Birthday Boy

The invite said there would be cake. Understand that I went for the cake.

I won’t lie and say I didn’t hear the rumors. When Ms. Dunphy extended the invitation, I accepted with a sort of rapacious eagerness, a journalist’s greatest flaw. I was visiting a small town in Iowa, one of those that seems to just rise right out of the ground one day like a mirage.

The town had two streets, directly adjacent to each other. The water tower was empty, replaced with thousands of hornets, which were only quiet at night. A diner sold synthetic food—piss-yellow eggs, dehydrated pancakes, freeze-dried fruit salad. The youngest student at the elementary school was thirty-two. The reverend violated cows, and there were rumors he was a Scientologist.

Ms. Dunphy was the most normal, plain woman in this town, short and plump with two crisscrossing Asian hair sticks holding together a taut gray bun. She was the birthday boy’s godmother and often looked after him whenever his parents had to leave to get a break from the sound of the hornets.

She briefed me on the way to the house. When she told me his bedroom was in the barn, I perked up, but then dismissed it, thinking there must’ve been limited space in the house. She told me to hold my breath as often as I could to protect my lungs from the fur. They live on a farm, that’s why, I thought. Then there was the matter of eye contact, which she advised I avoid because it made him anxious.

“Also,” Ms. Dunphy said as we neared the porch, “try to refrain from calling him Billy. It’s a tired joke, and it makes his mother upset.”

I was dubious up until the door swung open, when I immediately inhaled a mouthful of wiry hair. Even when I coughed to clear my throat, it clung to the insides of my cheeks, the back of my tongue, like television static. As I scanned my eyes around the foyer, I jotted down on my notepad, Normal so far. Classic farmhouse style. Wood-paneled walls. But hairy. The boy’s mother emerged from a room off to the side, and I had to do a double-take when I saw her face.

At first, I thought she’d stepped on glass or something. Her eyes were so wide they looked like they were popping out of her face, like when you squeeze the stomach of one of those old Popping Pete toys. Her veins swelled on each side of her neck; I imagined they’d be a phlebotomist’s dream—violet, thick, and bulging. At first, I thought she was grimacing. Her mouth was wide as if someone had taken it by the corners and stretched it.

It wasn’t until Ms. Dunphy stepped forward to hug her that I realized she was smiling. I hoped she would stop soon because it was sending chills down my spine. When she glanced at me, the grimacing intensified. She smelled vaguely like manure and maybe corn.

“Oh, this is June,” Ms. Dunphy said, tapping my arm. “I helped her change her tire the other day, and we got to talking.” She was nodding as she spoke, her tone patronizing, like the woman was slow or something. “I told her about Vincent, and she wanted to meet him. She brought him a gift.”

That was my signal to dig into my jacket pocket. I presented a single orange, feeling embarrassed. But Ms. Dunphy had insisted he’d be happy with it when I offered to bring something. “Hi,” I said awkwardly. “Nice to meet you. Here’s this.” I handed it to her, and she took it, still grimacing.

Ms. Dunphy started nodding again. “June’s a reporter. She’s passing through from California.”

The woman stared at me, and though her grimacing had finally subsided, her mouth closed, and an indecipherable expression replaced it.

Something bleated from the other room.

Immediately, the woman retreated. “Vincey, do you want another slice of cake?” She was talking the way women often talk to infants. “Another slice of cake? You can have all the cake you want, my love. All the cake.”

Ms. Dunphy waved her hand, beckoning me to follow her into the dining room. As I peered around the door frame, I nearly gasped. It was true. Ms. Dunphy hadn’t been exaggerating at all.

At the head of the table, strutted on four hooves, with horns that nearly touched the light fixture, sat an ivory billy goat wearing a bright polka dot party hat. It had an impressive goatee and beady, unfocused eyes. Its bottom jaw was agape, positioned in a way to look broken.

“Look, Vincey!” the woman exclaimed. “This lady brought you your favorite.” She placed the orange, unpeeled, on the confetti tablecloth in front of it, and it stared at it for a moment with its demon eyes. Then, it lowered its head and bit into it, sending sprays of juice flying. Its mother, unfazed, wiped the corners of its mouth with a napkin. She laughed again, but it sounded shrill, like wailing.

The goat bleated, perhaps indicating that it was pleased with my peace offering. When it was finished, the woman gestured to the cake. It sat in the middle of the table, a sad, drooping mess of dark, drooling chocolate. Feeds the goat chocolate. May be a health concern, I wrote.

Viewing her from across the room, I was able to observe the woman more closely. She was skinny, her white skin pasty. Her brown hair was thin, mousy, and sprouted unevenly from her head, though it looked like she’d tried curlers. She wore a baby blue sundress, stained with what appeared to be mud, or perhaps, I wondered, dung, and that was the source of the unpleasant odor. If she weren’t so unkempt, she could’ve been pretty. Her facial structure seemed well-formed.

The woman’s husband—a solemn, slouching man—sat at the far end of the table, his party hat lying untouched in front of him. He wore tattered overalls, his beer belly pushing against the edge of the table. A single wisp of hair was swept across the bald spot on top of his head. He didn’t even bother to glance our way with his good eye when Ms. Dunphy and I walked in.

He wore an eyepatch over his left eye, which comically made him look like a pirate cosplayer.

According to Ms. Dunphy, the story goes that he once scolded the goat for perching itself on the sofa, so that night, it snuck back into the house from the barn and shrank to the size of a marble. When its mother found it by the doorsill before bed, she placed it on a shelf over the sofa, where the man slothed with his moonshine in front of the television set. The goat-marble rolled itself off the shelf and pelted the man in his open eye, blinding him permanently. Signs of possible psychosis, I’d written.

“Sit, ladies, please,” the woman said. I hesitated at first, but then took a seat closest to the goat. Ms. Dunphy sat across from me. She slid her gift box toward the goat, smiling maternally. I stared at the droopy cake.

“Oh, thank you!” the woman exclaimed. “Look, Vincey, she brought you a gift, too!” She glanced over at her husband, who looked so bored he might as well have been catatonic. “Charles, look!”

He didn’t respond. No expression, no nodding. He just stared at the goat.

Ms. Dunphy seemed pleased. She waved her hands, as if urging the goat to somehow use its hooves to open it. After everything I’d seen thus far, I half expected it to start ripping at the paper. Instead, the goat merely stared ahead boredly, then lowered its head and picked up a stray orange peel and started chewing it like gum.

The woman leaned forward and started opening it instead. “Aw, is someone being shy? I’ll help you, Vincey.” She started grimacing again.

Underneath the table, I wrote, No evidence of human behavior. Seems to be a normal goat.

“Would you like some?”

I lifted my head and nearly jumped out of my seat. The woman was bent halfway over the table, her bulging eyes staring at me as she grimaced, holding out the cake in front of my face.

I forced a smile. “Sure, thank you,” I said through gritted teeth.

She cut a piece, which immediately collapsed onto the saucer, and placed it in front of me. I waited for her to hand me a utensil.

She seemed to pick up on this.

“Oh, we don’t use utensils in this house. We don’t want Vincey feeling left out.”

I hesitated. Across from me, Ms. Dunphy shoved a clump in her mouth unabashedly. I swallowed, then sunk my fingers into the slimy, lukewarm frosting, feeling around until I found the cake part. I lowered my head to help.

“Wait!” the woman exclaimed, and I shot back up. “We haven’t sung for him yet!” She waved her hand at her husband, who hadn’t stirred since I sat down. “Let’s sing.”

Then, as if directing a choir, she lifted her arms and started wagging her fingers. “Haaaaappy birthday to you. . .”

I looked at Ms. Dunphy. Together, we joined in.

The woman stopped singing, frowning at her husband, who had not chimed in.

“Charles,” she hissed, before uncannily starting to smile, grimace, again.

Charles merely sat there, his arms crossed. His lips were pursed, and he stared up at his wife, unfazed.

“Charles, haaaaaaappy birth—” She dropped her hands to her sides. “Charles, you’re upsetting Vincent!”

Suddenly, he stood up, his chair flying backwards. “For Christ’s sake, Miriam, that is not Vincent!” He stamped his feet on the floorboards like a toddler, sending the whole house into a violent quiver. “I’m done! I’m done with this!”

The woman merely stood there, grimacing so hard that veins began bulging along her temples. “Charles,” she said, her tone high-pitched and falsely cheerful. “Don’t start, please.”

He rolled his jaw, his face indignant.

She shook her head. “Oh, Charles, you’re just angry about your eye. Well. You deserved it. You shouldn’t have scolded him about lying on the couch.” She laid her hand on the goat’s head and rubbed the area just above its eyes. Its party hat drooped sadly to the side. “But I’m sure he’s forgiven you. You should do the same, Charles. So why don’t we sing for him?”

Exasperated, the man covered his face with his hands. “How much longer are we gonna keep this up, Miriam?”

This seemed to set her off because her grimacing halted, and she scowled at him. “Keep what up? That is our son, and you’ve ruined his birthday!”

He bent over and slammed his hand on the table. I jumped, staring across at Ms. Dunphy, who was pushing herself up from her seat. “Oh, it’s a billy goat!” he cried.

Her eyes bulged. “Don’t you dare call him that!” She waved her finger at him. “You saw. . . you saw it. He was the marble. He can change bodies. You’ve seen it!”

He gripped the sides of the table and shook it hard. Dishes clattered, Ms. Dunphy’s gift box fell to the floor. “It was just a marble!”

The sudden aggression seemed to frighten the goat, who tumbled down from the chair and began to bleat incessantly, then shuffled out of the room and into the hall.

“Stop it! Stop it, Charles!” she wailed. “You’re frightening him!”

“God!” he cried. “You’re insane! You need help, Miriam!”

She dropped to the floor and began to wail. It was the most horrifying thing I’d ever heard. All of the veins in her head, in her neck, bulged repulsively, and her whole mouth was downturned in a dramatic, almost cartoonish frown.

Without warning, Ms. Dunphy grabbed my hand and pulled me out toward the door.

The man was cursing under his breath. The woman was gasping for air. As we stepped outside, I saw the goat defecating in the hallway.

Ms. Dunphy walked me back to the hotel in silence. The hotel took luggage as payment instead of currency, so I went straight to my car. Ms. Dunphy apologized and said she hoped I’d come back to visit. No fucking way, I thought. I got in my car and never stepped foot in Iowa again.

Sometimes I wonder if it was just the edible. But every morning, to this day, I stand over the commode, coughing, gagging up the fur.

I still got my cake, though.

JODI GOFORTH is an emerging writer and graduate student living in Virginia. She holds a B.S. in writing and is a certified private pilot. Recently, she launched Animals on the Stairs, a writing/lifestyle blog. Her work appears in the Afterpast Review, As Surely as the Sun Literary, and Airplane Reading. She is also the proud dog mom of an adorable, wild puppy she is beginning to suspect may be part coyote (for various reasons). She drinks too much iced coffee to cope.

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