Crew and The Goat Lady – Ch 1

Crew and The Goat Lady – Ch 1

Tanya Fischer

Crew is a strange, quiet man with “scary eyes”. At least, that’s what he hears everyone whisper behind his back. He doesn’t mind. Being alone is all he’s ever known. He works the cattle and the horses, minds his boss at the ranch, then beds down in the cramped bunkhouse and listens to the crickets sing until he falls asleep. Life was predictable. Until the day he’s sent to The Goat Lady’s farm for Christmas presents for the boss’s sons. There, he finds a scarred woman of indomitable strength and a natural affinity with animals…and she’s just as lonely as he is. They discover that their similarities outweigh their differences and that when they’re together, two outcasts can also have a happily ever after.

Author’s Note: This is a short story based on a character from “Letters to Dogwood“. It is recommended that you read the book first before delving into Crew’s story. I wrote this because it was requested by a reader and it made me realize that everyone deserves someone, even if they aren’t your typical good guy or hero. Love comes in all shapes and forms, personalities and quirks. And considering that Crew has a heart of gold, he definitely deserves someone just as quirky as he is.

-Tanya

Chapter One: The Goat Lady

The road to The Goat Lady’s house was a winding, treacherous one.

Jethro Crew steered his gelding left and right around washouts and gullies from the constant flow of rain that trickled down the steep hill the woman lived on. His practiced eye caught on her fences, noting how they were assembled with crooked tree branches instead of sturdy, milled posts. There was no barbed wire, just long branches braced and fixed together with nails and a prayer. This close to her shack at the top of the hill, he could see the herd of sheep and goats she farmed, clearing underbrush and nipping grass at the roots.

A herd dog lolled in the grass with only its head raised, eyes following Crew’s tumultuous journey uphill.

As he slouched easily in the saddle, wooed by the creak of leather and the occasional clatter of metal horseshoes against rocks, Crew wondered what kind of woman would stay on a hill by her lonesome. He understood the need for solitude. All his life he’d been alone, working other men’s farms, staying in a bunk the furthest away from other men. Other people found him strange ever since he was a boy. He wasn’t sure if it was because one of his eyes was a tad crossed or because he could go long stretches at a time without speaking.

Even Lucy Stone, the bravest woman he’d ever known, had shown an initial aversion to him. Her husband and his boss, Ben Stone, sure as hell didn’t like him. Even so, there was intangible respect between Crew and the Stone family. He didn’t know if it had to do with the gun he’d drawn on Ben’s pa or the evidence he’d burned in the form of frayed rope years back. All he knew was that he’d finally found a place where he fit, crooked and odd though his shape was.

Which is why I always get stuck doin’ jobs like this, he thought to himself wearily.

He wasn’t overly fond of kid goats or lambs. He didn’t see their use.

But Lucy wanted one of each for her three sons for Christmas.

He reckoned they were soft and pleasant while young, but they’d sure raise a ruckus around the yard as they got older. Especially goats. A more aggravating, impractical, mischievous animal he’d never met. Even as he thought it, a black billy goat with the largest set of stones Crew had ever seen materialized on the path before him.

Not only was the goat out of the fence, but the dunderhead had also managed to get his head and horns wedged into a wooden feed bucket. It walked several tentative steps up the path, struck the trunk of a pine tree, and stopped.

“Now, what’d you do a fool thing like that for?” Crew sighed. He unlooped his rope, gave it a lazy twirl, and sailed it around the goat’s smelly neck. As expected, the goat fought the rope, his bleats muffled in the bucket. “Let’s get you to your missus.”

After about half a mile, the goat stopped fighting, and Crew’s gelding’s ears finally quit pinning back. Smokey liked goats about as much as his owner did. Once they had traveled another mile, the trees opened into a clearing that showed a smallish barn, several paddocks, and a shack that looked more cozy than decrepit with its window boxes and smokestack. Rumor had it that The Goat Lady was a hermit on a hill, so ugly she’d turn you to stone if you looked too long and smelled just as bad as her goats. Crew didn’t put much stock in rumors, being as he was usually the object of them, but he was curious. Especially the more he discovered about the little farm.

Though the fences were rustic, they were sturdy and well-tended.

The shack was tidy, with no garbage or high weeds choking it. All the animals had round bellies and a healthy sheen to their hair and wool.

Curiosity growing, Crew dismounted and tied his horse to the front gate of the fenced pasture by the path.

“Hello!” he called. His voice wasn’t very loud, and he tended to talk slow. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Anyone here? Ma’am?”

When no one appeared out of the house or barn, he tugged the reluctant goat to an empty paddock. Getting the bucket off was a chore, and even though the sun was soon setting on his thirties, Crew had a strong pair of arms and broad shoulders. After several curses and a five-minute game of tug of war, the bucket came off. It came off with a wrench. Crew stumbled backward, and the goat rolled onto his great belly comically before he gained his feet with no little effort. As though offended, the goat shook his curving black horns and sauntered off to the other side of the paddock, eyeing the man warily from a distance as though it were Crew’s fault the bucket had gotten stuck. There was a trough of water in the paddock, so Crew left the animal to his own devices, shut the crooked gate behind him, and lumbered to the barn.

“Hello?” He wasn’t used to hearing his own voice, and hollering aloud was disconcerting. The barn door creaked when he opened it and took a look inside. No one was there.

Next, he knocked on the door of the shack.

“Ma’am, you in there? I’d like to talk about buying some livestock off ya.” Lucy had been adamant that he be clear about his needs when he arrived at the farm. Women alone got spooked easily, she’d warned.

It reminded him of the time he’d been helping out on the ranch with Lucy while her husband was away. She’d been spooked by him then, and he knew it. Sensed it as surely as he knew that one of his eyes was crossed and his feet tended to point inward when he walked. He’d been unable to help it. Mrs. Stone had been one of the toughest, hardest-working women he’d ever met. Admiring her from afar was all he’d ever done, but he’d still done it in a way that had her skittish as a newborn colt. He’d had no idea how to be…less.

Less quiet. Less watchful.

Less unnerving.

It wasn’t until she’d received awful news and had holed herself up in her room that her fear of him had slowly dissipated. He’d never been so scared in his life as she’d wasted away right in front of his eyes. Having never courted a woman, he didn’t know much about caring for one. He’d tried to make her eat, cared for the farm while she slept the days away, and even asked the foreman, Frank, what to do. And when Ben’s pa had come over making demands—and subsequently beating on his youngest son—Crew had reacted without thinking, drawing the pistol and running the old bastard off the property.

It had changed something in Crew. He had no longer felt like someone only half alive, a gray haze walking instead of a substantial man with thoughts and dreams of his own. It had been as though he’d finally had a purpose. Meaning. Seeing someone he cared about in distress and doing something about it had given him the pluck he hadn’t known had been missing. Staying at the Stone ranch and watching the family grow had been the most wonderful five years of his life.

And now he looked at this simple home with its well-tended livestock and felt a burgeoning, hollow ache inside of him. Why hadn’t he ever tried to buy a piece of land of his own? He had the money for it. What was stopping him?

Not havin’ anyone to share it with, maybe, said a snide voice inside of him.

“Aw, shut the hell up,” he muttered aloud, pushing away from the crudely made front door and rounding the house.

He’d give the farm one good look before he gave in and went back to the ranch. There was plenty of time before Christmas to get what they needed. The Goat Lady was probably checking her herd before nightfall. That’s what he would do if it was him.

Crew had trekked halfway along the perimeter of the backyard when he heard it.

Frantic, constant barking.

He took one step to investigate, then changed his mind. You never knew what situation could arise on a ranch where you needed a good, strong horse. Jogging back across the yard, he untied his bored gelding, mounted, and retrieved his lasso from around the paddock post. Smokey galloped with sure feet down the slow decline of the backyard, the sound of barking growing louder, its pitch high and frenzied.

Sure that it was another goat that had gotten in a spot of trouble or a sheep that had met its end with a coyote or a bobcat, Crew readied his lasso and tried to remember if he’d reloaded his rifle since the last time he’d hunted. Bursting through a copse of hardwoods, he found the source of the barking…but no livestock.

In a small clearing, a black and white border collie yapped incessantly at the ground.

Frowning, Crew slowed his horse and wound around stumps and scrubs. This area didn’t appear to have livestock. Despite the coming winter, the underbrush was dense and tangled.

The dog had seen him but didn’t abandon its post. Its barks continued but higher in pitch. Excited.

“What is it, dog? Whatcha got there?”

Smokey’s ears perked forward and stopped about ten feet from the dog. Crew’s eyes widened.

The dog wasn’t barking at the ground.

It was barking at a hole in the ground.

Dismounting, Crew drew closer, his steps careful. It wasn’t just a hole. It looked like an old covered well. The wood encasing the well’s entrance had rotted over time, covered in dirt, leaves, and shrubs. Something appeared to have stepped on the softened wood covering and fell through. He could see jagged edges of wood like a wide open mouth with rotten teeth as he crept nearer.

“What fell in there?” Crew asked the dog in mounting curiosity. Even his cow pony nosed close behind him. “What did you find?”

Expecting it to be a goat or sheep, the hairs on the back of Crew’s neck pricked when he heard a thin, scared voice from inside the old well.

“Is someone there? Someone, please, help me!”

To be continued…