"I am not entirely confident," I said, "about having only one man between us and the caprine hordes. What if that man is injured, or changes career? Think about it, if the only thing that anyone says about you is 'He's that guy respected by goats', the satisfaction will eventually wear off and you'll want something more more out of life. So you stop taking cellphone calls. Then the goats respect no-one and there will be no holding them back."
"He needs an apprentice," Another Kiwi vouchsafed. "They should train a back-up. I can do that. How do you earn the respect of goats, anyway?"
"Beat them at activities they value," I said. "Much as Eric Stark won the fealty of the telepathic Northhounds by killing their leader the great king-dog Flay.""So with goats, you have to eat more underpants than they can?"
"I hope this is not leading up to a Keats-&-Chapman joke," I said, "with 'Chacun à son goat' as the punchline."
"Oh dear," said AK, hurrying away, "look at the time. I promised to help tigris pack the Cuvierian tubules into her costume for 'Come as your Favourite Holothurian Night' at the Old Entomologist."
10 comments:
The goatse only respects one man. Where is Substance by the wat?
Plumbing the depths of depravity.
A Buddhist site without a minimum of three resident monks cannot correctly be described as a wat.
...start counting
A warm night. A cold body. Two-thirds of a thatch roof. And a goat. A goat who only respects one man. And the law.
I like it: a new twist on an old Noir archetype.
When about a third part of the night had passed Grettir heard a loud noise. Something was going up on to the building, riding above the hall and kicking with its heels until the timbers cracked again. This went on for some time, and then it came down towards the door.
-- Grettir's Saga makes a lot more sense when you realise that Glam, the destructive entity on the roof, was actually a goat mis-translated as ghost.
Substance, when the wats fell.
It was late summer of '89. I was working on locating a cooker who had dropped out of sight with twelve pounds of pure crank dissolved in Everclear bottles. Trust me when I tell you this - don't drink that.
I had a 4" Colt Python in an Uncle Mikes shoulder rig, a six inch gravity knife in the back pocket of my jeans and a .32 H&R Mag tucked in my boot for good luck. I walked out of the back door of the Tiger Bar and across the parking lot toward the two lane blacktop, but was taken aback by a sudden rush of winos, back-country drunks, lost tourists and genuinely fucked up hillbillies running tits over ashcans for the bar.
"Whoa, c'mon, HEY" I shouted. When I finally detected some hesitation in the stampede I grabbed one particularly flabby example of drunken welfare consumption and shouted in his bright red face. "What the hell are you all running from?"
He dropped to his knees in abject fear, but all he could do was blubber over and over again "the goat, the goat, the goat" into a slowly widening pool of drool and snot. By conincidence, Drool & Snot was the name of the band that was playing at the Tiger Bar that very night. The universe is a mysterious place, man. Fucking mysterious.
Anyway, where was I. Oh yeah. The Goat. He sauntered up from the embankment above the 395 - you ever see a goat saunter? Son, lemme tell you, that is something you can NEVER unsee. I took an involuntary step back and drew the Colt. But there was something about that fucking goat. He looked at me with that flat brown goat-stare and walked on. I laid the front sight on his chest, just below his chin, but he just smiled his insipid goat smile and walked right up to the fat, blubbering hillbilly.
"God dammit, goat, I'll kill you where you poop, er, stand" I shouted, with a lot more conviction than I felt. But then I'd been convicted a lot of times, so that whole gig came kind of easy, if you know what I'm sayin. The goat stood stock still and gazed at me for a moment, then lowered his head and nudged the hillbilly with his thick curled horns.
And that's when things got REALLY weird. The goat looked up at me and sort of cocked his head to the side and said "What, tough guy? You gonna kill me? Maybe serve some kind of barbequed ME for dinner tonight?"
Wait. What? I've killed some animals in my day, but never had one talk to me first. Crap. Now what.
"Look goat" I said, and even I could hear the uncertain catch in my voice. "You back away from that stupid helpless hillbilly right now or I swear to, well, goat-god I'll drop you right here in the parking lot".
The goat carefully stepped over the prostrate, sobbing hillbilly and walked up to me. "You don't get it, do you?" he said with a goaty sneer. "I don't respect you." He half turned to the crowd gathered around and shouted "I don't respect ANY of you". He stopped, and walked back to the hillbilly. "I only respect him", he said with a kind sad finality, as if the realization of his unitary respect was hitting even him for the first time.
"But goat", I quavered. "Why him? How did such a pathetic example of human weakness earn your respect?"
The goat looked down, as if he was considering the question for the very first time. "Y'know, I'm not sure about that. His underpants did taste pretty good, though".
That was it for me. I fired three quick shots, the 125 grain hollow points turning his heart and lungs to soup. I put away the colt and took out the gravity knife. "Fire up the Hibachi, the goat's on me" I shouted to the assembled crowd, and even the hillbilly smiled...
That felt pretty good.
Thanks, smutster...
a new twist on an old Noir archetype.
Imma seeing it as a Melville movie, with Alain Delon as the Man whom Goats Respect.
Respect My Athouratie!!!
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