Here is an excerpt from my book Goat Water Is Not What You Think, which will be published in early February. The book chronicles our four winters on the Caribbean island of Montserrat, leading up to the volcanic eruption which destroyed our house, killed 19 people and made two-thirds of the island uninhabitable.
William Owensby,
our neighbor down the hill, arrived at our front gate with a burlap sack full
of banana shoots and his cutlass to plant MY banana plantation—the plantation
that within a few months would feed our family and, if we were lucky, half of
Spanish Point, as our subdivision was known, with lovely bananas. Or so I
fantasized.
William had timed
his arrival to plant, he said, “by the moon, two days after the first quarter.”
This was a serious thing and had to be strictly adhered to. He said all this
without even the hint of a smile, so I didn’t smile either….
Every now and
then, William would appear at our gate with goat meat meant as a gift. The
first time this happened he said he had made his kill that morning. I asked,
“Oh, which one?” He said it was the little male I’d seen running around with
his twin, a female I had named “Nice Girl.”
I said, “Oh, poor
thing.” I felt kind of sad.
William shrugged.
“He should know that’s what he was born for.” Females were jealously guarded
because they could produce more young. But the life of the male goat – except
for big billy – wasn’t worth much.
I thanked him for
the plastic bag containing the goat roast and another containing a big piece of
cake that his wife Mamie had baked. We ate the cake right away, but we put the
goat in the freezer. In two weeks, when I got up the nerve to thaw it out and
cook it, we could pretend it had come from the grocery store. We came to call
this ploy “running it through the freezer.”
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