Lookaway, Lookaway by Wilton Barnhardt

know what you’re doing—I can imagine.”
    Joey D: “Oh yeah, cuz? Just what is it you can imagine?”
    “Some frat boy shit. You pretending to screw the sheep or something for some dumb initiation.”
    Joey D was getting hot, but he couldn’t blow the arrangement this close to completion.
    “Heck,” Ryan went on, “I’d do the sheep before some of y’all’s sorority girls. Probably far fewer venereal diseases.”
    “Just let us see the sheep,” Joey D said, barely audible.
    Ryan used his key to open the basement door between the stairway and the sheep pens. There was a clean hallway with twelve sheep pens in a row against one wall. Third one down was Ryan’s pen; a clipboard chart was hung on a hook showing feedings and shearings. A removable cardstock label declared this was the pen of FURBALL .
    Ryan: “Now take your picture and then get gone. We’re already breaking a hundred rules being here.”
    Joey D now saw the difficulty of escaping with Furball. “Uh, could you give us some privacy?”
    Ryan stared at them. “You really gonna screw my sheep?”
    Skip Baylor cleared his throat. “It’s supposed to be an embarrassing photo. Like you said, a fraternity initiation stunt. You know, our mascot at Carolina is Rameses, a big, um, sheep.”
    Ryan mumbled, “Your mascot is a horned Dorset, this is a polled Dorset. Does that matter?”
    “Sheep’s a fucking sheep,” said Joey D. “No offense.”
    Ryan frowned, then turned and walked to the stairwell … before turning back. “But none of y’all are pledges. So who exactly is being initiated?”
    Joey D smiled. “Skip here. He was sick last year when he pledged so we don’t want anybody missing out on the sheep-photo fun.”
    Ryan frowned again. “Furball is my—and about five other people’s—senior project, Joseph. Nothing better happen to her or I can promise you a righteous shitstorm of biblical retribution. Can’t y’all just drink each other’s piss or spank each other in wet underwear or the usual stuff?”
    Skip and Justin hunkered down, waiting for the explosive Joey D response, but their Northern brother remained all smiles. “If you just give us ten minutes or so, Ryan. C’mon Skip, down with the pants…”
    Ryan crossed his arms. Skip, smiling weakly, began to undo his belt.
    “What?” Joey D asked his cousin. “You wanna see him in his underwear?”
    Ryan narrowed his eyes to a squint then left them to it. “I’ll be back in ten minutes,” he mumbled. “Try not to give my sheep genital herpes.”
    After Ryan was out of earshot, Skip whispered, “We’re never going to get her out of here—”
    “We’ll take her out that door. Grab her by the collar.” Joey D headed to the emergency exit, which promised loud fire alarms if opened.
    Justin pushed and Skip pulled on the collar, but Furball wasn’t budging.
    Joey D told Justin to run back to the parking lot and bring the van around to the emergency door; if he sees Ryan tell him, Joey said, “that you need some fresh air.”
    Skip had an idea. He got a handful of the green feed pellets from the pen’s trough and tried to lure Furball toward the emergency door. Furball happily ate what was held out to her. “It tickles,” Skip giggled, as Furball grazed from his palm. “I wish you could get a picture of this! Joey, look! She’s eating from my hand!”
    “Yeah, it’s an Animal Planet moment right there—look, I’m all teary.”
    Joey D’s cell phone rang; it was Ryan. “Y’all about done with your unnatural acts?”
    “Two more pictures, thanks!” Joey D sang out, while thrusting his middle finger at the phone.
    “I don’t wanna be washing y’all’s bodily fluids out of the wool tomorrow.”
    “Hey Ryan, fuck you, you know? I ask for a simple favor, cousin to cousin—”
    “Yeah, like that simple favor I asked for, that I come over to Chapel Hill for one little party? And you told me—what was it?—the girls would smell the barnyard on