Giles Goat Boy (16 page)

“So you see, Bill, you got a momma and a poppa someplace; anyhow you did once. And it’s not any poor scrub-girl, that her boyfriend got her in trouble and she tried to keep it secret; it’s like you were found in a rare-book vault, you know, that nobody but an old grand chancellor and his viziers had got the keys to.”

A dismaying thing occurred to me. “Then Billy Bocksfuss might not even be my right name!”

Max patted my leg—which owing to the hard oak tabletop had gone numb to pain and love-pats alike. “It was the right name for you when I got you, boy, but it’s not your
real
one, the way you mean. You were an orphan of the storm, like me, that the student race made their goats. Your poor leg and foot were bunged up so by the tape-cans I didn’t think you’d ever walk, even if nobody stole you away or killed you in the play-pound. And when I saw what a fine little buck you were growing to be on Mary Appenzeller’s milk, I said, ‘Well Mary, that’s some billy we got ourselves,
nein
? And it shouldn’t surprise me he’ll sprout two horns to go with that hoof of his …’ ”

Now he grasped hard my senseless limb. “
Ach
, Billy, I tell you, I loved you so from the time I saw you, and hated so much what us humans had done, if I’d had one wish it would have been you was a
Ziegenbock
for real! I wanted you to grow a thick fleece and big horns like Brickett Ranunculus, and be fierce and gentle the way he is, and so strong, and calm, and beautiful … you never would have to hate anybody!”

Thus it had come to pass (he concluded with the same rue that had commenced this history and got lost in its unfolding) he named me Billy Bocksfuss, and swearing George Herrold as best he could to silence, nursed me secretly for a year, after which he gave out that he’d found me crawling one morning with the other kids in the play-pound and meant to raise me as his son. Among his apprehensions had been that the tabloids would make a campus sensation of the story, not a few of whose features recalled such legends as the founding of Remus College; but they had inexplicably buried the report in their back pages or ignored it altogether. Just as mysteriously, the Nursery School’s Department of Student Welfare from Infancy to Age Six, whose chairman was a famously meddlesome lady, had made but a token inspection of my circumstances; the officials had asked Max politely to fill out a few forms legalizing my wardship and subsequently ignored us. With an uneasy kind of relief, then, Max had found himself free, to all appearances, to make a choice more difficult than the original “adoption”:

“Every day I looked at the human school-kids that visited the barns,” he said; “they were good children, pretty children, full of passions and curiosity: I’d ask one who he was, and he’d say ‘I’m Johnny So-and-so, and my daddy’s a gunner in the NTC Navy, and when I grow up I’m going to be a famous scientist and EAT the Nikolayans.’ Then I’d ask Brickett Ranunculus, that was just a young buck then, ‘Who are you?’ and he’d twitch one ear and go on eating his hay. There it all was, Bill. On one side, the Nine Symphonies and the Twelve-Term Riot; Enos Enoch and the Bonifacists! On the other side, Brickett Ranunculus eating his mash and not even knowing there’s such a thing as knowledge. I’d watch you frisking with Mary’s kids, that never were going to hear what
true
and
false
is, and then I’d look at the wretchedest man on campus, that wrote
The Theory of the University
and loves every student in it, but killed ten thousand with a single Brainwave! So! Well! I decided my Bill had better be a goat, for his own good, he should never have to wonder who he is!”

Max’s long speech closed with such abruptness, was itself the end of so mattersome a history, I did not at first understand that he was done. But he set his mouth resolutely, closed his eyes, and stroked their brows with his thumb and index-finger. The hall was silent and still duskish—though
outside the solstice midday must have been blazing. I could hear again the fountain chortling near the door. Poor Redfearn’s Tommy, he was not forgotten, his corpse lay as large in my thoughts as in his pen—but it was bestrid gladiatorlike by a vaster fact, which wanted just this gurgled quiet fully to see. I raised myself up as far as I could without waking my legs.

“Then I’m not a goat? My sire and dam were both human people?”

As at the outset, Max replied only, “Forgive, forgive, Billy!”

“All this time I’ve been a human student, and didn’t know it!”

“Ja ja.”
Max was down on his knees now, so that all I could see of him was his old forehead pressed against the table-edge. “I should’ve seen what it would come to. But forgive, Billy!”

Alas, his revelations so possessed me, it was some moments until I noticed his misery. Then I leaned quickly to shower benedictions upon his hair. Still I couldn’t share his tears; half a score of inferences and conjectures importuned me. Distinguished human parents! Dark intrigues in the highest places to destroy and save me! Rescued to
Pass All Fail All!

As if summoned by these astonishments my rescuer himself now hove into view, sweeper in hand. “Y’all go ’long now,” he ordered us with a grin. “I got to sweep this here table off.”

That frizzled head, those great eyes, yellow-white, that had on first behold so frightened me—quite kindly they seemed now. And his gentle madness, it plucked at my heart.

“Five minutes yet,” Max pled, rising. “I call for a wheelchair and fetch this boy to the Infirmary.”

But I insisted I could manage. “I’m going to stand up and walk.”

“Nah, Bill!” He made to stay me, but I gestured him off and swung half-around to sit on the table-edge, my legs hanging over. They pained sharply—not from their first deforming nor yet from Redfearn’s Tommy’s charge, but from the course of fresh blood that began to wake them. When I slipped myself off they buckled, and I was obliged to grasp the table for support.

“Too much at once,” Max protested. “A little time yet!”

But I could not bear resorting to my old lope. For all the shocks that ran from hip to toe, I could flex the muscles once again, and was determined they must bear my weight from that hour on.

“Give me a hand, George.”

“Yes,
sir
.” George Herrold readily put down his sweeper and supported me under one arm. “Y’all want to lay down,” he scolded cheerfully,
“you do it in the dormitory where you s’posed to, not in my stacks.”

“I will from now on,” I said.

His face still anxious, Max braced me from the other side, and I stood off from the table. The most difficult thing was to straighten my knees, which fourteen years of my former gait had crooked. But it was they, and my inner thighs, that Tom had struck, and I choose still to believe his blow was like a hammer’s on a rusted hinge, to free the action. In any case I got them straight.

“You can let go now.”

George Herrold did at once, with a chuckle, and stepped back. Max hesitated, stayed it may be by the sweat of excitement on my face; yet I had only to glance at him, and he too released me. As I had twice with Lady Creamhair and once alas before Redfearn’s Tommy, I stood erect—but this time I didn’t fall. A very paroxysm of unsteadiness shook me, surely I must keel; Max stood ready to spring to my aid. I so far compromised my aim as to rest one hand on George Herrold’s shoulder. But I didn’t fall.

“He good as new,” my rescuer scoffed. “Ain’t nothing wrong with this chile.”

Max clapped his hands together. “Billy Bocksfuss! Look at you once now!”

It was a gleesome thrill, this
standing;
my heart ran fast as when I’d teetered on those barrels in the play-pound. But at my name I felt displeasure, like a pinch. Breathlessly I said, “I don’t want to be a
Billy
now, or a
Bocksfuss
, either one! I’m going to be a human student.”

“
Ja ja
, you got to have a new name! What we do, we find a good name for you. Ay, Bill!” In the access of his joy Max embraced me around my chest and came near to upsetting me—but I did not fall. It surprised me to observe how short a man he was, now I was standing straight: I was a whole head taller! Many things, indeed, that I had until then necessarily looked up to I found myself regarding now as from an eminence; the perspective put me once more in mind of my short reign as Dean of the Hill.

“I’m going to learn everything!” I cried. “I want you to teach me all I have to know, and then I’m going to be a student in New Tammany College! And you know what I’m going to do, Max? I’m going to find out where WESCAC’s den is, and I’ll say, ‘Where’s my mother and father? What have you done with them?’ And he’d better give me the right answer, or by George I’ll eat
him
up!”

Max shook his head happily. “Such talk!”

Perhaps thinking I’d referred to him, George Herrold struck up his favorite warning:
“It’s WESCAC’ll EAT you if you don’t watch out …”

“You’ll see!” I gaily promised.

Max let go me and furrowed his brow. “Say now, Billy! I just thought something!”

He was struck with wonder that a certain question had not occurred to him until that instant—one which well might have long since to any auditor of this history. But as it had required him fourteen years to think of it, so seven more were to pass before ever it got asked—and I fear it has not been answered to this day. I cut him off at the mention of my name.

“Not
Billy
any more! Billy Bocksfuss is dead in the goat-pens.” The latter words, an inspiration of the moment, it gave me an unexpected stir of pleasure to pronounce.

Max laughed. “So what should I call you?” He reminded me that none of us knew what my proper family-name was, but he saw no reason why I shouldn’t get by without one for the present. If in the meanwhile I desired a new given-name, he’d be glad to help me choose one. The goats, I knew, were named by a strict genealogical procedure, but I had no idea how humans went about their own nomination.

“Well, the Moishians anyhow,” Max said, “they call their sons by the last man that died in the family, so his name don’t die too.” He said this lightly, but it turned our thoughts together to my dead friend, inasmuch as in goatdom we all had been brothers.

“You want to be a Tommy, boy?”

I shook my head: the burden were too painful—and besides, noble Tom had been after all … a goat. For similar cause I rejected
Max III
, after my keeper’s father: however dignified, even dynastic, the air of such numerals in studentdom, to my mind they still suggested prize livestock.

George Herrold the booksweep here lost interest both in our discussion and in my swaying stance; he returned to his machine, humming some tune for his own entertainment. I followed him with my eyes. After a moment Max said from behind, “
Ja
, I raised you; but that George Herrold, what you might say, he brought you into this campus.”

I turned to him with a smile. “
George
is a good name, isn’t it?”

“A fine name,” Max agreed. “There’s been famous Georges.” Presently
he added, “His wife left him since he was EATen. I don’t think he ever had any kids.”

“If nobody minds,” I said, “I want to be called George from now on.”

Max nodded. “That’s good as you could do.”

I found myself then unspeakably fatigued, and proposed we go home. Standing was one thing, walking another; Max fetched George Herrold to help, but even with their joint support I got no farther than the drinking-fountain before I was exhausted. Still I refused to go on all fours.

“So let your namesake carry you,” Max suggested. And when I was fetched up in the black man’s arms he said, “Now wait: I do something important.” He wet his fingers at the running fountain. “When the Enochists name a child,” he said soberly, “they take it to a Founder’s hall and spritz some special water on its head; and they say a thing like
Dear Founder please drive out the old goat from this kid, and keep the Dean o’ Flunks off him, and help him pass the Finals and sit with you and Enos Enoch on Founder’s Hill for ever and ever
. Well, so, this is just good drinking-water here, and instead of a Founder’s hall we got a library. With a crazy
Schwarzer
for your Founder-father and a tired old Moishian for your chaplain. So this won’t be a regular Enochizing; what you might say, I’m going to
Maximize
you.”

So saying he declared to the empty stacks: “This kid he’s not a goat any more, but a human student. Let suffering make him smart, that’s all I care.” His voice rose: “By all the Grand Tutors, true ones and fakes, that ever made students miserable; by everything that suffers—Moishians and
Schwarzers
and billygoats and the whole flunking student body—I dub you once
George
, you should Pass All Fail All.”

The clock in far-off Tower Hall happening just at this point to strike the hour of one (but we were on Daylight Saving Time), he touched waterdrops to my brow. We three then stepped into shadowless midday, my namesake singing as he bore me:

Seven years I spent a-prepping—where did they fly? It is an interval in my history far from clear. As those unlettered hordes of old swept down on the halls of Remus College and were civilized by what they sacked, so vandal youth must bring forever the temple of its heritage to rubble, and turning then the marble shatters in its hand, commence to wonder and grow wise, regret its ignorance, and call at last for mortarbox and trowel. Just such a reconstruction was that account of my earliest years, whose cracks and plaster-fills will not have escaped the critical; and such another must I render now of my education, like an archaeologist his lost seminaries of antiquity, from its intellectual residue. Certain events unquestionably took place at certain times: Mary V. Appenzeller, for instance, empty of udder and full of years, Commenced to greener pastures not a month after Redfearn’s Tommy—peace of mind be eternally hers, who gave me the only and lovingest mothering I knew. These are my bench-marks, the footers and standing columns of past time’s ruin. The rest I reimagine from the shards of Max’s teaching that remain to me—altered, I do not doubt, by passage of time, by imperfect excavation, and by my own notions of how things should have been. Even so are the sayings of Maios known to us only through the dialogues of his pupil Scapulas, and the deeds of Enos Enoch through the reminiscences (by no means indiscrepant) of his protégés. What I may want in fidelity of reproduction, let good faith and earnestness
atone for, accepting too this special extenuation: that for reasons presently to be made manifest there is fitness, even significance, in the obscurity of this period and the consequent vagueness of my accounting.