Aftermirth by Hillary Jordan Page B

impersonations, because one day it turned on him and killed him. Butted him thirty-seven times. You know how I know that? Because he captured the whole thing on film.” She started rocking herself, sobbing, but as she went on the sounds changed, and the sobs turned to hysterical laughter. “There’s Commandant Cal in his desert fatigue pants and combat boots, standing in the goat pen with this big male with these big honking horns. Cal’s giving it hand signals,” Catherine made karate-chop motions with her hands, “and barking orders at it in atrociously accented German: ‘Achtung!’ ‘Setz!’ And at first the goat’s actually obeying. It’s paying attention, it’s sitting, it’s staying and going down on command, and you can see Cal swelling up with pride, thinking about all the money he’s going to make off his seminarials and imagining the look on Tiffany’s face when she realizes the gold mine she foolishly walked away from. Then Cal points to a stuffed dummy a few feet away and says, ‘Fass!’ which means ‘Attack!’ and the goat’s like Sieg heil! but instead of charging the dummy it charges Cal and butts him in the thigh, wham! And Cal goes down, flat on his back. For a minute he’s just lying there in a daze, and then he sits up and rubs his leg and looks at the goat with this wounded expression on his face. ‘What the heck, Billy?’ he says. ‘That hurt .’ And the goat paws the ground and charges him and butts him in the shoulder, wham! ‘Hey!’ Cal yells. He’s hopping mad now, his face is bright red and he’s practically got steam coming out of his ears. ‘Oh, you’ve done it now, mister,’ he tells the goat as he struggles to his feet. ‘You’ve crossed the line now.’
    Catherine stopped, gasping for air, laughing so hard she could barely speak. “Cal draws himself up and puffs his chest out, by God he’s going to show that goat who’s boss, and he’s shouting ‘Setz!’ and ‘Platz!’ and making his patent-pending Guard Goat hand signals. But the goat doesn’t want to sit or go down, what it wants to do is fass. This time Cal dodges it, yelling, ‘Nein, Billy! Nein!’ but the goat’s not having it, oh no, it’s trained too long and hard for this moment, and it butts him again, wham! And Cal goes back down. He tries to get up but he can’t, his legs won’t support him, and he’s sitting there hollering every German word he can think of. Meanwhile the goat’s in full battle mode, and it butts him again, wham! So Cal points his finger at it and in his sternest voice, pulls out his last-ditch ace in the hole: ‘Bad goat! Baaaad goat!’ Wham! Wham! ”
    It was horrible; it was funny as shit. Catherine was doubled over, and tears and snot were streaming down her face. I couldn’t help it, I started laughing too, and then Elena joined in and then George, and before long we were all howling and clutching our bellies. “Bad goat! Wham! ” Catherine cried, and I shouted, “Volkswagen! Wham! ” At which point it turned into a free-for-all: “Dachsund! Wham! ” “Frankfurter! Wham! ” “Lederhosen! Wham! ”
    Eventually we subsided, the howls turning into sheepish chortles that would soon fade into shamed silence; we could all sense it coming. Catherine looked like she was about to start crying again.
    â€œI read about these two guys in Ireland,” Elena said. “They were driving on a country road, going in opposite directions, and the fog was so incredibly thick and the insides of their windshields were so covered with condensation they couldn’t see a thing, so both of them had their heads stuck out the window.” She demonstrated, wrapping her hands around an imaginary steering wheel, craning her neck to one side and squinting. “And