“What
d’ya want ta do today?”
Steven
looked over at his friend Allan, “I don’ know”.
“We
could al’ays go visit Bessie,” John suggested.
“Naw,”
said Ted. “I don’ feel like cow-tippin’. Beside, you gotta do that at night so
old man MacGreggor don’ catch ya, an’ it’s still ten in the mornin’.”
It
was late summer, school was just a few weeks away from starting back up, and
the four friends were sitting on Allan’s front porch.
“Look
who’s comin’ up the lane.”
“Hey
guys,” called out a girls’ voice, and a moment later Amanda flopped down on the
steps.
Amanda
and her family had moved into town right after school let out for summer break
so was still considered a bit of an outsider by most folks even though they had
been in the community for a couple months. Being a small rural town, everyone
had heard of the new family moving into the old Johnson place but nobody had
really seen them until the start of summer ice-cream social a week after school
was out. Amanda had shown up in a pretty yellow sun dress with a floral pattern
on it, ankle socks with lace on them and white leather open-toe sandals on her
feet, and a wide-brim sun hat on her head. All the boys in town had been
somewhat intimidated by the pretty girl who stood 5 foot 5 inches with the
piercing grey eyes, quick smile, and out-going personality. The girls in town
were all politely cool to the stranger and nobody really got to know her that
first day.
The
next day though, Amanda had shown up at the local ice-cream parlor and burger
joint where the kids in town would hang out on weekends or during the summer
when chores weren’t being done. She strolled in wearing jeans and a t-shirt,
boots, and a cowboy hat. The kids learned fairly quickly that while Amanda was
definitely a girl and liked dressing up for special occasions, she was also
more than a bit of a tomboy who liked doing active things with the guys more
often than hanging out with the girls in town, and she was Allan’s neighbor.
She soon became ‘one of the guys’ in the group of friends which included Allan,
Steven, John, and Ted, which meant that she got in a bit of trouble a few times
during the summer right along with the rest of them when their fun wound up
upsetting the animals of one farmer or another.
Everyone
just sat around in silence for several minutes until Amanda spoke up. “Well
this is fun. Not sure I can handle all the excitement here,” she said with a
twinkle in her eye.
“Yea,
gettin’ kinda bored myself,” Ted drawled.
“What
can we do to liven things up then?”
“How’s
about we go see Suzie for some DKG,” Allan suggested.
“Hey,
yea,” Steven agreed. “It’s been a while so farmer McKinney won’ be lookin’ fer us, an’ ‘Manda
ain’t played it a’fore.”
“What’s
d k g?”
John
grinned, “You’ll see. Com’on.”
――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――
After
cutting through a couple of fields they arrive at the fence around farmer McKinney’s pasture. The
ground is rough and rocky with steep hills that have wild grass growing all
over, and there are even a couple of large boulder-sized rocks half buried in
the ground. Grazing on the grass near-by are several goats.
“Ok,
so we’re here,” Amanda asked, “now what? Who’s Suzie, one of them? And is
someone going to tell me what d k g means?”
“DKG,”
explains Ted with a grin, “is a little game we play called Don’t get Kicked by
the Goat.”
“Hey
guys, lookit here. They’s a new sign on th’ fence says b’ware th’ billy goat,”
says Allan.
“Aw
he jus’ put them signs up ta scare us af’er tha’ las’ time.” John turns to
Amanda and continues with, “The game is ta sneak up behin’ a goat an’ annoy ‘em
jus’ enuf ta kick out wi’ a hoof but don’ get hit by it.”
Amanda
wants to know, “And just how do you do that?”
Ted
holds up a stick he had picked up along the way, “Ya tickles and poke ‘em like
ya was some bug crawling or bitin’ on ‘em. If yer really good an’ they ain’t
reactin’ ya can try grabbin’ ‘n’ pullin’ their tail, but ya got ta be real fast
ta do that.”
Amanda
notices everyone else has a stick, and Allen has two.
“Suzie
is the old grey goat right over there,” Steven said pointing to one of the
goats. “She’s pretty laid back an’ act’ly kinda sweet. Takes a bit ta get her
to kick ‘n’ when she do it ain’t real hard. Here, I’ll shows ya how.”
Steven
climbs over the fence and slowly walks up behind Suzie. He starts by barely
running the end of the stick through the fur on Suzie’s legs and back-side, but
nothing happens. He gets a little faster and rougher which gets the goat to
shiver like she’s shaking off a fly, but no kick. Steven breaks off the end of
the stick so it has a point and starts to poke Suzie in the leg which finally
gets the reaction he’s after and she lashes out with a hind leg. Steven is
looking for it and easily avoids the kick by jumping back. He looks back at the
group with a grin.
“See?
Ain’t that hard,” says Ted, then he and John climb over the fence.
Allan
hands Amanda a stick with a grin and climbs over into the pasture with Amanda
right behind him.
Ted
quietly goes up behind another goat that is close to the fence, and in a few
seconds gets it to kick out which he avoids by dodging to the side. John grins
at Amanda and gestures for her to go out. She looks around for a moment then
starts sneaking up behind a big goat a little further out in the pasture.
Amanda
gets up behind the goat without it noticing her and she looks around at the
other kids. Steven is starting to play with Suzie again and Ted is going at it
again with his goat. John is starting to sneak up to a goat while Allan is
watching Amanda. She grins at Allan and turns back to her goat to play the
game.
Allan
watches as Amanda starts to gently poke the goat with her stick, and he wonders
when farmer McKinney
got such a big goat. Then the goat turns its head to look back and Allan
realizes that it’s not just a goat, that’s a Buck, and it’s got a mean look on
its face.
Allan
starts running and yells out, “Amanda! NO!”
His
loud shout and sudden movement distracts the other boys and startles the goats
and several things happen all at once. John stops and looks around while Steven
and Ted both turn their heads to look and don’t watch the goats they are
poking, and Steven actually pokes Suzie much harder than he intended to. Amanda
looks around too, failing to notice the buck is looking back right at her.
The
buck kicks out, but because Amanda is turning towards Allan the kick only
catches her on the left arm just below her elbow with a sharp crack. Suzie,
receiving a hard poke in her side from the stick, bleats out loud and lashes
out with a hoof that catches Steven in the side of his leg just below the knee
with a wet sounding snap. The goat that Ted was bothering is startled and turns
around to look behind it and sees Ted standing there with a stick in hand. The
other goats not being pestered by a human get spooked and run off a short
distance before they stop and look back, silent witnesses to the unfolding
drama.
Ted’s
goat lunges forward at him with a head butt, but because he is too close for a
good charge instead ends up lifting him in the air and throwing him back
against the fence. When he lands his back is bent so that his butt hits the
ground just before his upper back and head hit two different cross-bars on the
fence with a sharp thud sound, and Ted simply falls to the side with a moan to
lie on the ground. The goat gives a snort when he doesn’t get up and trots off.
Steven
screams in pain, causing Suzie to bolt towards the other goats, and he
collapses to the ground with his leg suddenly unable to support any of his
weight.
After
kicking Amanda, who yells out in pain, the buck turns around and rears up to
attack his “attacker”, Amanda, with a vicious head butt. Allan arrives first
and slams into Amanda, throwing her backwards out of the way, which leaves him
standing there sideways when the goat comes down. Allan takes the full force of
the buck’s thick horns on his hip which slams him to the ground with a loud
crack. The buck, which is now enraged, rears up and comes down with his
fore-hooves on Allan several times. Each hit results in another snap or crack coming
from Allan’s body.
Suddenly
John, who is the biggest of the boys and the best linebacker on the football
team, comes rushing in from the side in a head down bull rush and slams into
the big buck. He knocks it way from Allan with the huge blow that stuns the goat
for a second, but leaves John off balance and down on his hands and knees. The buck
recovers quickly, and seeing a new opponent on the ground charges back in. John
only has enough time to rise up on his knees with his arms crossed out in front
of him to try and block the blow. The goat slams into John with a double crack
that throws the large boy backwards several feet and knocks the wind out of
him. No longer enraged, and seeing his enemy’s all lying on the ground, the buck
turns and joins the rest of the heard and leads them away to other parts of the
pasture.
When
Allan threw Amanda away from the buck’s attack, she collided with one of the
large boulders, her left shoulder taking the impact with a sharp pop and stunning
her for a minute. By the time she regained her senses enough to look around,
the goat was walking away and everyone was on the ground in various amounts of
pain. Amanda tries to sit up and gasps as pain shoots down her entire arm,
letting her know that she was seriously injured.
“Amanda.”
She
looks around and Steven is looking back at her.
“Amanda,
ya have ta go for help.”
“My
arm’s busted, every time I try to move it hurts like hell.”
“Ya
have ta Amanda, yer the only one who can. I can’t walk, Allan is a mess ‘n’
unconscious, Ted’s out too, an’ both of john’s arms look really bad. He can’t
climb a fence or even open a gate wi’ ‘em.”
Amanda
looked around at the other boys and Steven was right. His leg was bent sideways
at the knee. John’s arms both were bent in the middle where they shouldn’t bend
and he was still on his back looking around dazed. Ted’s eyes were open but he
wasn’t focusing on anything and just lying there not moving and barely
breathing. Allan was out cold. His entire lower half was definitely messed up bad,
and she could see blood seeping into his jeans from a couple of spots.
“Can
you stand up and move?” Steven pleaded with Amanda.
Gathering
her strength and gritting her teeth, Amanda managed to stand up with a groan
and lean again the rock. Holding herself up with her right arm to stay balanced
as her head swims dizzily, her left arm dangles by her side. The shoulder was
obviously out of place causing the arm to twist unnaturally, and there was an
obvious kink in the arm just below her elbow where she had been kicked. Once
the dizziness passed Amanda shifted so she was more sitting against on the
rock. She tried to move her left arm but it didn’t do more than twitch and she
hissed in pain from the muscles trying to obey the signals from her brain. Knowing
it was going to hurt, and gritting her teeth once again, Amanda reached over
and grabbed her left hand with the right, and with a small scream of pain
pulled it up and tucked her left hand into the waist band of her pants. She sat
for a minute breathing heavily from the pain then managed to clutch her left
arm to her side with the right hand and stand up.
“I
guess I lost, I got kicked first” Amanda joked.
Steven
gave a weak grin, “We all lost. The farm house is that way,” he said while
point out across the field away from the way the goats had gone. “Please,
hurry.”
Amanda
nodded and started in the direction indicated, every step jarring her injury
with agonizing pain. Amanda did her best to ignore it and staggered off as
quickly as she could, knowing that she was the only hope the others had for
rescue.
――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――
Dr.
Jonathan Statler looked up at the clock on the wall of his office and, seeing
he had a few minutes to spare, leaned back in his chair with a sigh and thought
about the five children who had filled his orthopedic ward these past three
weeks. He liked to think of himself as a simple country doctor and the small
hospital he worked in helped keep that illusion. But, it was times like these
that he was grateful for the knowledge and experiences he had gained as a
doctor in the military while serving during the war which made his current job
a bit easier to deal with.
Those
four boys had been his patients individually, or occasionally in pairs, more
than once as they grew up. This was the first time though that all four had
been brought in together, and this time they even managed to include the girl
in their antics and gotten her hurt as well. Although, once he had been handed
the girl’s medical records by her parents he would have thought her a boy going
solely by her history of injuries and ignoring the name on the file. It would
seem the girl was quite the tomboy despite the impression of a very sweet young
lady he had first gotten when he saw her at the beginning of summer social. The
family had bought the old Johnson farm and moved to town due to her love of,
get this, bull riding of all things. The girl had shown an exceptional
fortitude in going for help that he doubted most of the other children in town
would have managed to do. At least the kids had been in good enough spirits to
go and give Josiah’s new goat a name of their own, which was apparently going
to stick as he’d been hearing it used around town recently.
Three
weeks ago, the girl, Amanda, had come stumbling into the home of Josiah and
Alice McKinney through their back door into the kitchen, half scaring Alice to death. She was
extremely pale and sweating, half delirious and barely able to keep herself up
from the pain of her own injuries. She was still able to keep herself together
long enough to let Alice know that the four boys were lying injured out in the
pasture and needed immediate attention, two of them in very serious condition.
Then she collapsed on the floor. Alice
immediately called the hospital for help which brought Dr. Statler running with
a couple of other doctors and a pair of nurses in tow along with their two
paramedics in the town’s ambulance and the one fire truck. It had taken Amanda
over an hour to make her way through the field to the farm house, and it took
another twenty minutes for the rescue trucks to arrive at the McKinney’s before
they could go out and get the others in the field and bring them back.
――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――
Steve
shifted around on Amanda’s bed and tried to get a bit more comfortable for the
third time in fifteen minutes with his leg up on an extra pillow.
“Dang,
I jus’ can’ get settled right wi’ this thing.”
“Quit
yer bitchin’. You got it the easiest of all of us.”
“Sorry
Amanda, yer right.”
Steven
looked down at the plaster cast covering his left leg and frowns. The cast went from practically the top of his
thigh all the way down to his toes and kept the knee bent enough his toes
couldn’t touch the floor when he stood up straight. Suzie’s kick had dislocated
his knee and broken the top part of both bones in his lower leg and the end of
the femur. The shin bone had been cracked, doc had called it a partial greenstick
break, but the smaller bone had been broke clean through. After a small surgery
and a week in traction to get his knee back in place they had put this cast on
his leg that he’d be in for six or eight weeks. After the cast came off Doc
said he’d need a brace and therapy for a bit to get his leg strong enough
again.
“At
lees’ I get ta sleep at home and don’ have ta eat th’ hospit’l food. You ‘n’
John should be goin’ home pretty soon too.”
John
swallowed the bite of food he’d been given by the nurse feeding him.
“I’m
goin’ home t’day. I’m jus’ gonna need a lot of help fer th’ nex’ couple
months.”
John
raised both arms up a little to display them while he accepted another bite of
food. They were in matching plaster casts from the armpits to the knuckles. His
elbows were held at a ninety degree angle which effectively kept him from being
able to get close to his face at all with either hand. The left hand had been
turned so the palm was facing fully upwards while the right had was just the
opposite, the palm was turned to face completely down.
“I’m
glad my arms ain’t hangin’ in th’ air no more ‘n’ I c’n move ‘em aroun’ some,
but I still can’ do nuthin’ wi’ ‘em. My sisters ‘n’ mom ‘r’ gonna have ta do
ev’rthin’ fer me ‘til I get these casts off, an’ I do mean everythin’, which is gonna be so embarrassin’.”
“Me
too. Going home that is. Doc cleared me this morning. I’m glad to have my arm
out of traction and I can get out of bed now too. Not the first time I’ve been
in a big cast like this either. Same arm too come to think of it, although last
time my hand was still free.”
Amanda
sighs.
“It’ll
be a right pain having my arm poking out like a bum wing for the next couple
months but I’ve done it before. At least I don’t have to worry about a bra or
shirts with this thing.”
Amanda
grinned as she knocked on her cast with her good hand. The plaster shell
covered her entire torso from just above the hips all the way up over her left
shoulder and down her arm to the knuckles of her hand. The upper arm is held
straight out to the side with the elbow at a ninety degree angle so her forearm
and hand point straight out to the front with her palm facing down to the
floor. A wooden bar, completely covered in plaster, has been included for extra
support going up at an angle from about the waist to the forearm a couple of
inches away from the elbow.
“Doctor
Statler said I’d probably have to have a long arm cast for another month or so
after I get rid of this one. Diablo did a job on my elbow and I’ll be wearing a
brace and doing therapy for a while too after that.”
“Sorry
‘bout th’ shoulder, Amanda, tha’s my fault.”
“Well,
yea, it is. But then again it’s not. If you hadn’t knocked me out of the way
then that dang goat would have stomped on me and I’d be looking worse than you
probably. Maybe even as bad as a combination of me, you, and Ted.”
“well
it’s a good thin’ John done tackled Ol’ Diablo when he did, or I might jus’ be
lookin’ like tha’ instead o’ thi’. How ya doin’ over there Ted? How’s tha’ new
cast?”
“How
d’ya thin’ I’m doin’?
...
I’m
in a plaster shell from my knees to m’ forehead
...
wi’
only three openin’s in it at th’ top o’ m’ head
...
m’
face, ‘n’ m’ privates.
...
Oh,
an one fer th’ tube in m’ neck.
...
An’
they done plastered a bar in b’tween m’ legs
...
so’s
I can’ have no pants pulled up fer privacy.
...
I’s
got ta wear a diaper to cover me.
...
An’
I needs th’ diaper ‘cause I can’ control m’ body no how.
...
Th’
damn cast is cold ‘n’ wet where I c’n feels it
...
an’
it’s so tight ‘roun’ m’ jaw I still can’ eat solid food.
...
An’
who know’s when I’ll gets ta go home.”
“Hey
now, they got you out of traction so you ain’t being pulled on all the time,
and you ain’t hooked up to that breathing machine all day long anymore.”
“Yea,
but I still can’ move nothin’.
...
An’
ya sees how I has ta take a break to breathe when I talk.”
“Ok,
sure, they’s got ya all laid out stiff likes a board, an' it’s hard ta talk.
But what ya mean ya can’ move nuthin’? Ya can move yer arms around pretty well.
An’ th’ doc says yer gettin' better ev’r day.”
“Yea,
I c’n move m’ arms aroun’.
...
But
how am I gettin’ better?
...
It
feels like I’m wearin’ extra thick wool mittens
...
when
I tries ta grab or feel sumthin’ wi’ m’ hands.
...
An’
I can’ al’ays grab things right neither.
...
As
fer feelin’
...
I
got this on ‘n’ off tinglin’ tha’ goes from m’ chest to m’ belly.
...
An’
below there I got nuthin’.
...
I
can’ feel nothin’ below m’ waist
...
so’s
I don’ know if’n I done shit m’self again
...
‘til
someone smells it ‘r th’ nurse checks me.
...
An’
I got a tube inside me fer my piss to go
...
‘cause
tha’ don’ work right either.”
“Oh
come on. You moved your feet this morning when they came in to check on you. We
all saw it. Yea, it was slow and jerky, but YOU moved your feet Ted!”
“So
you says.
...
I
coul’n’ sees it
...
An’
I coul’n’ feels it
...
So
alls I got ta go by is what you says
...
whi’
ain’t much from here.”
“Screw
you Ted. We all done saw ya move yer feet. Why woul’ yer frien’s lie ta ya
‘bout that? A’leas’ ya still got all yer parts and they’s startin’ ta work
again. An they ARE workin’ too. An’ yer outta that traction too. Ya know wha?
I’m gonna make ‘em bring in a big ol’ mirror th’ nex’ time so’s ya can see yer
feet move.
“Me,
I’m still all tied up in ropes o’er here. Tha’ damn goat done stomp th’ shit
outta me, lit’r’ly. I got a hole cut in my side fer my crap to come out inta a
bag tha’ has to be emptied ev’r few hours an’ changed ev’r few days. An’ I got a
tube in me fer my piss ta come out too, but my tube comes out the other side a
m’ body. Not thru m’ dick like yours does. An’ I still needs a diaper too
‘cause I c’n still leak fr’m m’ butt somehow. An’ when I does gets outta all
these ropes, they gonna put me in a big ol’ cast from my armpits ta m’ toes fer
months.
“Only
good thin’ ‘bout alla this is I ain’t in a lotta pain ‘cause I can’ feels
nothin’ from m’ belly down. But tha’s a bad thin’ too ‘cause I can’ moves
nothing either. Th’ nurses say that I’ll heals up and get rid of alla this crap
around me eventually, bu’ they can’ say when ‘cause I was hurt so bad.
“Guess
it’s gonna be a while yet, but you an’ I is gonna be better Ted. You’ll see.
Doc Statler has al’ays fixed us up before, an’ he’s gonna do it again.”
http://abbacor.blogspot.com/2015/07/DKG-alternate-ending.html
