I took one
last swipe at the floor with the mop and looked at my handy work. Standing on
the back stoop, the screen door propped open, the bucket set on the step next
to me, I’d mopped my way out of the now clean and empty house. Moving day. I
glanced through the kitchen into the living room, the front window sparkling in
the early morning light, the rug vacuumed, shampooed and smelling free of any
doggy odor. The house, bare of any trace of our residence was cleaner then it
had ever been while we lived there.
Bruce
peeked past me. “Looks good,” he said as he picked up the bucket of dirty water
and dumped it into the flower bed.
I carried
the mop, paper towels, and bucket now full of cleaning supplies to the back of
the truck. Bruce followed the vacuum in his hand.
The tailgate was down, exposing all our tightly and systematically packed possessions
to the world. Bruce slid the paper towels in an empty pocket of space, making
the packing job even tighter. I lifted the vacuum into the one empty corner of
space in the back of the pick-up.
“It can’t
go there,” Bruce said, “that’s the spot for Anabel.” Anabel was our goat.
“Where’s it
go then?” I asked trying to envision the diagram Bruce had drawn weeks before
that neatly displayed how every box, piece of furniture, sock, shoe, pot or pan
would fit into the truck for our 1000 mile move from Illinois to Virginia. He’d even duck-taped his shoes and socks
inside the back bumper in order to not waste any space.
He didn’t
answer right away, so I turned my head to repeat the question. Bruce stared at
me and then grinned. “I forgot about the vacuum,” he said.
I looked at
the 2 foot by 2 foot space neatly cleared in the right back corner of the
pick-up. Just big enough for a little goat to stand, lie down, turn around.
Just big enough for an old upright Hoover vacuum to fit. Obviously, not big
enough for both.
I wanted to
leave the vacuum. We’d paid twenty-five dollars for it at a garage sale five
years before. I figured we gotten out money’s worth. But, it still worked.
“We can’t leave a perfectly good
vacuum,” Bruce argued, which is how we moved a 1000 miles with Bruce, me, two
dogs, and a goat all riding in the cab of the truck.
Two miles
down the road, Anabel’s little cloven hooves were digging into my bare legs.
Despite the heat, it wasn’t a good day to be wearing shorts. Bruce drove.
Piper, the border collie, curled up at my feet. Finn, the golden, lay on the
bench seat between Bruce and me. I folded Anabel’s back legs under her, making
her sit like a dog. As I bent her front legs under her, trying to get her to
lie down, her back end popped up. When I pushed her back end down, her front
end came up. About the third try, pushing down on her back with my chest, I
managed to get her to lie down.
It lasted about fifteen minutes.
Piper stood up to change places with Finn. Finn stood up to go down on the
floor. Anabel stood up to join in the fun and we started the whole process
over. Tiny round little black and blues were appearing on my legs.
About the fourth time the dogs
decided to change places, we pulled into a rest area. We leashed up the dogs
and Anabel and headed to the dog walk area. Leaving everyone with Bruce, I
headed to the bathroom. When I came out, a small crowd was gathering around the
dog walk area. I wanted to get in the truck and leave, but I was attached to
Finn and Piper.
The dogs, tails wagging, stared
happily at the growing crowd. Anabel was standing on her back legs, trimming
the bottom leaves off a young maple. Bruce handed me the leashes and headed to
the rest room, when a woman came up to me.
“What kind of dog is that?” she
asked pointing at Anabel, while Finn pulled on the leash trying to lick the
woman’s hand.
All fiction writers are liars,
Garrison Keillor says. At that point, I wasn’t writing much fiction. But I was tempted to say "she’s a rare European Goat Dog.” Instead, I told the truth.
“She’s a goat.” The expression on the woman’s face was still worth it.
