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Hugging this baby goat is incredible.
Everyone should have the opportunity, at least once in life, to get happily mauled by one of these little guys. To look into dark brown eyes with long lashes, to hear the little sounds coming from his cute, smiling mouth.
Heissmiling up at me. I know it.
“He’s acting like he knows me or something! Did you see how he ran right into my arms?” I say as I stroke the little guy’s cheek. “You are something else, you know that? Where’d you come from, little man?”
“I think we’re about to find out,” Cole grumbles. He points toward the stairs we took earlier. The ones that come up from the parking lot.
A grizzled, stocky man with stringy-gray hair is hobbling up the last few steps. He strikes me as out of place, seeing as this is a yoga retreat. There’s no way he gets those stiff-looking limbs into yoga poses. He looks like if he tried a down dog, he might break a hip.
“Hey there!” he shouts our way.
Cole lifts a hand. It’s his silent, working-man-to-working-man wave. The kind he gives to any big truck that passes him on the road. Or anyone he sees in Silver Creek in a uniform of any sort, or in work boots, or pushing a dolly.
“Howdy, Sir,” Cole says, once the old man’s in earshot.
Why couldn't he have treated Skye with this kind of respect?
Probably because she didn’t have dirt on her knees, or calluses on her hands.
This old man definitely has calluses on his hands. I get that info for a fact when he offers me a handshake.
Then he pumps Cole’s hand up and down a few times. “Sorry to bother you, folks. I see you found the last of my load.”
What’s he talking about?
His watery eyes flick down to the precious creature in my arms. He gestures toward the goat like he’s pointing to a bag of cornmeal. “I been loadin’ up the hobby ranch down the road. Bought the place a couple of weeks back, and it came with a heck of a lot of animals that I gotta pack up and cart to new homes.”
“That right?” Cole says.
“Sure, but they’re a lot harder to get into a trailer than most anything else, I’ll tell you that much. I packed up a good lot of furniture in my day. You never see a couch get up and run off, I’ll tell ya that much. I’ve had a heck of a time gettin’ ‘em all packed in.”
“This one get away?” Cole asks.
I wrap my arms around the goat.
The little guy nestles into me. He bleats again. This time it sounds exactly like he’s saying, “Save me! Save me!”
“You got a rope or something?” Cole asks. “We’ll help you get him down to your truck.”
“We will?” I try to catch Cole’s eye, but he’s not looking down at me. Instead, he’s watching the old man pull a bundle of ropefrom one of the baggy pockets on his padded, patched, flannel jacket.
“Sure, do got a rope, got one right here. Thanks for yer help.”
“Olivia?” Now Cole finally looks down at me. “That’s not your goat. That’s his goat.”
“I—I know that.”
“Then why are you still holding him?”
“Because… because…”
Because it’s like eating cotton candy while riding a Ferris wheel, holding this goat. Or, waking up to fresh snow on Christmas morning. Or, that first bite of a sundae, when the chocolate sauce is still hot and it’s melting the top layer of ice cream.
“Let go of the goat,” Cole directs me slowly, like he’s a cop, telling a criminal to release a hostage.
So, I do.
