Flashback: tales from ages past

The Cure: 1942, North America

Norval pedaled the last stretch home. A short-legged mutt trailed behind with tongue hanging and tail drooping. "Don't blame me, Fritz," Norval told the exhausted dog. "I tried to make you stay home. Remember?" As the boy circled the barn to the dugout cabin's door, Fritz veered off to the watering trough in the goat pen.

The twelve-year-old counted horned heads. "Oh no, not again." He tipped his laden bike against the old farm truck and dashed toward the kitchen garden. "Bonnie!" he yelled, spotting the brown-and-white nanny among the bean plants. "Get out of there, you thief!"

Bonnie threw him one mocking glance, then leaped the barbed wire fence in a bound. She pranced toward the barn, bleating laughter. Fritz made a half-hearted attempt to chase, then flopped in the shade.

Norval surveyed the slaughtered bean plants. Mama would have a fit!

As he went back to his bike, he saw his father's legs worming out from under the truck. "That goat again?" Oscar asked, wiping smudges of oil from his hands. He tossed the rag onto his tool box.

"Yep. The beans, this time." Norval lifted the saddlebags from his bike. "No mail this week, but I got the sugar rations."

Oscar glared after the vanishing goat. "I'll fix her," he muttered and stalked off after the mischief-maker.

Norval took the sugar bags inside, then dashed to the barn.

Bonnie was nowhere in sight. Oscar stood at his workbench, hammering away at something with the clang of metal on metal. He held up a crude heavy-duty hook linked to the end of a short chain. "I'll cure that goat. Catch her, and we'll teach her not to jump the fence."

Norval dumped grain into a bucket and sauntered over to the goat pen, shaking the bucket with a rattle. "Hey, Billy! Hey Nan! Come on, come on."

The goats crowded up to the fence, ears pricking, tails flicking, bearded chins bleating in a chorus.

Sure enough, Bonnie appeared out of nowhere, eager for her share. She didn't pay any mind when Norval grabbed her horns, so long as she could hog the grain bucket.

Oscar buckled an old belt around the mischief-maker's neck, a collar threaded through a link of chain. The hook dangled just below knee level.

Norval didn't have long to wait to learn what his dad had in mind. From a hiding spot behind the old truck he watched Bonnie deftly open the garden gate, this time heading for the cabbages.

Norval jumped up, let out a holler, and ran for the gate.

Things didn't go quite the way his dad planned.

Years later Norval would retell the story: "That goat threw up her head, bleated, and took a running jump. She went over that fence, and that hook caught, and it pulled that wire back just like the bowstring on an archery bow, and that iron hook broke loose and went flying across the garden. And was I glad I wasn't close to it!"

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prompt: hook

Another true tale from my father's childhood in rural Wyoming. In the summertime, he often made the 30-mile round trip to town by bicycle. Fritz refused to stay behind. (I don't know if they named the goat, but Bonnie and Clyde sprang to my mind...)