Oh Poo !

BILLY'S GOAT

 

I don't know why but it is just the way it is. I'm the first one in our family to wake up, even on week ends. While it bothers me, everyone else is glad I'm 'IT' and they can grab a few more minutes, even hours, of sleep. I keep an emergency flashlight on the small square wobbly table between my bed and my brother's. With a twist, a turn, I might as well get up, use my flashlight to get to the toilet without peeing in my p.j.s. Billy is dead to the world. The light, the noise of the toilet flush might as well be in somebody else's house. Once in a while I get silly, mean, and kick his bed or drop a shoe. He has never complained or called me a clumsy fool.

 

Here lately I've been testing, trying to get him to stir. I turn the black and white t.v. on, volume as high as it goes. My father yells from his room, 'Turn that damn thing off. Don't you know it's only six o'clock?'
Just yesterday I leaned hard against the wobbly table, aiming it at Billy's bed. It hit his mattress but not him. My father yells, 'Damn fool, watch where you're going.' Sounds of him getting out of bed, grunting, turning on the hall light bother me, not Billy.

 

My brother is a friendly guy, called in for neighborhood softball games. He's pretty good at tennis too, and can get a match almost whenever he is in the mood. Jealousy is raising its ugly fangs and I am the one who is jealous. Sara Mae Kolinskey is Billy's new girlfriend. She says she is eighteen, looks 20 to me. I happen to like womanly girls with a bit of schmaltz on them and make a hit on her. I am neither accepted or turned away. Sara Mae ignores me. At least I think she does.

 

5 a.m. before I even reach for my flashlight, Billy jumps out of bed on to my back, says nothing, just punches me where I think my kidneys are. I squeal like a pig going to slaughter. My father yells his usual yell, 'Shut up boys. It's too early to fight. Damn you both.'

 

I've never seen Billy go berserk before and don't like seeing him flip out now. 'You want to come to my wedding, Brother?' he asks me.
'Not particularly. When is it going to be?' 'As he punches me in my gut and I gag, he tells me, 'Sara Mae and me, we're getting married when we feel like it, before she gets preg, we hope. You stay away from her or you'll be my dead brother. Got it?' I got it but don't like it. I have to get back at Billy's nasty tone, his using me for a punching bag.'Yeah, Brother, you're not the only one fooling with Sara Mae. She's come on to me when you're not around.' Foolish remark. I see stars. His fist gets me in my Adam's apple and I start to vomit.

 

I can see thru small slits in my eyes that Billy regrets what he did to me. He's scared, puts his arm around my shoulders and helps me sit down on the grass.  Our father appears from nowhere and yells, 'Damn you boys. Stop the arguing, the fighting. Billy's fuse is short. You got his goat once too often and deserve a lickin.'

 

When my knees stop shaking, I stand and look right in Billy's face and and make goat noises, lower my head and butt him hard in his belly.

 

The bed next to mine is now empty. Dad put a new color t.v. in my room  and I still  get up earlier than my father,  brother, Sara Mae or my new niece, Betty Poop Too Much.

 

My father yells, Damn it, Billy why does the hall always smell like shit?' Billy points to Betty and we all smile.