The River Grasses
The River Grasses
By: Jenna Cargill
This is the story of an accident. It happened in a small town called Eddyville, and it was just a regular day like any other. One of our goats has been hurtling back and forth through the fence that separates its pen from the neighbors', but this time, it fell into their garden. The other goats weren’t around so we were the only ones to witness the disaster.
The neighbor’s son was home. He’s six years old and by far the cutest kid I’ve ever seen, except for when he gets worried about his goats. When poor Brown fell, he cried out in fear and started begging me to “please go get Mommy!” of course I went to get her right away. But when I got back with her, the goat was all dead in the yard, with a very big gash on its head. His mother wept and said she would never feed him again.
So there we had it: three dead goats.
The next day, the son went off to school, and his mother was left to clean up the yard. I don’t know exactly what she did, only that it involved a lot of bleach and duct tape. She made sure to leave the head and hooves in place so that everyone could see what happened, but I didn’t understand why at first.
I heard she told everyone in town about how her son wrote a will before he went off to kindergarten—he left everything to his pets. “He knew even back then how important they were!” she said. I wonder if he still does.
She held a funeral for poor Brown, even though it was just an accident, and all the kids came in droves, which I thought was a little weird. Then I realized that she probably thought it would be easier to get donations if it didn’t look like they were mourning the death of someone.
They buried her in our garden instead of the town cemetery. She made me sadder than anything else ever could have—she might not have been as cute as her little son but she wasn’t any less a pet or deserving of a burial next to him. So we buried her in my garden.
A few days after the burial, I saw my neighbor walking around with a shovel. I thought maybe she had gotten permission from the owners of the plots next to us and was digging one up for Brown.
I knew better.
She didn’t even bother asking me what happened to Brown’s body. Instead she went right out to her garden, dug up poor Brown, and brought her back into her house with her. She kept her in a crate while she ate bread and drink tea like nothing had ever happened. It was like Brown never even died.
A few days after that, my neighbor went to the grocery store in town. She brought Brown with her. Then she brought her back home with her a couple days later, only this time she wore a hat and sunglasses. “Why are you wearing sunglasses?” I asked. “Oh, I forgot about this,” she said, fanning herself with something brown and shapely in one hand and fluffing up Brown's fur in the other. “This scarf is really pretty, isn’t it? I got it on sale.”
She said she had decided to spend the rest of her life with Brown. She knew this wasn’t a normal thing people did, and she said that she thought Brown would like a real home, so she was going to take her in.
She even gave me a gift certificate to the store and asked when I planned on going back.
I felt bad for her. I knew that we had all made some mistakes, but I thought Brown deserved to be with her family in the end.
But I never said anything about it—we were still all friends and neighbors, after all.
I didn’t see my neighbor again until a few months later when she came to clean up the yard once again. She brought Brown to me in her car, saying she wanted me to help give my dead goat a proper burial. That was nice of her because it would have been very painful otherwise.
She knelt down by Brown’s grave—we had a nicely decorated patch of grass overlooking the river—and we both cried. “I’m going to take her back to her boy,” she said. I told her it was okay, and so we placed poor Brown in the ground.
Then my neighbor went back home and packed up her other pets and kept them all in boxes in the attic, along with all of Brown’s things, until ten years later when she finally went to sell them. She only got a few dollars for their old clothes and toys because they had been part of a will that would have taken care of them forever.
I had never told anyone any of this before. I didn’t even tell my mom or any of our friends what she did to us, but I guess it was all right because no one ever asked and, to be honest, I didn’t want the whole story spread everywhere either.
The next day my neighbor came back to clean up the yard again. She said she would take Brown out to her boy’s house with her one last time, and then she would get rid of her at a place where they buried pets in people’s yards.
A few weeks later when my neighbor came back with Brown, something was off about her.
I don’t know what it was, but she just wasn’t the same person anymore. She was pale and her eyes seemed to be glazed over, like she had seen a vision of something terrible.
I asked her if everything was all right, but she didn’t answer. Instead she handed me a box and said that everything was in there except Brown, who would be buried in my garden along with the other goats.
Then I asked her why they were leaving me all of this stuff—Who did I know from them? What did they owe me? She didn’t say anything for a long time.
Conclusion
I have spent the last nine years of my life corresponding with my neighbor, including e-mails and letters. I have helped her—and at least one other person—move from house to house, from country to country, and through several divorces. I am the only person she has trusted with her entire history . . . but that is all about to change for me.
This morning my neighbors called me over to their house. They said that Brown was dead in the yard and asked if we could help bury her—now that they had decided what to do with everything else.
I told them that instead of burying anything in my garden it was time for me to go into town for a few days.
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The River Grasses