It was late spring. Color bloomed out of all the green. The field across from Sam’s driveway was planted with young wheat. It was green to the edge of the world, a barbed-wire fence where the field met the road. I saw the goat first. She bounced through the field, distant at the horizon. She stopped for a while and then rocked in another direction, her teats swinging from side to side. Sam appeared, a dark green figure in the young wheat, and chased the goat. I stopped to rest and watch. Put the bags of groceries in the ditch and leaned on the fence.

The goat stopped at the fence and chewed some green wheat. I leaned over the top wire and watched her shake her beard. Sam approached, his face flushed. His gray undershirt was dark in patches at his belly and at his pits.

“Hi. Just a minute.” He held one end of a short white rope; the rest lagged in the dirt. He snapped it up and walked slowly toward the goat. The goat continued to eat. Sam jumped forward, grabbed a fistful of thin white hair, and swung one end of the rope around the goat’s neck. The goat kept chewing, its long ears twitching, flicking.

Sam tied a knot in the rope and panted. He tilted his head and smiled. “I’ve just run about forty miles over this two-acre field.” Behind him, the long rows of broken wheat shone silvery-green.

“How am I going to get her out of here? She jumped in.”

“I’ll hold the rope if you want to lift her,” I said.

He passed me the rope. It was a clothesline. He grabbed the goat around the chest. It tittered hysterically as he heaved. The forelegs dangled, but the rear legs still touched the ground. Sam called from behind the goat’s shoulder, “I can only get one end of her at a time!”

I scrambled over the fence. The goat’s hair was longer around the hooves, which were yellow and curling. The goat kicked at me as we lifted her over the fence. Halfway over I dropped her legs. She got stuck, her rear legs sawing on the wire, twisted free, and dropped to the ground. One knee gave as she landed. She pulled up and trotted across the road, dragging the rope behind her. Sam straddled over the fence and we walked toward the house.

He grinned at me and wound the rope around his fist. “Her name is Kate.” Apologetic shrug. “The guy who owned her before called her that.”

“How’s Carlotta?”