Meanwhile, the goat farmer was now in a struggle that the goat was losing only by virtue of being slowly dragged towards the edge of the counter, which made Baz feel somewhat better.
“Fortinbras, you have one hoof in the glue factory if you don’t cut it out,” the goat farmer growled between her teeth.
Fortinbras started nibbling on her sleeve.
“Do goats mind being picked up?” Baz asked her, zipping his jeans. They were damp. He tried not to think about that too much.
“Not if they’re used to it, which most of mine are when they’re young, but this one’s probably about a hundred and twenty pounds. So basically, sure, if you can pick him up, be my guest.”
He wasn’t exactly sure how to pick up a goat, but he tried putting one arm around the goat’s chest and scooped the other under its hind end. The goat looked astonished enough that it gave only a token struggle, at least at first. By the time it started actually kicking, he had it outside. The other goats trooped along behind as if this was the most exciting thing they’d ever seen, aided by the goat farmer tapping them with the stick now and then. Arden trailed at one side, looking amused and occasionally reaching out to give a goat a cautious pat.
Baz half-lowered and half-dropped the goat, which was now struggling in earnest, in the street. The goat farmer reached behind her to close the door now that all of the goats (Baz hoped) were out.
“You’re strong,” she said, inspecting his muscles.
Baz revised his guess of her age considerably downward now that he saw her in the sunshine. Her hair, down to her shoulders, was silvery white, so he had just assumed from that and her distinctly offbeat fashion sense that she was older. But her face was almost unlined; she was either prematurely gray, or she had done that silver fashion dye thing that he had never understood.
A small swarm of goats—a herd? a flock? a murder?—was dispersed among the houses, chewing on grass. Baz found it difficult to count them because they were in constant motion. He guessed there were about twelve or fifteen of them, all sizes ranging from large and leggy to very small and round.
Baz wondered if complimenting a woman on her goats would sound like a bizarre pick-up line. Anyway, he only had eyes for Arden. It felt even more awkward to stand here without saying anything, though.
“You have a lot of goats,” he offered.
She pointed wordlessly at her shirt.
“Right,” Baz muttered. He pushed away Fortinbras, who was now trying to nibble on the bottom edge of his T-shirt.
“They’re not going to hurt you,” the goat lady said. “They’re friendly.”
“A little too friendly,” Baz muttered, pushing Fortinbras away again. “Er, not to be rude, but did I miss some kind of scheduled goat maintenance visit or something?”
“No, I just bring them here when the weeds are getting high. I have an arrangement with the property owners. That is, the previous owners.” She gave him a sharp look from under her hat. “Are you the new owner?”
“Yeah. Co-owner,” he clarified. “I meant to come down and talk to you when I got a chance.”
“Then I guess it’s good I came up to you.” She said it firmly, unsmiling; Baz’s smile, having assumed she was being friendly, withered and died on the vine as she went on talking. “I’m Elvy. They call me Elvy the Goat Lady.”
“Can’t imagine why,” Arden said under her breath, coming up beside him leading the small goat with a finger hooked into its collar.
There was a delighted squeal from across the street. “Baby goats!”
Fern came running, barefoot, long skirt swishing and her mass of red hair still pulled up under the antique silk kerchief that she wrapped it in while she slept. (She had once told Baz that it helped prevent her hair from becoming unmanageably tangled in the night. He thought it made her look even more like an old-time pioneer housewife than she normally did.)
Heedless of the dirt on her feet and her long skirt, Fern dropped to her knees in front of two of the small goats. One of them promptly tried to climb into her lap.
“They’re not babies, they’re pygmy goats,” Elvy said. “Nigerian dwarf goats, to be specific. The others are mostly Nubians with a few Boers.” She pointed with the stick. “That’s a Boer.”
It was a weird-looking goat even by goat standards, oddly proportioned with a low-slung body, a truncated-looking face, and a thick, long beard that sprouted from a small area under its chin and made Baz think of his uncle’s old ZZ Top albums.
The Nubians, including the one that had been on his countertop, were long-legged goats with floppy ears and a variety of coat colors, mostly splotched brown, black, and white. They looked basically just like what Baz imagined a goat would look like. His actual experience with goats was pretty minimal,since his clan ranched cattle. Horses and cattle and sometimes even sheep, he could deal with. Goats were a new experience.
Which reminded him that he knew nothing about Elvy’s situation, other than the fact that she owned the goat farm.
“Do you get paid for this?” he asked Elvy. “That is, do we owe you anything?”
Elvy shook her head. “The arrangement that I had with the previous owner is that I get unlimited free grazing in exchange for keeping the brush down and occasionally having a look to make sure nobody was trying to squat here or loot the place. I could tell someone was staying over here, so that was one reason why I decided to bring the goats over and find out if it was the new owners or someone else.”
Baz carefully did not look at Arden. “Well, now you’ve met us,” he said.
