I take the beer. It's cold and I immediately press it against the back of my neck because the afternoon has not let up and I've been sweating since lunch. I sit down. I could probably make myself more useful, but I'm not going to say no to a cold drink and a break, even if the cold drink is a beer and I'm about to drink it straight from the bottle for the first time in my life.
Don takes the third chair. He takes a long pull on his soda and stares at the trailer.
I can hear them in there — a shifting of straw, a soft thump. I put my beer down and start to stand up to have a look.
"Leave them." Maggie gestures for me to sit back down without turning her head. "We don't want to scare them. They'll be traumatized enough by the trip." She turns to Don. "How've they been on the drive?"
"Quiet. Drummed a bit out of Tulare. Settled after twenty minutes."
"Any issues loading?"
"Not too bad. They're used to people — the owner had them from chicks apparently. Makes a difference."
"Good." Maggie leans back in her chair and sips her beer.
After a minute, the goats appear.
They come from the other side of the yard in a small group, four of them. Beyoncé is leading. She's smaller than the others but she walks like she's in charge. Derek is behind her. He's the one who headbutts things he doesn't approve of and I prefer to stay out of his way. The other two are Lorraine and Patsy. Somehow I've learned their names. I'm not sure when that happened.
They line up, facing the trailer, and stare.
"The audience has arrived," Maggie says.
"Do you think they know something's happening?"
"They know everything. Goats are gossips."
Hank has moved closer and I've been around Hank enough now to know that when he stands this still it means he's seriously interested.
We wait while we sip our beers and make small talk. The best thing about Don is that he has no idea who I am.
"Does it always take this long?" I ask after we've covered several topics from the hot weather to the price of diesel and the fact that Don's wife makes her own sourdough and has won a ribbon for it.
"Depends on the animal. Horses take about fifteen minutes. Goats are out in thirty seconds." Maggie shrugs. "I don't know about emus. I've never had them."
"Is it true they can disembowel people with their claws or something? I think I read that somewhere," I say.
Don snorts into his soda.
"That's cassowaries," Maggie says. "Different bird. Emus can kick but they're not generally aggressive. Just don't try to pet them, don't corner them, and don't stand directly in front of them if they look agitated."
"Got it. Don't pet the emu. That was top of my list."
She glances at me and I catch a small half-smile before she looks back at the trailer.
There's a louder rustling coming from it now, and then a long neck emerges, gray-brown, with a small head at the end of it and a pair of beady and vacant eyes. The head tilts. Then the head withdraws.
"From the pictures, that looks like Louise," Maggie says.
The head comes back out, further, and I can see the top of a gray-brown back, dark feathers draped over it like a bad wig. The bird takes a single step forward, so that it's almost fully out of the trailer, and stops. It looks at us, at the goats, at Hank, then at the sky.
"She's thinking about getting out," Don says.
Louise takes another step. Her whole body is visible now — maybe six feet tall, with legs that look like they belong on a dinosaur.
She stops and stares at us again, and I feel a little intimidated. And then, without ceremony, she steps out of the trailer and onto the dirt of the paddock. She's enormous.
Hank brays. It's a loud, strangled, operatic bray — not his usual noise, which is more of a distracted grumble. This one has real feeling behind it.
