I found a dead goat in front of the gate this morning. I was going for the mail while Rose made breakfast. She has decided she would do that, having gotten tired of cold cereal and fruit for breakfast every day. I didn't make the slightest objection.
I might not have noticed it except for the flies buzzing around it. Who looks for a dead goat when she is walking from the Castle to the mail box? I hadn't planed for this. I was looking forward to reading yesterday's mail, if any, and having a hot breakfast.
But there it was, a dead goat. I could tell it was a goat by the horns and general size, and it was even easier to see that it was dead. There was blood, but not too much. No wild animals had gotten to it yet, so it must have been recently put there. Then I saw that it had a bloody spot on its chest. I just stood and stared at it for a minute or so. Then it came to me, forensic scientist that I am not, that it had been shot, poor thing. The bloody spot was a bullet hole. I continued to stare, then looked around at the landscape and the road, and thought. What was a goat doing at my front gate? What was a goat doing anywhere near my front gate, for that matter?
Then I looked around, and thought of my nakedness. There was nobody in sight. There never was. But the surprise of finding a dead goat changed my world. I now once more worried about other people in the world. Like how did the goat get into my driveway? Who brought the goat into my world?
I thought about what I was to do now, about the goat, I mean? That's me all over, always thinking of myself and never thinking of the goat. I could drag it off somewhere and bury it, I supposed.
I had no answers so I did the only sensible thing I could think of. I went back to get Rose to show her the dead goat.
"Rose, there's a dead goat in our driveway. It's been shot. That's why it's dead. Come see it."
Rose was cooking breakfast. She looked at me, apparently decided I wasn't joking, then took off her apron, turned off the stove burners, put on her sandals and followed me back out to the gate.
Sure enough, nothing had changed. The dead goat was still there, and still dead. Rose looked down at the goat, then all around, as I had done, and asked the obvious question. "How did it get here?"
I gave the obvious answer. "I haven't the slightest idea."
While I was saying that, I looked at the ground around the goat and realized all at once that someone had dragged it to where it was now. It hadn't been shot here. It had been shot somewhere else and dragged here. "Look, Rose, It's been dragged here, from the road.
"Why would anyone want to shoot a goat and then drag it to our front gate?"
"Let's consider the question in two parts. First, why would anyone want to shoot a goat?"
" No idea."
"Second part, Why would anyone want to drag it to my front gate?"
"No idea there either."
I surveyed the scene once more, then, thinking again of my nakedness, I followed the drag marks up the driveway to the road. "Look, Rose, you can see the drag marks." Thinking like a detective, I added, "It wasn't shot here. It was shot somewhere else, then dropped here and dragged to our gate."
Rose walked from the goat keeping her eyes on the ground almost to the road. "Yes, I see the marks."
She looked intently up and down the road, then walked back to the goat.
"Did you notice a piece of paper stuck to one horn?
I hadn't seen that yet. I guess I had been too interested in the bullet hole, and maybe the road. I pulled the paper off of the goat's horn. It was a note. It said, "WHY DID YOU KILL MY GOAT" It wasn't addressed to anyone and it wasn't signed. I handed it to Rose.
She looked at it, then at me. "It's a child's handwriting."
I had run out of detecting. Wordlessly, we walked back to the house, leaving the goat where we had found it. Evidence, I guess I thought. But to whom would we show this evidence?
Rose put her apron back on and continued where she had left off with breakfast. I poured coffee. We sat down. I looked at the note Rose had brought back with her. It was certainly a child's printing, a soft lead pencil on the cheap pulp paper used to teach writing in elementary school. I remembered it well. It was torn from a Big Chief writing tablet.
"Rose, what are we going to do about the goat?"
"I don't know. Bury it I suppose, what else?" She looked at me. "How important is a goat, anyway?"
"We didn't kill the goat. Somebody thinks we did. Some child owned the goat. He thinks, or she thinks, that we killed it. It was important enough to bring it here somehow and drag it to our gate and write a note. I want to tell whoever's goat it is, or was, that we didn't kill his goat."
"But the note isn't signed. So how do we know who wrote it? How do we know whose goat it is?"
I had an idea. Maybe it was the coffee. The coffee had improved a lot since Rose had taken up residence.
"Children are known to gather at schools. Children as young as the writing on that note suggests gather at elementary schools. We could go there and ask. Maybe someone would know who owned a goat, recently deceased, and who might have written the note."
I was all ready to go to the nearest elementary school and make inquiries when Rose, ever the neat and tidy one, reminded me of the dead goat once more.
"So what do we do with the goat in the meantime?"
"We bury it, even if it's evidence. Evidence of what I don't know. I do know what the outcome will be if we don't bury the goat. And it has to be moved out of the driveway. So I guess we bury it on our side of the fence near the gate. And then I go looking for elementary schools. I won't be potting today. I'll go this afternoon. You can stay here and watch over the grave."
I went to the garage and brought back a shovel. The ground was soft sand, and it wouldn't be much of a job. But I still had questions. One doesn't think of disposing a suddenly appearing dead goat in the same cavalier manner as one might think of refilling an ice tray, for example. It's one thing to not worry too much about what happened to all the ice cubes and another to not wonder how a murdered goat got to your front gate.
"Rose, that goat belongs to someone, or used to belong to someone."
"So fine, now who? We don't have any close neighbors that I know of."
"We've always turned to the left out of the driveway to go to town. I can't remember ever going to the right to see what was further down the road in that direction. I wonder why we never did that?"
"Not curious, I expect. How far does one drag a dead goat? They must have dropped it out of a car or truck on the road and then dragged it to our gate. I'm really getting into this detective thing. And shouldn't we tell someone about this?"
"Who, for example? The police? Call 911? I have no idea if 911 works out here. Does this hick town have a police force?"
"I don't know. But surely there was a Sheriff somewhere. There's one in every county. But would the Sheriff care about a dead goat? Maybe it would make a difference if it had been shot, but I didn't know. Guns and firing them is pretty common these days, especially around here."
"I agree the goat doesn't seem very important, but that might be because it's dead. It might be important enough to report if it were alive."
Which started another string of reasoning. The goat, my detective mind told me abruptly, must have belonged to somebody. OK. But who? The questions pushed up like weeds after rain. My mind went back to the road to the right of my driveway. Maybe somebody who lived in that direction owned the goat?
"Maybe I should try to find them, ask around."
"Anybody missing a goat? Anybody know of anybody shooting a goat recently?" If anybody answers, you could follow up with "Why did you drop the dead goat at our front gate? What are we supposed to do with it?"
With that we walked back to the gate with our shovels.
"Before we disturb the crime scene," Rose said, "I want to take some pictures of it, just in case."
"Just like on TV! How exciting!"
That afternoon I put clothes on and went with the note to find an elementary school.