Page 35 of She Autumn Be Mine

I turned toward the sound. Something big and shaggy and horned had split off from the herd in the front pasture, cleared a low spot in the fence like it wasn’t there, and was bearing down on us at a dead run.

“Jake, watch out!” My heart slammed into my throat.

Instead of diving out of the way like a sane person, the big Navy SEAL planted his boots, dropped his center of gravity, and caught the thing by the horns.

Man and beast went skidding across the gravel in a cloud of dust and profanity. I screamed. I may have grabbed the nearest weapon, which turned out to be the diaper bag. What was I even planning—to burp it into submission?

His parents stood there laughing.

“Oh, he’s fine, honey.” Dot waved a hand, bouncing Stetson, who shrieked with delight, pointing at the show. “That’s Macho saying hello.”

“Saying hello?” The two of them were wrestling in the driveway, Jake grunting, the goat’s back legs churning gravel. “It attacked him!”

“Just a greeting,” came a new voice. Jamie strolled up from the direction of the smaller barns, wearing half a beekeeper’s suit, the hood pushed back from her hair, tugging off a pair of long gloves. “Nice to see you again, Autumn. Hi Stetson.”

“Wait, you met them before I did?” Dot’s face screwed up about it.

Jamie mentioned meeting at the wedding, the two of them unfazed by Jake and the animal. Then the goat made a sound I can only describe as a happy groan and started rubbing his head up and down Jake’s shirt like an enormous cat.

“Hey, Macho.” Wrecked and filthy, he scratched it behind the horns. “Missed you too.”

I stood there with my mouth gaping wide open.

Dot explained, “Nine years ago, Jake came home on holiday leave, and we had a sickly twin, too weak to nurse. His mama rejected him. We’d about given up until Jake sat in the barn on Christmas Eve and bottle-fed him every three hours. He did that for two solid weeks, right up until he shipped back out.” She shook her head fondly at them in the dusty driveway.

Jamie added, “Macho never forgot. Every time Jake comes home, he charges him out of love.”

“I was just saying the other day, that goat mourns when Jake leaves. Stands at the gate for days. Isn’t that right, Mr. McCall?”

The man only grunted in reply.

“Isn’t he technically a—” I hunted for the word. “A ram?”

“Buck,” Jamie corrected, grinning. “Sheep have rams. Goats have bucks. But Macho is a wether. Means he’s castrated. Wethers are nicer than bucks.”

“If you call getting mauled, nice.” That’s when I felt the tug at my shoulder. I glanced down and startled. A white and brown colored goat with a long face methodically ate the corner of my diaper bag.

“Presley! No.” Jamie swatted her away, but the damage was done. “I’m so sorry. She’s our delinquent. Eats everything. I’ll buy you a new bag. No arguments. Consider it my first act as your sister-in-law.”

Sister-in-law. It went through me, so foreign, but warm at the same time.

“Go on with the tour. I’ll put Macho away,” Jake called.

“Yes. The baby has to meet our kids.” Dot led the way to a barn full of goats.

I learned more in a half hour about these animals than I thought possible. But the real moment came when meeting the newest arrival at McCall’s Meadows, only two days old, black and white, roughly the size of a loaf of bread, and with the cutest ears. Dot set Stetson down in the straw on his diapered bottom, before I could protest. The tiny kid goat wobbled straight over and pressed its nose to my son’s face.

Stetson laughed with an unstoppable belly jiggle that only babies have, and the goat startled, bounced straight up in the air the way baby goats do, which only made the laughter louder. The bouncing and laughing game repeated, seemingly with no end. I took a hundred photos. I would have taken a thousand just to capture all the joy in my son’s face.

“She needs a name,” Dot said, misty-eyed. “Stetson, honey, what should we call her?”

My son looked up at the assembled McCalls, gravely aware of his moment, pointed one chubby finger at the goat, and declared: “Ba!”

“Perfect. Bah it is.”

So my son named his first goat, and nobody in that barn thought it was anything less than official. Secretly, I hoped it wouldn’t be his last.

ELEVEN