The Crash of Hennington. Patrick Ness
munching her hay, distracted and oblivious.
Trailing his fingers on the wall, Maggerty circled the goat slowly. She took no notice of him after her initial sizing-up, exuding the offhand confidence so peculiar to farm animals who weren’t also sheep. She was a greenish brown with white bony legs and sharp – Maggerty was soon to discover – hooves. With caution, or rather, with reverence Maggerty placed a hand on the goat’s hide. The goat jumped a little, but it seemed to Maggerty to be more out of surprise than abhorrence. When he touched her again, she didn’t move.
He began to stroke her, slowly, like a pet. She had birthed a litter less than three weeks before, but her kids had already been taken from her. Her udder, plump to the point of hardness, glistened with a liquid Maggerty assumed to be sweat. He knew, as all farm children knew, that udders issued milk, and he was deliriously overcome with a desire to drink, to sup rich sustenance from the goat, to bring the pulsing, thrumming warmth of another existing aliveness into himself. A contempt was there, too, for the goat’s refusal to regard him, to notice his need, but that did not stop his desire for the milk.
He knelt. Heat buzzed in the air. He felt his heartbeat in his temples. A tingling spread over his body along with a sort of ecstasy, if he had known the word at six, but it was like the ecstasy of those screaming streetcorner preachers who haunted Hennington’s desolate east side and who would shit right out in the open and leave it stinking in the sun for want of interrupting their sermons. Maggerty leaned in and put his lips to one of the long teats. He had not even properly gotten his mouth around the nipple when the goat kicked him, slicing a deep, precise cut between two ribs just below his left armpit, leaving a wound that never healed. Never.
This was the unacceptable thing. A child ridiculously exploring a goat could be explained, heaven knew such things and worse had happened on southern Hennington farms since time immemorial, but a child with a wound that never stopped bleeding, never scabbed nor scarred, now this was a thing to be wary of. The expected ostracism and isolation followed ruthlessly in the farming community, ringing outwards from friends to schoolmates to teachers and onward, until finally Maggerty’s own mother regarded him only grudgingly on the rare occasions when she regarded him at all.
As he stumbled down the road after The Crash, Maggerty distractedly put his hand to the wound. Years and years and years had passed. The wound never got worse, but it never got better either. It also never stopped hurting, and it was this, the never-ending pain coupled with the oddity of the never-healing wound, that had driven Maggerty irretrievably into madness sometime in the teenagedom when he had picked up with The Crash, still accompanying them all these many long years later.
He ate grass and roots with them. He drank from the streams and canals and lakes as they did. He rarely approached them – the experience with the goat had taught him not to meddle with an animal that weighed one hundred times as much – but he also never left them, nesting with them through winters and storms, famines and droughts. He began to be called Maggerty the Rhinoherd not long after taking up his patronage. At first, municipal thought considered forcibly separating him from The Crash, but as he apparently did no harm to the animals and as they did not seem to mind or indeed acknowledge his presence, he was left alone.
And so it stood. Maggerty the Rhinoherd. Before the year was out, he would have a second never-healing wound, but only because it would first take his life.
6. The Mayor’s Office and its Discontents.
The speakerphone on Cora’s desk crackled.
—Mayor?
—What can I do for you, Adam?
—The Arboretum just called.
—Let me guess. The Crash bruised a blade of grass and molested a squirrel.
—More like trampled a rare species of terrestrial phalaenopsis. The botanists are screaming about irreplaceability.
—Adam?
—Yes, Mayor.
—'Terrestrial phalaenopsis'?
—That’s what they said.
—They couldn’t say ‘orchid', like normal folk?
—I guess they figured you’d know.
—On the basis of nothing.
—What should I tell them?
—That they shouldn’t have planted terrestrial phalaenopsi where one hundred rhinoceros could tread on them.
—Well, they are terrestrial phalaenopsis.
—And it is an equally terrestrial Crash. Surely there are paths The Crash doesn’t take. The botanists can plant their orchids there.
—I think all they want is a fence.
—In whose lifetime do they see that happening? The Arboretum’s been an open park for ninety years. That’s not going to change on my watch just because a bunch of botanists are crying over orchids.
—I like orchids.
—I have another call, Adam. Issue settled.
She released his line and pressed another flashing light.
—Yes?
—Deputy Mayor Latham on the line.
—Put him through. Max? Make me happy.
—Unlikely, I’m afraid.
—You can’t make the fundraiser.
—I can’t make the fundraiser.
—This is my thought, right this second: ‘Why do I even bother?’
—Talon is sick.
—Oh. Well, all right then. What’s wrong with her?
—Battery Pox.
—Poor thing. Started the shots?
—We’re driving home from the doctor’s office right now. She’ll be fine. She’s just throwing up all over everything.
—And a sitter is out of the question?
—Cora …
—All right, all right, all right, I’m civilized. I’ll just have to work myself up for a sparring match with Archie Banyon.
—He can’t be too upset if I have a sick daughter.
—He won’t be upset at you. He’ll be upset at me.
—You can handle Archie Banyon.
—I know I can handle Archie Banyon. Doesn’t mean I look forward to it. Where are you now?
—Driving down Eighth. Just about to cross Medford.
—Look out for The Crash. They’re around there somewhere.
—The Arboretum called, didn’t they?
—I don’t want to talk about it.
—Sorry about tonight.
—I don’t want to talk about it.
But she did.
—How can you expect to be elected if I do all your campaigning for you?
—You got elected four times. Why fix something that’s not broke?
—Don’t be cavalier. They’re not going to make you Mayor just because I tell them to.
—They might.
—Well, yes, they might, but still, Max—
—I’ll make it up to you.
—So you say. Are you even going to vote?
—Mercer Tunnel. Breaking up. Gotta go.
—Liar.