I was over at the bodega when I ran into Hank and Wallace. They’re crazy shiny-haired suit types during the day but they’re also a couple of real chill dongers so we all ended up over at Marie’s place. Marie is this older but still pretty smoking lady that’s married to the guy that makes the goat-cheese pizzas for the little league games, and this was in June—real serious little league time, we’re talking major consumption of goat-cheese—so Jerry, the pizza guy, is seriously busy making pizzas and meanwhile his poor wife Marie is stuck at home taking care of the guy’s goats.

That’s right, this guy Jerry keeps goats in his apartment—for the cheese, I guess—and he expects the wife to sit home on the hot summer days seeing after all these goddamn goats, trying to stop them from eating up the furniture and everything. I don’t even know how many of them there were. A lot.

So we’re over there, and it’s pretty goat-ish in the apartment, as can be expected. Hank and Wallace are having a hard time with it because like I said they have shiny hair and wear suits and whatnot, so they’re not used to spending quality time with farm animals. But me, I grew up next to a lake in the forest with nobody around for miles, just me and the animals. Didn’t even have parents, if you can believe that. Just me and the animals, like I said.

So we’re having a pretty good time, doing keg stands of hard cider—everyone was drinking hard cider that summer, who knows—and Hank’s starting to get real irritable with one of the goats. And the goat, this dude wasn’t all that into Hank either, to be honest.

So they’re kind of squaring off in the kitchen, waiting for the pizza pockets to finish heating (this is how much Marie hates her husband the pizza guy and basically all things goat-related in general: she keeps frozen pizza pockets in the freezer, a lot of them), when Hank tears off and belts the goat right across the melon. Well, the goat just looks at Hank and starts laughing. Real high-pitch sinister type laughing. Because Hank’s broken his goddamn hand on the goat, which I could’ve told him that you don’t punch a goat in the head. It’s stupid. What you gotta do is get him by the legs and flip him over, I tell Hank. You flip him over and over until he don’t even know up from down and isn’t even totally sure he’s a goat anymore. He doesn’t know what he is or where he came from. That’s the way you break a goat’s spirit.

But Hank by then was already pretty worked up over his busted hand and wasn’t paying much attention to my worldview. That’s the way it goes sometimes.

Anyway, Marie and Wallace was getting pretty chummy on account of the fact that they’ve known each other since they was kids, which means they’re already onto each other in ways I can’t even begin to explain to a stranger such as yourself.

Feeling kinda left out, I wandered over to the goat what had busted Hank’s hand and I leaned down and whispered in his ear thank you, because the truth is I don’t even like Hank all that much. In fact, you might even say that I hate him. You might even go so far as to say that I’d lured Hank over to Marie’s house with the intention of doing him in right then and there, chopping him up, and selling him to Marie’s old man for future use in his little league pizza pies. That’s one possible view of the thing, that I intended to get rid of a dude I didn’t want breathing the same air as me, and to turn a tidy little profit in the deal.

But once his hand was all busted I got to feeling sort of down about my plan, having second thoughts about everything, you might say. Poor old Hank seemed pretty sad already, the way he was slurping on that pizza pocket, letting the hot cheese drip on his busted hand, clearly burning the shit out of himself. So that’s why I went over and said what I said to the goat. I wanted to thank him for saving Hank’s life, and saving my own life as well.

Because who knows, it’s possible Hank might’ve done me before I even got the chance to do him. Word on the street is that he’s got a black belt in karate, and that he’s already pretty touchy as it is, with his pretty serious steroid use and his calcified pineal gland. The dude drinks mouthwash like it was Perrier, and if you even so much as mention it he’ll go fucking apeshit on you. He’ll beat the hell out of your head and body, and then he’ll impregnate your whole family.

I know this for a fact, because this is what happened to yours truly when I happened to mention to Hank something about do you think you ought to be drinking all that mouthwash, amigo? Then he did those things I just mentioned, destroying my life and giving me the sour view of Hank that I now obsess over pretty much all my waking hours.

It’s not a good way to live. Alone, tired, hungry, desperate, not to mention chilly. Totally mind-fucked over what this dude did to me and my wife and my daughters and my whole world in general. Which, as I mentioned, is why I’d lured him to Marie’s in the first place.

But now, thinking back on the moments that’ve just transpired, it seems more and more likely to me that Hank would’ve torn my body asunder, rending my limbs, gnawing my innards, and tossing whatever was left off the roof of the building, seeing how far he can toss it—making a goddamn contest out of the thing—and then what would my options be? Not good. Not good at all. But this goat, this goat is good. This goat busted Hank’s hand and saved my life. Thank you, goat.