The Adventures of William Neil Phaleenkanos { 2004 }
The stray goat had come one afternoon when Willy was young. It had knocked over the tin wash tubs, trampled most of the garden, dragged the washing through the mud, torn Willy’s best trousers, chewed open two sacks of sugar, and had stood placidly licking at it until Willy’s mother came home. She had shouted and chased and pushed and pulled, but neither her nor her son nor the neighbors had been able to get rid of the four-legged menace. In the ten years since that day, many sacks of sugar, not to mention quite a few lines of clean washing, have been altogether ruined by that goat. He never seems to be far away.
Willy’s mother turns to her son. Today is his eighteenth birthday. He waits, not looking at her or at the goat. “William,” his mother says. “Some sandwiches. And this if for you. From—”
The goat bleats loudly, and for the first time in ten years, Willy’s mother does not scowl or shout or throw anything at the creature in response. Willy takes the small, heavy case from her and puts it and the sandwiches in his rucksack. The goat bleats again and stamps his hooves on the dirt floor.
“Take that goat.” Willy nods, letting his glance fall briefly on the goat, who looks just the same as always: brown, hairy, and smug. “Go on,” Willy’s mother urges, grabbing a cloth from the sink to wipe sandwich crumbs from the table. She doesn’t look at her son.
Willy lets the door slam behind him. A few yards along the pebbled road Willy names the goat Confetti. When the pair get to the top of the road the boy turns and fixes the little thatched roof, the little crooked chimney, the little wooden fence around the little muddy garden, and the surrounding vine-covered trees where he loves to climb, in his memory. The eighteen years he spent growing up are over now, and by the time Willy and the goat reach the river, the view from the hill has already been forgotten. Willy now has to think about what he is going to do when it gets dark. His mother will not be expecting him back.
Willy walks close to the river. This is still territory he knows, filled with familiar boats, rafts, and children playing in the river’s wide, shallow, sandy curves. Sitting alone on a pier Willy eats one of his sandwiches. He takes out the case his mother has given him and undoes the clasps. The goat nibbles on Willy’s shirt as the boy pulls out a smooth wooden telescope, which sits in Willy’s hands and reads
-William Neil Phaleenkanos 1709 –
in small silver letters. The boy stars at it. After a while he puts it a way withough looking through it and eats another sandwich. Then, with one last look across the river, back at the clearing and the town and the hill over which he has come, the boy begins his way into the jungle.
When he was young Willy had been afraid of the deep jungle. The shadows are thick and humid, and the breeze through the canopy is restless. He steps carefully and shushes his goat. Confetti tears at the fronds of a fern with his surprisingly clean set of vegetarian teeth. Willy takes a moment to wonder how big the jungle is before he pushes past the heaviest undergrowth and loses sight of the sky. An afternoon passes with the scenery. Willy leaves behind nothing but footprints and sandwich crumbs in the mud.
The boy watches sunset from high in a tree. From this height the river shines a broken orange between the dark shadows of tangled vines and branches. The telescope remains in his rucksack on the ground. Willy is thinking; he does not notice the mosquitoes or the gnats. He does not know how far he has walked today. Stars appear and Willy is still thinking. He will run out of sandwiches tomorrow.
The boy climbs down and finds a bit of soft ground. Confetti has wandered away somewhere into the warm dusk. Willy tries, but cannot remember a time when the goat had not been around getting shouted at by Willy’s mother for whatever had just gotten knocked over or chewed on or dragged through the mud. Willy doesn’t know about the time his mother took the goat to the river and tied it tightly to the dock. His mother had wired the front gate shut and even mended the few loose boards in the fence, but in the morning the goat had been there in the garden, chewing on the radish tops.
Tonight Willy’s last conscious thought is a tentative hope that maybe the goat won’t come back in the morning, but Confetti’s left horn digs gently into his left shoulder and wakes Willy from a dream about some nameless girl. “Blasted goat,” he mutters, violently pushing the goat away. While Willy yawns and stretches, Confetti chews on the straps of the boy’s rucksack. The few sandwiches left within it are slightly soggy. His father’s telescope is shut in its case. There are bits of card, string, and a rusted corkscrew cluttering the bottom as well. Willy shoos Confetti away, eats two sandwiches, and tries to ignore the way his goat is looking at him.
...
Confetti appears to have a knack for wandering into the middle of lonely villages. Idle children feel urged to throw sticks and pebbles at the goat. None of them ever succeed in hitting him. Willy walks quickly, ignoring them all; his stride is long and he only slows once to nick the biggest papaya from the corner market stall. He leaves the village and climbs a tree to eat his last sandwich and the fruit. Later he will watch the goat wandering past beneath him and the children playing hide and seek in the ferns and vinery. A frog makes a few small, sticky hops along a tree branch. Willy puts his sandals back on at the base of the tree and walks back through the village, stealing two small coconuts and a handful of berries on his way.
The goat is never far behind. When Willy reclines against a boulder to enjoy his stolen fruit, Confetti breathes into his ear and bits clumsily at his lank hair. Willy pushes the goat’s hairy nose away. Confetti bleats loudly, contemptuously, and spends the rest of the afternoon chomping on various plants. Willy ignores him and licks his fingers, staring sleepily into the green blur of the jungle around him.
...
For the next two days it rains a slithery, incessant rain. During the downpoor all the villages are quiet and there is no fruit out for the boy to take. Willy has some money stuffed into the deep back pocket of his trousers, and he uses a bit of it to buy a hunk of cheese and some bread. This food does not last long, so, leaving Confetti picking at the mushrooms growing around the roots of a tree, Willy makes his way over the back wall of a house bigger than any he has ever seen.
The rain slows. Willy’s fingers have just closed around the base of a carrot top when a female voice asks him, “What are you doing?”
As he hesitantly rises, the carrot top breaks off in his hand.
“You’re ruining the carrots,” the voice accuses him. “Who are you?”
Willy looks, at last, at the girl. She is slim, dark-haired, and barefoot. He swallows and tells her his name. “Willy?” she repeats. “What are you doing in our garden, Willy?”
Confetti’s soft bleat suddenly fills the silence. The goat walks up to the girl and tears a few blades of grass from the ground near her feet.
“Is that your goat?”
“Not really,” Willy answers. The boy eyes the goat suspiciously and chews thoughtfully on the edge of his fingernail.
“Not really?” The girl looks from the goat to the boy and back again.
“Well, his name is Confetti.”
The girl hms to herself and runs her hand over the mottled brown fur of the goat’s nose, smoothing one pretty finger along his horn. “You’re stealing our carrots, aren’t you?”
Willy thinks about scaling the garden wall. The girl is stroking Confetti’s head. Willy doesn’t need that goat. If she likes it so much, she can keep the pest.
“Are you just going to stand there?”
Willy continues to stand there. He watches the girl’s small hands, her freckled arms, the close frills of her sleeves, and the smile on her face. It is a pink and playful smile.
Confetti bleats and twitches his tail. Willy does not move. The girl waits, watching him, taking in his messy hair and unshaven face, his wrinkled clothes and worn sandals. Willy wonders how old she is.
“Papa,” she calls, turning her head. “Papa, come out, there’s…” She looks back to find Willy has backed through four rows of carrots. Confetti clops over to the boy and tugs the limp carrot top from his fingers. The girl skips up the her papa at the door. Willy glances at the goat. Confetti looks blankly back at him.
“Hey, kid!” the girl’s papa has seen him. As Willy hoists himself up and over the stone wall, he hears the girl soothing her papa’s rage. It is too late for Willy to regret telling her his name. He shoulders is rucksack and walks quickly between the trees and undergrowth, hoping that nobody will follow. There are three carrots, and handful of green beans, and a potato in his pocket.
...
Confetti has not reappeared next morning. Willy notices this but wastes no worry on the goat. He climbs a tree and looks for the river, anticipating being able to find, somewhere along its winding length, a fisherman or two from whom he might steal lunch, or at the very least a line and a few hooks.
His tree is not high enough, or perhaps he has wandered too far from the river, because Willy cannot see it in any direction. The boy sits in the tree, his face drawn serious and pensive. Some minutes blow away in the wind before Willy retreats to the ground to take the telescope from the bottom of the rucksack. He turns it over in his filthy hands before making room for it in his pocket by transferring the leftover carrot and potato to his rucksack. The tree is easier to climb the second time. At the top Willy stands still, trying to unearth the horizon from its hiding place behind the edge of the sky. His hand grips the telescope in his pocket and he tries to imagine his father.
...
Confetti calmly nibbles the leaves of a beanstalk while the girl and her papa watch, whispering. The goat twitches his tail and bleats. The girl goes up to him, pats his head, and asks her papa if they might keep him.
“I don’t think so,” he tells her. Confetti is looking at them both with shining eyes and a mouthful of leaves. The girl takes her hand from the wet fur of the goat's head and steps back. Her eyes meet the goat’s and she shivers. “Come inside,” her papa says.
Confetti is now alone in the garden. There are no tops left to the carrots and no leaves left to the beanstalks when the goat stamps his hooves and walks past the woodpile into thin air. The girl and her papa never see that goat again.
...
Willy’s mother has never mentioned his father’s name. The telescope tells Willy it must have been the same as his own name, but nothing more. In this tree far from home, Willy puts the telescope to his eye and searches among the trees for a hint of glittering river water. Behind him rise the mountains he has never noticed. Confetti walks out of nowhere up to the base of the tree and silently eats Willy’s last carrot.
When the boy turns around, the sight of the snowy purple crags of those mountains will make Willy smile. His telescope will pick out a cascading ribbon of silver and his eyes will sparkle. When in twelve days he reaches the edge of the jungle, where the foothills come down to meet the canopy, his goat will not be far behind.
