"The Parable of the Sheep and Goats" by Ken Teutsch

Ken Teutsch is a writer, performer, and filmmaker living in central Arkansas. His stories have appeared in anthologies and in such diverse publications as Mystery Magazine, Andromeda Spaceways Magazine, and Cowboy Jamboree. He also records music in the guise of perennially failed country music “star,” Rudy Terwilliger.

The Parable of the Sheep and Go“Well, guess what?” I said.  “Delmer’s got some goats.” 

Wendell was making coffee. He stopped for a second, said, “So what else is new?” and went on about his business. This reaction surprised me until I realized he must have thought I said Delmer got my goat, which, granted, would not have been big news. So round and round we went until I could make the half-deaf son of a bitch understand me. When he finally did, he set the coffeepot down and said, “Do what, now?” 

So I had to say it again.

“Delmer,”–and I said it real loud and slow this time– “Has. Got. Some. Goats.” 

And I wasn’t talking about two or three goats. Delmer had just come rattling past the house pulling a horse trailer overflowing with goats. A herd of goats. Or flock, or whatever you call a shitload of goats. 

Wendell got that loose-dentured, befuddled look he gets sometimes, like a monkey watching a magic trick, and said, “What in the world does he want with that many goats?” 

I did not know what Delmer wanted with any goats at all. That went without saying. I went ahead and said it anyway. Then I asked right back who knew why Delmer Spivey did any damn thing Delmer Spivey did. Then we both agreed that the answer to that was almost certainly, Nobody. Then we had our coffee.

Goat Day was just the latest What The Hell, Delmer? Day. It came about a month after the first one, which was the day Delmer came down the road pulling his house behind him. This ain’t a mobile home I’m talking about. I’m talking about a house. Not a big house, but still. A house. Had a banner on the back that said, “WIDE LOAD,” which has always puzzled me, frankly. Does anybody really need to be told that a house is a wide load? 

Just like that, we had ourselves a neighbor. 

The ten acres that side of our place belonged to an old widow woman named Perkins who lived in a rest home somewhere and had never done anything with it beyond leasing it out for cow pasture. (Cows are pretty good neighbors, by the way. Unlike goats. Or Delmer Spivey.) But old Mizz Perkins, unbeknownst to us, had died. Her heirs, even more unbeknownst to us, put her land up for sale. We would have tried to buy it ourselves, but by the time the situation was beknownst to us, the deal was done. We didn’t beknow a damn thing about it until the bulldozer showed up and started cutting a driveway and leveling off a house place. The proud new owner, we learned eventually, was Delmer Spivey. 

We knew a little bit about Delmer Spivey. None of it was good.

It was hard enough after years and years of more or less solitude to get used to having any neighbor at all. But to all of a sudden not just have one, but to have this one? Right over there where we had to see him every time we passed by the kitchen window? (Don’t know why the son of a bitch even brought his house with him–he never seemed to go inside it.) Wendell said he felt obligated to wave every time he went out to feed the chickens or water his flower bed. 

Delmer Spivey did not wave back.

~~~~~~~~~~

How does Delmer Spivey make a living, you ask? Hard to say. I guess I’d call it “first one thing and another.” For instance, dead cars. His precise business model is a puzzle, though. He doesn’t seem to try to fix them or sell them. He just scatters them around the place. 

One day we saw him in town peddling out of the back of his truck what was, according to the sign, “Shrimp Fresh frum the Gulph.” I told Wendell I thought it highly unlikely that Delmer’s shrimp were either fresh or from “the Gulph.”  I thought them more likely to be who knew how old and from Vietnam by way of Walmart. Wendell said something about customers and “benefit of the doubt.” I said something about customers and “without benefit of clergy.”

Delmer’s truck was in the corner of the parking lot in front of where the cafe used to be. We were across the road buying gas at the Circle K. Delmer seen us looking at him and his fresh Gulph shrimp and proceeded to make some gestures at us. I’d rather not say exactly what kind of gestures. I made to go in the car trunk after a tire iron, but Wendell punched me in the side and said, “Don’t be ignorant.”

~~~~~~~~~~

All right. Here’s the thing about me and Wendell.

We been living on this place for, as I already said, a very long time. I was away some over the years working in the oilfield, but Wendell spent his whole life right here working for the County Extension. People still call him up to ask him about when to plant this and what fertilizer to use for that and how to deal with whatever infestation is infesting at the moment. Everybody around knows us, or at least knows him. As far as I know, pretty much everybody likes us. We ain’t give nobody reason not to that I know of. 

Here’s what folks around here call us, if they bother calling us anything at all: Confirmed bachelors. Or for the last several years: Old confirmed bachelors.

That ain’t what Delmer Spivey called us when I went over to say hello and welcome. And it ain’t what I hear he’s been calling us around town.

~~~~~~~~~~

So in addition to being a dead car speculator and rancid shrimp purveyor Delmer was now a goat mogul.

It wasn’t two days after the goats arrived that Wendell stepped out on the porch to find a couple of them grazing on his azaleas. Wendell is somewhat maternal about his azaleas. He hobbled down the steps waving his arms and stomping his feet and hollering, “Begone, spawn of Satan!” 

Wendell goes to church. I don’t. Neither did these goats apparently, because they just looked at him and went on chewing. I came out and run them off with a broom, but of course they would be back, likely bringing all their kinfolk with them.

Late that evening we sat in the living room, Wendell with his stinky cup of tea and me with a glass of Jack, discussing the Delmer Situation and what Wendell called the “wanton caprine depredations.” (In addition to going to church, Wendell reads more than is probably good for him.) 

I suggested right off that the solution lay in the hall closet. That’s where we keep the shotgun. Wendell said no, it wouldn’t do to shoot the goats. I said who said anything about shooting goats?

Wendell went all dreamy then and said, “You remember the parable of the sheep and goats?”

Like I said, Wendell goes to church.

I said, “Is that the one where Jesus gets the sheep out of the ditch on a Sunday and that pisses off the—"

“No, you hell-bound ignoramus," he said. “It’s the one where Jesus says one day God is gonna split up the folks like a shepherd does his flock. Goats on one side, sheep on the other.”

“Uh huh,” I said. Wendell comes out with one of these “parables” from time to time.  They generally leave me wondering why, if Jesus had something to say, he couldn’t just say whatever the hell he meant.

  “There’s people,” Wendell went on, “who are good to other people. ‘I was hungry and you fed me…what you do for the least of my children, you do for me.’ See? They’re the sheep. They’re going to heaven. The other people are the goats. The mean ones who don’t help other people or be nice.”

“All right,” I said. “Sheep good. Goats bad. And your point is…?”

“Nothing, really. Just struck me that it’s fitting that Delmer Spivey has goats. Because he’s a goat himself. Parable-wise. But yeah, the good people are the sheep. Which means we ought to be sheep. Which means we ought not to be mean. Not even to goats.”

You would have thought he was the one been drinking bourbon. Just like with Jesus half the time, I couldn’t tell what he was going on about. “Wait a minute,” I said. “Are we talking about real goats now? Or parable goats?”

“Both.”

He was giving me a headache. “Is this your way of saying I ought not to shoot Delmer Spivey?”

He nodded and pointed at me like a teacher does when the class moron finally gets an answer right. “Among other things,” he said.

“What if I don’t want to be no sheep?”

He shook his head. “Parable sheep,” he said. “Parable sheep are the good guys.”

“Sheep is sheep,” I said. Then I said, “Serious now, Wendell,” and I looked at him hard so he’d know I really was.“This bastard don’t care about your parables. He’s gonna cause us no end of shit. Already is. Him and his goats.”

“I know it,” he said. 

“So what do we do?”

He didn’t seem to have no answer, and neither did I. We set for a while and listened to the katydids outside in the elm tree. I picked up the newspaper and a pencil and started in on the crossword, which is the only part of the newspaper I read anymore. Pretty soon I guess I dozed off, because I jerked awake when Wendell spoke up.

“You know what I think we ought to do?”

“Huh? What?” I guess I sounded peevish. I don’t know why, but I always hate being caught sleeping. “What ought we to do?”

“Get married.”

I took off my reader glasses. He didn’t look like he’d gone insane, but looks can deceive. I stared at him. The katydids in the elm tree changed gears. “It’s legal nowadays,” he said at last, and he sipped his nasty tea.

I said, “So’s riding a hippopotamus sidesaddle.”

He just shrugged and grinned a little grin that way that always reminds me of Stan Laurel. 

  I put my glasses back on and picked up my paper. Best to ignore him. Let the madness pass. I had a hard time concentrating on the crossword, though. The little black and white squares kept running together. I kept thinking about Wendell’s sheep. And Delmer’s goats. And Delmer. Delmer over there smirking, thinking he had it all over us.

That’s when I saw it. 

All of a sudden like a bolt out of the blue. Eight-letter word beginning with E. Epiphany. It was like what Wendell told me happened to what’s-his-name on the road to wherever-it-was. I set my paper down. 

“I just had a vision,” I said. “I seen it clear as day.” 

“Is that so?” said Wendell. “What did you see?”

“I seen the look on Delmer Spivey’s face if he heard we done it.” 

Wendell rocked back in his chair and smiled at me over the rim of his teacup. “It will certainly get his goat,” he said.