The goat heard, looked and bolted, breaking off the rope at the base of the tree. Henry ran, trapped it between a corner of the house and the barbed-wire fence and caught it with a diving tackle. Should hang him up first by the hind feet, he thought, alive, then slit the throat. But that wouldn’t be easy now. Sitting on the goat’s back, he drew his pocketknife and flipped it open, yanked the hard head up and backward—the calm yellow-green eyes stared into his. O Death, thou comest when I had thee least in mind. Henry could feel the violent beating of the animal’s heart, the surging lift and fall of lungs and rib case beneath his own 180 pounds of human weight, human power, human domination, human greed. Good God, he thought, I can’t do it. I can’t do it. Cursing, he sliced the keen edge of the blade across the goat’s throat and did it.

There was no further struggle; the beast died quietly. Henry hung it by the pasterns to a tree near the fire pit.

Feeling sick and hollow, he let the goat complete its bleeding, catching the blood in a pail, then gutted it—dropping the steaming viscera on spreadout newspapers—and skinned the animal clean. Flayed, the young goat looked pale as a dead baby. A few flies gathered but not many; the air was chill, silent clouds floating across the face of the sun. Henry lit his fire, pausing to watch the flames rise and dance.

Myra stepped out on the back porch of the store to drop rags and papers into the trash barrel. She stopped and stared. Her husband, with bloodsmeared hands, forearms, face, knelt at the side of a blazing pit. Behind him, a naked child hung upside-down from a dead tree.

Henry. Good God.

He stared back, grinned: Cabrito, Myra. Goat. We got to feed our guests. Got to get things ready.

She stared at him, the goat, the fire. Disgusting, she muttered, but he thought he saw a sneaking admiration in her eyes. Hell, she was a carnivore too; hadn’t Henry felt her sharp teeth often enough? Disgusting, she repeated, returning to her studio.

He wrapped the unwanted organs and guts in several layers of newspaper—setting aside heart, liver, kidneys—and stashed them for the time being on the roof of the tool shed, shady side, beyond reach of the village dogs. He weighted the package down with rocks. Later he’d bury it in the pit in the garden; would make good fertilizer. He stretched the hide on the same roof, tacking it down flesh-side up toward the winter sun, and scraped off the remaining tallow. Goatskin gloves, men. Handbags, ladies.

He took down the goat and laid it in a tub filled with his secret marinade: six bottles of beer plus honey, garlic, red chili and oregano. He soaked it through the afternoon and into the night, meanwhile keeping a fire going in the pit. Near midnight, Myra sleeping, Henry wrapped the goat in marinated cheesecloth and layers of wet burlap and carried it into the dark backyard.