats are out in thirty seconds." Maggie shrugs. "I don't know about emus. I've never had them."
"Is it true they can disembowel people with their claws or something? I think I read that somewhere," I say.
Don snorts into his soda.
"That's cassowaries," Maggie says. "Different bird. Emus can kick but they're not generally aggressive. Just don't try to pet them, don't corner them, and don't stand directly in front of them if they look agitated."
"Got it. Don't pet the emu. That was top of my list."
She glances at me and I catch a small half-smile before she looks back at the trailer.
There's a louder rustling coming from it now, and then a long neck emerges, gray-brown, with a small head at the end of it and a pair of beady and vacant eyes. The head tilts. Then the head withdraws.
"From the pictures, that looks like Louise," Maggie says.
The head comes back out, further, and I can see the top of a gray-brown back, dark feathers draped over it like a bad wig. The bird takes a single step forward, so that it's almost fully out of the trailer, and stops. It looks at us, at the goats, at Hank, then at the sky.
"She's thinking about getting out," Don says.
Louise takes another step. Her whole body is visible now — maybe six feet tall, with legs that look like they belong on a dinosaur.
She stops and stares at us again, and I feel a little intimidated. And then, without ceremony, she steps out of the trailer and onto the dirt of the paddock. She's enormous.
Hank brays. It's a loud, strangled, operatic bray — not his usual noise, which is more of a distracted grumble. This one has real feeling behind it.
Louise startles. She takes two fast steps forward and produces the strangest sound I have ever heard. A deep, thudding, underground sort of noise — thump, thump, thump — that vibrates through the air.
"The drumming," Maggie says quietly. "I can see how that was disturbing to their old neighbors."
The second emu appears. Thelma. She comes out quicker than her sister, maybe because she doesn't want to be left behind, and she walks straight up beside Louise and stops, and the two of them stand in the middle of the paddock, looking at us.
And then they suddenly start running, their ridiculous legs moving underneath them so fast that they blur.
They do a full circuit of the paddock in what can't be more than ten seconds.
Past the chairs, past the goats who look seriously confused, past Hank, who has backed up against the fence with his ears flat against his head.
Louise stares directly at me, and Thelma stares at Maggie. We all sit very still.
"What do we do?" I whisper.
"Nothing. We just sit here and let them get used to us."
Louise takes a step closer. Then another, her feet lifting high with each step like she's paranoid about mud.
"She's coming over."
"She's curious. Don't move."
My heart is hammering in my chest. "Maggie, I'm scared."
"Don't move, Sloane."
Louise keeps coming. She stops about three feet from my chair and lowers her head.
Her beak comes toward my hair. I hold my breath and close my eyes while she touches the top of my head with the tip of her beak.
Twice. Then she lifts her head back up, looks at me for another long moment, and turns around.
And she poops. On my leg. A thick, dark, wet stream of it, running down my shin and into my sneaker.
I make a sound that isn't a word. It isn't even really a scream.
Don is quietly laughing and Maggie has her hand over her mouth. Her shoulders are shaking and her eyes are watering and she's not even trying to hide it.
Louise walks away as if she hasn't done anything at all and Thelma joins her. They wander over to the far side of the paddock and start investigating the pool.
I stand up. The poop is warm and I can't say anything because there are no words available to me right now.
"Well," Maggie says, still trying not to laugh out loud. "She's marked you. That's an honor in some cultures."
It's running and I can feel every inch of it. I've never wanted to be out of my own body as much as I do in this moment. "Maggie, this really isn't funny."
Maggie pats my arm. "Okay. Okay, I'm sorry. I'll hose it off and you can shower in the house. I've got clean towels in the bathroom and I'll find you something to wear home."