Benji and the Lost Goat

The goat arrived on a Tuesday.

Nobody saw it come. It was simply not there at seven-fifteen when the caretaker opened the school gates, and then it was there at seven-forty when the first students arrived. A brown-and-white goat, medium-sized, with a rope still attached to its neck that had been chewed clean through at approximately the one-foot mark.

It was eating the flowers outside the administrative office.

Benji was sitting beside it.

Not trying to move it, not alarming it, not doing anything except sitting beside the goat with his amber eyes facing the gate — which was the direction from which things arrived and from which, presumably, an explanation would eventually come.

“Why is there a dog and a goat at school?” said a Standard Three girl to nobody in particular.

Nobody had an answer.

Clevie saw the goat from the road and was through the gate before his bag had fully settled on his shoulder.

“Goat!” he said.

The goat looked at him and kept eating the flowers.

“There’s a goat,” he said to Omar, who had arrived behind him.

“I can see the goat,” Omar said.

“It’s eating the principal’s flowers.”

“I can see that too.”

Nadine had arrived from the other direction and was already beside Benji. “He was here when I got here,” she said. “The goat was here. He was already sitting with it.”

“Where did the goat come from?” Clevie said.

“That’s what we need to find out.”

“The rope is chewed,” Omar said, crouching to look at the end trailing from the goat’s neck. “It didn’t break. It was chewed. This goat chewed through its own rope.”

“Determined goat,” Clevie said.

“Determined to go somewhere,” Nadine said.

The principal was Miss Henry, and she arrived at seven-fifty-five and stood in the gateway of her school looking at the goat eating her flowers and at the dog sitting beside the goat and at the three students crouched near both of them with expressions of concentration.

“Reid,” she said. “Campbell. Brown.”

“Good morning, Miss Henry,” Omar said.

“There is a goat.”

“Yes, Miss Henry.”

“At my school.”

“Yes, Miss Henry.”

“Eating my flowers.”

“Yes, Miss Henry. We’re trying to find out where it came from.”

Miss Henry looked at the goat. The goat looked at Miss Henry. Something passed between them: a mutual recognition that this situation was unusual and neither of them had asked for it.

“You have twenty minutes before first bell,” Miss Henry said. “Move the animal to the back yard and find out where it belongs. The dog as well.”

“Yes, Miss Henry.”

She went inside.

Moving the goat was Clevie’s contribution. He had grown up with a cousin in the country who kept goats and he had the specific confidence of a person who had been told by that cousin the correct way to handle a goat on a rope. He took the trailing end of the chewed rope, held it, and walked. The goat followed, which meant that either Clevie’s technique was correct or the goat had decided it trusted him, which was about the same result.

In the back yard, Benji sat with the goat while the three of them talked.

“It came from somewhere,” Omar said.

“Obviously,” Clevie said.

“From that direction —” Nadine pointed “— because the rope end was facing west when it arrived. It chewed through. Which means it was tied west of here.”

“The lane behind the church,” Clevie said. “There are three houses there that keep animals.”

“I know Miss Ettie has chickens,” Nadine said. “And Mr. Llewelyn used to have a goat.”

“Used to?” Omar said.

“He sold it. Two months ago. His wife said they were too old to manage it.”

“Who bought it?”

Nadine thought. “I don’t know. She didn’t say.”

Omar looked at Benji. Benji was watching the goat with what appeared to be professional concern — the concern of someone who has identified a problem and is waiting for the relevant parties to arrive at the same conclusion.

“The goat chewed through its rope to leave,” Omar said slowly. “It came here specifically. To a school.”

“Animals don’t go to schools,” Clevie said.

“This one did.”

“Why would a goat—”

“It wouldn’t,” Nadine said. “Unless it followed something. Or someone.” She looked at Benji. “Did you lead it here?”

Benji looked at her.

His tail moved once.

“You went and got it,” she said.

He looked at the goat. Back at her.

“Something is wrong where the goat lives,” she said. “And you brought it here because here is safe.”

The three houses on the lane behind the church were Miss Ettie’s with the chickens, Mr. Llewelyn’s, and a third house that had been rented since the summer to a family the neighbourhood was still getting to know.

Omar walked the lane at lunch break, which was permitted as long as students signed out at the office and were back within thirty minutes. He signed out for all three of them. Miss Henry looked at him when he signed the third name.

“The goat?” she said.

“We think we know where it came from,” Omar said.

She waved them through.

The third house had a yard. The yard had a post. The post had a length of chewed rope attached to it. The yard also had a watering bucket that had been knocked over and not righted, a small pile of grain that had been sitting long enough to attract ants, and a gate that had been left open — not ajar, open, swinging.

“Nobody home,” Clevie said.

“Nobody’s been home for a while,” Nadine said. “The water’s been overturned since yesterday at least.”

“The family renting this house,” Omar said. “Does anyone know them?”

“I know their daughter a little,” Nadine said. “She’s in Standard Four. Tamika.” She paused. “She hasn’t been at school today. I noticed because she usually passes me on the way.”

They stood in the lane for a moment.

“Something happened to the family,” Omar said.

“Or to someone in it,” Nadine said. “And the goat was left alone. And Benji—”

“Benji knew,” Clevie said. He was looking at the watering bucket. “He found the goat, he saw the empty yard, he brought the goat somewhere safe, and he waited for us to figure out the rest.”

Miss Henry made the calls.

She was a school principal and school principals knew which calls to make when a student was absent and a family’s yard was open and unlocked. She made them in the order they needed to be made, efficiently, and within an hour she had the information: Tamika’s mother had been taken to the hospital the night before — nothing life-threatening, but sudden, and the family had gone to be with her and in the urgency had not properly secured the yard.

Tamika’s father was reached. He was apologetic and grateful and then, when he understood about the goat, specifically and loudly grateful in a way that suggested the goat was important to the family.

He came for the goat at three-thirty.

Tamika came with him. She was eight years old and had been at the hospital since seven the night before and had not thought about the goat at all until her father told her on the drive over, and then she had thought about nothing else.

Benji was with the goat in the back yard.

Tamika saw Benji before she saw the goat, and she stood still for a moment.

“Is this your dog?” she said to Nadine.

“He chose us,” Nadine said, which was as accurate as anything.

“He kept my goat safe?”

“He brought it somewhere safe. And made sure we found out the rest.”

Tamika crouched and looked at Benji with the eight-year-old directness that was sometimes the most accurate way to look at things. “Thank you,” she said to him.

Benji looked at her.

His tail moved. Not once — several times, in the easy way of a dog that has received exactly the right response and has no further notes.

The goat’s name, it turned out, was Precious, which Clevie found extremely funny and which he only let himself find funny once Tamika was back in her father’s car with the goat, at which point he laughed for approximately two full minutes.

“Precious,” he said.

“It’s a good name,” Nadine said.

“For a goat.”

“Why not for a goat?”

Clevie tried to explain this and couldn’t. It was just the specific comedic weight of the word Precious attached to a goat that had chewed through its own rope and walked to a school. He couldn’t explain it. It simply struck him as correct.

Omar wrote in his notebook: Benji found the goat, assessed the situation, led the goat to safety, waited for us. He understood something was wrong before we could have known. How much does he know about this neighbourhood? About who lives where? About who is safe and who is not?

He thought about that last question.

He wrote: I think he knows everything.