What is up with the sky? What is up with it and the clouds and the grasses and how everyone talks? Do you know this? Why they don’t stop as it goes closer to the end of the table, Jess? They could just say, “Oh my geez do you see that glass thing is nearly to fall off the table, drop and shatter on the floor?” That would at least be a step, don’t you think? As the glass seesaws, deciding whether it should tip, bumping closer and closer to being like milk and glass cereal on the ground. Do you see this, Jess? That people make shape of the world and, with their gift of tongue, speak. If they wanted. Not just some ancient reptilian noise. Speak, so they may see you.
Look—I will tell you what it is if you do not know. If you will listen again. Not just pull me into the room so you may do your business. No more to line me up on the stand, slide my head through the wood, and squeeze me for what I have to give you by my body. Here I am and I will tell you. I will tell you about the clouds and the grasses and everything moving as though it were this great big before. Coming and building. I will tell you of the new grass that gives me the diarrhea. Of the voice that says rain for forty days, coming from the air like a craving. Of how people talk like nothing, like how are you guy, good sweetie, oh it’s so nice to see you, yes let us convene again, maybe over lunch because we are friends. Do you feel this like me? That it is nearing? Or am I just a goat.
These are just a few that concern me, Jess, in a list of long. Truthfully it goes and goes forever, this list, so full of parts that to tell you all of this big arrival would be to blab nearly everything, and that I cannot do as time is creeping up. What I want to say quickly is that I am sorry to make myself out of dust and leave no goodbye, but I don’t believe in it anymore, and I’m not sure what you would do if you saw I was leaving. You might tie me down or search the fence for the hole I’ve been gnawing. You would probably use it as more reason to sigh when I attempt to say something honest. Oh, Cass is too smart for her own good. Oh, she is such a bother. Oh, if she only further developed the cortex then she would know that Jess and milk is scripture. That the tongue is truth and the fence is law. But Jess, there are things I used to do that now feel as if I’m wearing tiny socks. Not that there’s the low on circulation, but that I realized nearly all you have for me is socks and I cannot do so because I have hooves, Jess.
You see, with the pepperweed I tried to show you, like how we talk nearly all the time. You nod, and I say good, thank you. I lift my head through the hole, you look me in the eye, I look back at you, you smile, grab my teats, and there is love. I felt it in your hands, Jess, when you squeezed me. How you called out so we may embrace in our square room. I remember how it was young.
Last time, though, I brought the pepperweed that grows over by the creek. I tried it like usual because I enjoy the flavor more than grain, I think, since it does not show itself right away. Grain is small and pebble-like so you’d expect the crunch. Pepperweed, on the other leg, is a mustard. It is green and stemmy like the other greens that live near like the grama and buffalo grass, and if that was all you could believe or know, that all these green stemmy plants were alike, then you’d think they’d both be mild. But beneath is a quick spice and wow I am glad it grows by the creek. But this is not why I talk about it.
I brought it by the pen to show you it has a new taste, a foul taste that comes at the back of the throat. Did you know this? Also Jess, around it grew this darkened patch of plant like from some kind of fungus. As I smelled it I bumped the leaves, and they crumbled as dust. A grey stem that just dissolves into nothing. Maybe the grama or something else, I couldn’t tell, up from the base and empty as it went higher, looking stable until you touched, causing the thing to poof into the wind. I swear a twist came at my throat when I saw this happen, a twist like how a cable is wrapped in loops, around and around until it’s dizzy, my head. Remember not just this once, but more as I turned to look over toward the west side of the field. Over the fence on the far length of the river the peppergrass looked like nothing at all, just not there or hidden by the grama. Green hills or greenish hills with this slight bit of grey. It was around us all. This thing. Wrapping, tighter.
So I bit off a piece of pepperweed and carried it up to the barn as the early morning rain trickled and made all these puddles in the field. You were there unloading from the vehicle saying hey like it was every day with us—let’s get things going. Though I was up on the fence making noise with my teeth and you said, “Easy now, Cassandra.”
You never like me on the fence.
Oh I remembered your truck wailed and you brought it to the shop right away, so I tried to make that noise to be like the truck to get your eyes. Kind of high squeaky and the wheezing of the pipe. You did this within the day, I remember, straight to the shop. So I squeaked, and then of course the whole herd copied, turning my call into noise as you continued to bring the boxes indoors, now not hearing me anymore. I stopped and waited a little. I watched the puddles in the rain. I knew I would see you in the parlor at least where I could speak to you alone. The herd continued their rumble.
Not soon after that I trotted inside the barn to meet you by the gate and Peanut followed with me knowing what was coming next, the milking, yet she still made the noise like the truck. Her eyes were wide and happy because she liked the noise as it came out between her lips. This is an everyday with Peanut, the waiting by the gate in the barn, as she wants us to bang our heads together. We hit and shared our thought until you came into the milk parlor, this time wet and frustrated, as you forgot your jacket. I saw it in your movement. I clacked Peanut’s head and told her about the pepperweed. She paused and then hit me back. I said yes, feeling dizzy. We stood there for a long moment, as I saw her big eyes deciding, then taking and holding the brain pieces near her chest. “Oh,” she said in her face, and moved aside to let me through the gate when you first opened it. That I was grateful for, Peanut.
When we were in the parlor, Jess, I held the pepperweed in my mouth as you helped me up the stand. This while the routine brush and wipes. The room felt damp as some of the rain splashed through the window. I thought to tell you of the pepperweed in my mouth to signal. Yes, so I waved the grass around and you picked it from my mouth and dropped it on the floor. I saw it on the ground in front of me. You just threw it on the floor. Snatched it and threw it on the floor. Took it from me to put on the ground.
Then I tried something else by moving my mouth as I often see you move yours, Jess, with your lips and tongue flap. I had to bend and twist the muscles. It was like when a hinge goes the wrong way, like a leg far out of its socket. And for a second in that stretching I thought I my jaw came undone. Though I said it. I finally got the thing out. I said, “Pleeease, Jess,” which caused the room to fill with it and its loudness. I felt you slow your hands. You stopped, then you looked at me like always and said in one tone, “Not right now,” and continued milking.
This, I believe, hurt.
Jess, you know that I was staring to the wall, the white wall, as I felt you finish. Just the last squeezes and my head as a nothing with the white zooming in above, around me, filling. I saw that Peanut had sneezed on the wall the day before. Inside me this wanting to vomit. You had forgot to clean, so the dots were dried in a cluster and glistening and I felt the crawling up inside me like a puppet hand through to my mouth, pulling at the bones. My jaw hung swollen even though it popped back into place.
The spots on the wall seemed, for a long while, like they were moving, maybe, since they were at the end of my nose and my eyes had crossed. I could not tell. Globs would shift secretly until I was really looking and then they’d snap back. With the white still circling around. A nothing.
Then I saw you were done.
You were to let me out into the pasture as you always do, standing by the gate with it open beneath your arm, the milk room door open, my head unlatched from the block, and I waited, tall on the milk stand, as we stared for the long until you gestured to the gate. You widened like go out, Cass, go out across out in the pasture with the rain coming down. Just go out, Cassandra. I saw it bundled in your face. Another ahead, another tomorrow, the same day forever, and it was empty like a linked fence for you, tied together in a long unend. You rubbed your eyes to reach behind them the brush that won’t let us be. Yet you won’t stop this, day and day, because at least you can yawn and drink your drinks, at least you can pretend that you are Jess and then go home. This is what you’ve always said with that face, the one you hold at the end as you’re waiting for me to get on with it.
So as you did this yawn and such, I ran back to pick up the grass you dropped on the floor. Maybe I would say again with Jess, look, I get it. You’re tired. But I heard you come up behind me quick like I’d done something wrong. It frightened me how quick you were behind me. You snagged me and tugged me so hard by the collar that I strangled, then you pulled me around. You said, “Come on now, Cass, get out,” as you always do, like just a moment before there wasn’t any of that word I spoke but nothing and more sound. Then you pushed me through the hall toward the gate.
Jess, that’s all for this way. Tomorrow you might call out for me in the morning when it is just dark enough to think I’m still asleep. You’ll see if maybe I was in the corner behind some bale, yet as you look I won’t be there to respond. It’ll be quiet as you search. You might feel restless, and after a few hours you might find the hole in the eastern fence. You might say to yourself that this is some big deal while you worry for my health, feeling what you say is a kindness. That’ll be true for you as truth has always been—a thing to hold like my collar. You might wonder after many days, though time will take me away for I don’t know how long, or where. When I come back I will have the speaking down. Yes, and you will stop what you’re doing and listen. This is the promise like the rain tonight, on all the nights when the clouds are poised. Because I will have seen the world, as far as I can wander, and will tell you in clear words that beyond your eyes, your tongue, and your hands there is something big going on, Jess, and I will bring it to you in the clearest of words, understandingly.