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When they come home the left shoe does not fit but the right does. The left shoe has shrunk, perhaps from embarrassment. Never mind, call the store. The number is no longer in service, a recording sympathizes and advises checking the number and trying the call again, ultimately to no purpose. Meanwhile the right shoe is perfect, they both look wonderful, it's a shame. The right shoe begins to sob, it's not its fault, but they are a team, it's a shame. Never mind, put them out of their misery. Down to the poorly lit basement, down to the even more poorly lit sub-basement. There the mangy goat waits. It does not know the meaning of second guesses. It has always uncomplainingly consumed the disappointments brought to it. No one remembers—and no on tries to remember—when the goat was first discovered there, tethered beneath the single dim bulb, or even a time when the goat has not been there, devouring the castoffs. What do those people down in the shabby trailers do? Surely they cannot have a sub-basement, and so they must live with their disappointments, which mutely wail all through the nights. Do you know, life is not very fair.
Then comes the day when a man from a government office calls to inspect the goat. Not just gumption, a real invasion of privacy. Of course he is told to mind his own so-called business and of course he says that's just what he's doing. He has cards and documents and an attache case and a head that does not move. Well, what would you do, bureaucrats are like a force of nature sometimes. Down to the poorly lit basement, all the while letting him know that this is unheard of, unnecessary, and down to the even more poorly lit sub-basement, him all the while silent to all this indignation, and there—not a goat, no goat at all, none in evidence, the dim bulb swaying above and the tether loose upon the clay below.
It is impossible to say from which direction the response first comes: where is; where have you hidden; who could have; know for a fact you have in your possession; always been right here; not to toy with the inspection office. A fluttering open of a notebook and the offence is documented. I shall return, he toots, I shall return within the week and if you cannot then produce to satisfaction the organism in question more serious action will be taken! They watch as he mounts the stairs and delivers a jolt of terror by turning his head to the side, once, sharply, looking back down at them for that half-second, as if to prove that he could and might turn his head further.
No time at all before suspicion collapses onto those people down in the shabby trailers, but nobody wants to knock on their dirty doors let alone admit the worst to them. Besides, let's think rationally a moment, there's no way they could have gotten past all the locks on the door let alone clamber up all the stairs obstinate stair-detesting animal in tow without being detected. It is hard to follow that moment, so we are still in it now, that long, long moment of thinking rationally, because as rational as we are we don't know how to get to that next moment until we get out of the rational, until we say, rationality sure is a killjoy, and then think or preferably do something irrational. This is how time progresses.
Left up to the smallest of the cousins. He smashes all of the dinnerware, probably has had it in mind for a long while, see it in how methodically yet swiftly he goes about it, and that gets time moving on again nicely. And before the shards and the reaction can settle, when melancholy is bound to move in at this destruction's reminder of the incomparable efficiency of the mangy goat, who would not have left a single shard to settle, before this can happen this same cunning one expertly sets fire to the drapes. They must be able to hear the cries of astonishment in Patagonia. How long has it been since possessions were seen burning? The question barely takes shape when sparks widen the spectacle and someone goes shouting for the kerosene.
And for a while—before the air runs out—it's like old times, redundancies wiped out, disappointments swallowed up, like things were. Only the smoke ruins it, with the goat there was never any smoke, call the fire department. The number is no longer in service, a recording sympathizes and advises checking the number and trying the call again, ultimately to no purpose.
