Goat (6 page)

Part Two

The Star and Crescent shall not be worn by every man, but only by him who is worthy to wear it.

K
APPA
S
IGMA
C
REDO
,
Bononia Docet,
Kappa Sigma Pledge Manual

Ernest Howard Crosby, a brother and poet, wrote:

No one could tell me where my soul might be;

I searched for God but He eluded me;

I sought my brother out and found all three.

Bononia Docet,
Kappa Sigma Pledge Manual

5

AFTER BRETT AND I leave the interstate and take the Clemson exit, the tiger paws start. On the asphalt, footprints painted orange, five feet long, five feet wide, like monster tigers have walked there. I could lie down on them with only my head sticking over the edge of the toes.

We pass fields, cows bending to the grass. Some sit, and I remember what my father told me about sitting cows, that it means rain. But the sky is clear and bright.

We stop at a gas station called Tiger Mart. A square building painted orange, Go Tigers in black lettering above the doorframe.

Inside the store, Brett and I buy cigarettes. I stuff the receipt in my pocket because I’ve started to keep things. Mostly just receipts and change, but anything really. A glass bluebird from my parents’ house. A tiger cut out from an Exxon gas card. Things like that.

Outside we lean against Brett’s car and smoke.

Too hot to smoke, he says. He looks up.

Yeah, I say. Brett wipes his forehead with the back of his palm. Pulls the smoke. Drops it on the ground and crushes it with a foot. Looks over at me.

You ready? he says. He knows I’m nervous. And even though things feel okay between us now, they’re still different. I know he feels like he needs to look after me, but part of him is broken too. The thing that happened to me a year ago is his thing too. And he is aloof most of the time. Stays in his head. Speaks only when necessary. And even though he doesn’t say anything I can feel his apprehension about me coming here, his nervousness, the way he smokes hard, the way he turns his head down the road toward Clemson in the afternoon heat.

Sure, I say. I’m ready. Look down the road and squint my eyes. Brett pulls out another cigarette and lights it and I do too because that’s what we do when we’re nervous. Brett opens his door and gets in his car. Through the glass, the cigarette on his lips, smoke filling the inside of the car.

THE MONSTER TIGER paws are painted the whole way into town. We cross under a brick railroad arch, the trees on both sides green with summer. Brett tells me the weather in Clemson works like this: in the summer and into fall it is bone-hot, heat rising opaque from the asphalt, grass burnt, soil fired hard. And when fall is over, around late October, the heat stops and the hard cold begins.

When we get to Main Street, I know I’m there. Shops on both sides. Everything related to the school—Tiger Pharmacy, Tiger Sports Shop, Tiger Sports Bar. Orange everywhere—burnt-orange brick, signs, doors, walls painted orange.

When Main Street ends there’s an open field. Girls in bathing suits laid out in the grass. Shirtless boys throwing footballs and Frisbees.

Behind the field, the campus. Everything the same dull burnt-orange brick as the buildings downtown. A clock tower standing over everything. A right turn at the end of Main and a left past a soccer field, the football stadium called Death Valley. Lights at the top of the stadium like fists.

The stadium is called Death Valley for the obvious reason, it’s meant to be a fearsome place where teams come to play and leave bleeding, but also because a legendary Clemson football coach, Frank Howard, got a rock from Death Valley, California, and had it attached to a waist-high monument at the place where the football players enter the stadium. Told the players that they couldn’t touch his rock unless they came to send people home limping. Players rub Howard’s Rock for good luck and to remind themselves that they are there to inflict pain.

Cars everywhere, dropping off, pulling in, turning left, backing up, all at once. We pull into a parking lot. Find two spaces beside each other even though the place is packed. Everyone pulling things from trunks, picking them up, walking hunched toward dorms.

We get out and Brett points to a brick building.

That’s the back of our dorm, he says.

It’s three stories. Brett tells me these things: our dorm is part of six buildings, three on each side of a courtyard. We’re going to live on opposite sides of the same dorm. The first two floors and some of the third are all fraternity kids. Phi Delts on one side, Kappa Sigmas on the other. The third floor is a mix of fraternity kids and whatever other guys get dropped there. Fraternity dorms are all guys and sorority dorms are all girls. He’s on the first floor on the Kappa Sigma side, I’m on the third floor on the Phi Delt side.

I nod. Kids moving up the stairs carrying clothes, televisions, stereos, mini-refrigerators.

We’ll get our shit later, Brett says. Too many fucking people right now.

I can’t stop smoking. Neither can Brett. He starts walking toward the dorm, Daniel Hall, and I follow him.

IT’S MONDAY, THE day before classes start, and I’m in my dorm room. My room has tall wardrobes on both sides of the door. A window on the far wall. My bed on the left side. My roommate’s on the right. If I stand between our beds I could touch both if my arms were cut off at the elbow. My roommate has this loft thing that he made. It’s like a bunk bed without the bed underneath. Instead there’s a small futon and our twelve-inch television, a mini-refrigerator and a stereo. On each side of the window is a desk. Bookshelves on both walls, but no posters. My roommate’s this kid Greg I know from home, not someone I know really well, just someone who needed a roommate like I did.

I had to have a major so I chose Studio Art. Photography, painting, drawing, all that. I’m a junior. Brett’s a sophomore and he hasn’t decided what his major is.

But there, sitting in my room, I start thinking about being an art major, and how much all the supplies cost and how I don’t have that much money and I don’t know where an art supply store is so I decide art’s not for me. I also figure art’s not for me because I’m sticking with my idea about pledging Brett’s fraternity and I know it’ll take up a lot of time and all the art classes are three hours long two times a week and I’ve got two of those plus two other classes. Brett and I talked about me pledging Kappa Sig and he says he wants me to if it’s what I really want. I tell him yeah it’s what I want. Fraternity rush starts on a Sunday, in less than a week.

I GO TO the bookstore after I decide not to be an art major and decide to be an English major because the books you get to read look cool.

I have a friend from back home who lives one floor down from me in Daniel and he’s in Phi Delt and after I leave the bookstore I go back to his room and on his computer I drop all my art classes and sign up for English classes, one American Lit and one British Lit, and that’s all I have to do to change my major. I have to take three other classes. Geology, Statistics, Religion.

I go back to the bookstore and buy the books and put the receipt in my right pocket.

CLASSES GO WELL the first week and I like the English classes and the Religion class but not the other ones so much. I go home on Friday because I know it’s my last chance before all the fraternity shit. I’ve got to leave early Sunday morning because the first rush events start Sunday afternoon.

At home I sleep like the dead. I wake on Saturday and I have to get some new glasses because mine are bent from sleeping with them on. I get these small black-rimmed glasses. Keep the receipt.

After I get the glasses I’m at a stoplight. And then there’s a face against my window, a fist tapping the glass, and I know I shouldn’t roll down the window but I do it anyway, this guy says a ride, can I get a ride and the light turns green, all these horns blowing behind me, I say yeah get in, lean over and unlock the passenger side door. And I know I shouldn’t. I know it but there’s this part of me that wants to. This part of me that wants to be scared. Like I can fix everything if I do it. And he’s sitting there beside me. I don’t look over. I start to drive.

The man asks if I can take him up the street.

Sure, I say. Not far though. I have to be somewhere.

Okay, he says and then I look over at him. His hair is black, greased, hands folded in his lap like he’s praying. Got dirt all in the nails.

He tells me he’s a preacher and I say oh, yeah, I know about preachers, my dad’s a preacher and he says what church and I say Highland Park Methodist and he nods his head, oh, yeah, that’s a fine church, yeah, a fine church.

So have you been washed? he says.

Washed? I say.

Cleansed. Blood of the lamb.

Sure. I’ve been washed. We’ve gone a few miles, my hands shake and I know I shouldn’t have done this, it hasn’t fixed anything, and I don’t want to be scared anymore. I stop the car. Right there in the middle of the road. Cars blaring their horns at me. I keep my eyes straight. Hands on the wheel.

Get out, I say. I don’t look at him.

You’ll die, you know, he says. God just told me. You’ll die.

Okay. Yeah. I’ll die. Get out. I don’t look at him.

Fire. You’ll burn.

Get out. I look over at him. Get out, I say. He starts to open the door.

God punishes those who ignore his servants, he says. I’m his servant.

Get out.

You’ll burn. In a wreck. On the way home. I promise. You’ll end in fire. He gets out of the car. Keeps a hand on the door.

Fuck you, I say. Dirty fuck.

He leans back in, points a finger at me and I press the gas with him there holding on to the door. He falls. Crumples on the sidewalk.

On the way home I’m shaking and thinking about what I just did and how I was right to be scared, how it didn’t help, how people are fucked everywhere, how I got lucky and how maybe it’s just a matter of time before my luck runs out.

AFTER I TOLD Brett I definitely wanted to pledge Kappa Sig he seemed apprehensive, but he also seemed happy and thought it would be a good idea for me to be around some of his fraternity brothers before rush started.

At a lake off campus the week before rush, we went to a rope swing and took turns showing how unafraid we were to swing to its highest point, forty feet above the lake, let go, flail our arms the entire way down, crash with a sharp split into the brown water. There was a tree stump buried directly below the point where we would naturally fall. Someone had tied an orange life jacket to its branches so we’d know where it was. So we had to swing and pitch ourselves out past this stump to avoid breaking our legs. This one brother went over the stump headfirst. Landed with a thud. Seven times. Rose each time smiling, hair pasted to his scalp, skin slapped red and shining.

Sunday afternoon I’m at the first party of official rush after driving back from home early that morning. Brett standing a few feet away. Light from a small doorway falls in bright columns across his face and slight chest. His arms crossed, he is glowing and talking to a brother I recognize from the lake.

Everyone wearing name tags. And later, if I get a bid, remembering brothers’ names becomes the most important thing. Not just first names. Last names. Majors. Hometowns. Everything.

AT CLEMSON THERE are no on-campus fraternity houses, only dorms. The fraternity dorms are all grouped together in a quad. The sororities are together too but they don’t have a quad, just a bunch of buildings all beside each other, and this get-to-know-you thing on the Kappa Sigma hall just means we hang out on the side of our dorm where Kappa Sigmas live.

The Kappa Sigs serve finger food of the worst kind, pimiento cheese, ham, and barbecue sandwiches, plain potato chips, corn chips, tortilla chips and salsa, all piled into plastic bowls that look as if everyone here has groped them. There’s plastic silverware. Not white plastic but a more elegant, clear version. Bottles of liquor on the table. A few two-liter soft drinks. The table covered with a red-and-white-checked tablecloth. Two coolers of ice at the foot of the table. One laid open with a plastic cup for dealing out ice, the other shut, says Kappa Sigma Mountain Weekend on top in red and green letters.

Will Fitch stands with a boy named Chris Sample, clutches a plastic cup in one hand, fumbles nervously in a pocket with the other. Wiry tufts of blond hair stick out from the side of his khaki hat. He doesn’t look cool at all. Neither does Chris. He has his arms crossed over his chest, hands tucked beneath his armpits, he’s trying to poke his chest forward. Make himself seem bigger. No dice, I say.

Will and Chris look like they shouldn’t be here. Like they’re lost. I wonder if I look like they do. They don’t talk to anyone other than themselves. I dig out some ice with a cup. Trying to fix my own drink. I take Jim Beam and Coke, dabble a small amount of bourbon into the cup, quickly fill it with Coke so no one will see how little liquor I’ve poured.

MY BROTHER COCKS his head to one side, listens doggedly as a brother stresses a point with his hands. Brett looks over and waves me toward him.

I shake hands with the brother. He tells me his name is Ben Moore. He has three inches and forty pounds on me. He takes a sip of his drink and smiles. He swirls the liquid around. Rattles ice against plastic.

Pretty fun, huh? he says. I nod.

I can’t think of anything to say. Turn awkwardly to my brother.

So? I say, look at Brett, hope that he’ll get the conversation going. Ben walks away and begins to talk to someone else. Brett pulls me in close to the wall. I can smell the bourbon on his breath. Sharp and hot. I pull back a bit. He clasps my arm firmly at the bicep.

You have to meet these people, he says. Stares at me. I look away.

I’m serious, he says. Squeezes my arm. They aren’t going to let you in just because you’re my brother, you know? I mean it. These guys are funny about that stuff. Now go and shake some hands and make them want you, he says.