Reading by Lightning by Joan Thomas

Parrots’ yard once and heard piano music coming from the house at ten o’clock in the morning.
    I couldn’t take it even if I wanted to, says Mrs. Parrot. It’s part of the chattel mortgage. So is that, she says, watching the men lift the cream separator up to the wagon the auctioneer is using as a platform. That’s the bank’s. It’s all the bank’s from here on.
    Hey! she shouts suddenly. The cream separator is covered with a sheet to keep it clean, and the auctioneer’s helper has just pulled it off. I’ll have that, she calls. That’s not the bank’s. The man folds the sheet neatly and hands it through the crowd to her and everybody laughs, and Mrs. Parrot laughs too, showing the gap between her front teeth and the little bud of skin growing down into it.
    Just then a dark blue sedan drives up past all the cars parked in the lane and pulls right into the yard, as though the driver owns the place. The driver gets out and slams the door, and I see it’s the new banker, Mr. Bates. He has a boy with him, a brown-haired boy about Phillip’s age in a store-bought white shirt and gabardine pants. Mr. Bates walks through the crowd as though he has just dropped in out of interest, and the boy follows him, and then the auctioneer’s chant starts up and people turn their attention back to him.
    While they’re bidding on the separator I go to look for the goat. It stands with a rope around its neck, tied to the back of the auctioneer’s wagon. It is
different
beyond anything I’ve ever imagined. It has an old man’s bearded face and sweepingeyelashes and a miniature oblong udder with two pointed teats sticking out of it. Its ears hang down like wide ribbons, and two narrow, fur-covered ribbons dangle from its neck. At the sight of its white eyes and their golden centres I feel a little thrill go down the back of my legs. I pick up a stick and touch the wavy hair on its back, and it flips a snowy flag of a tail and lets out a petulant protest. Phillip and our cousin Donald come along, and I do it again to show them.
    Keep back from him, says Donald. He’ll try to eat your dress.
    That’s not a billy goat.
    It’s a boy who says this, the boy who got out of the banker’s car. He’s standing right beside me.
    Look, it’s a nanny. He reaches a hand towards me — he wants the stick. I give it to him and he taps the udder, once above each tit. Anyway, he says, a billy goat would have horns.
    We drop back from the goat and stare at the boy, and he looks easily back. He has his white shirt and a barbershop haircut, a belt holding up his trousers instead of braces, his knowing about different animals. What we have is one another and our joint silence. Here, he says. He hands the stick to me and walks away.
    I see the boy again when they sell the piano. We’re in the house then, and I’m standing right beside the piano, and as everyone crowds round I reach one finger out and press down on the end key, in the slow way you can press a piano key so that it goes all the way down without making a sound.
    A Baldwin, says the auctioneer, standing with his hand on the polished top. One of the best. That’s cherrywood! You don’t see much of that around here. Made down east and brought in special by the national railroad. Look at the date on her, 1917. Those pedals are solid brass!
Perfect
condition. This piano will be a family heirloom one day. Who’s going to show us how she sounds? How about it, Bertha?
    People look cautiously around, but Mrs. Parrot seems to have vanished. Then Mr. Bates cocks his head at his son, and without any further persuasion, the boy walks up to the piano. There’s no stool to be found so he just stands, his sturdy back inclined over the keyboard. He puts his hands on the keys and pauses for a minute as though he’s listening to a song in his head. Then he launches in and plays a song I know from