A tale by Gene Marckx
They tell about a place, a crossroads called Damned-if-you-Do & Damned-if-you-Don't. And they say that each of us is born just where we are meant to be. But it's hard to believe, hard to believe in the case of the boy born in that place, the crossroads of Damned-if-you-Do & Damned-if-you-Don't. Whatever he did—chop wood, carry water—wasn't good enough. The wood wasn't stacked high enough. The water tub wasn't full enough.
Then the old man slipped and fell on the muddy path where the water had spilled.
Covered in mud he howled, "Get that boy! Get that boy!"
Right at the crossroads he had the boy bound up in chains and brought to the big fire where the yes-men spread coals out on the ground. Then the old man pushed the boy down to fall on those coals, and the bound-up boy rolled around in the fire wailing and calling for help. No one reached a hand to him. Everyone was looking over at the old man.
Then something shifted. The boy started swelling up in the fire. Was it the blisters? Was it the gall? The boy swelled bigger and bigger until his chains broke. He was a boy no longer. He was a giant. He knocked the old man down into that fire, and then he let out a roar, a roar that shook the earth and sent every last one of those yes-men into hiding.
The giant stomped away from there, and because he'd gotten so big his hunger got big as well. He grabbed up what he could and swallowed it all down—cows, horses, sheep, goats, dogs, pigs and even a bear or two. But he could never still his craving. He was hungry for something he couldn't find. And this craving drove him roaring and tramping after anything that had the look and smell of food. Day-to-day, when he got tired he slept in the mountains, breaking down a few trees to make his bed. He liked the cold mountain air for his hot temper.
When people heard those heavy footsteps coming they hid away. Yet there was a boy who tended goats in the woodlands and led them home to the village at night.
His job was to protect the goats while they browsed on vines and thorns. But often he lay dozing under a bush. So when the giant saw goats in the bushes he caught a couple, and he caught up that goat boy too. He swallowed them all down and went on to eat up all the goats.
Then he tramped into the village. The people ran away and hid. He could smell food, animals, but he couldn't find them as he smashed through half the homes, driven by craving. He got tired of this and stomped back to the mountains and slept through the night.
After he left, the people mourned over their losses. The mother of the goat boy ran up across the fields and into the bushes. She found goat tracks, and the footprints of her son, and the last threads of his tunic left on the thorns. And she stumbled home sobbing bitter tears.
The elders had a sense that the giant was going to come back. They counseled and made a plan, and then began to work under the moon that night. The people dug a deep pit and drove sharp stakes in at the bottom. Then they covered the pit with slats and mats woven of reeds until everything looked green as grass.
They knew what the giant was after, and they herded all their animals into a long pen beyond the mats. The horses with the pigs, the sheep with the goats, the cows with the chickens, oh, they all made quite a noise when the sun came up. The giant heard them and smelled them from afar. In his hunger he charged down the mountain into the village, kicking aside the houses. As he reached out for a cow he fell into the pit. His head was cut through. His heart was cut through. And his belly was cut through.
The people came out of hiding and crowded around the pit. They saw blood flowing from the dead body of the giant. But what they saw next they could hardly believe. Up from the bloody pool a boy was struggling, struggling, and the men climbed down to help him out.
"My son! My son!" cried the mother of the goat boy. "My son! My son!"
She took her shawl and wiped the blood from his face, and the other women brought water and washed him. But they whispered, "This is not your son, Mrs. Nissa. We knew that wild one. This is a different boy."
But Mrs. Nissa would not hear them. She kept murmuring, "My son, my son." And so they let her go on. She took the boy to her hut and nursed his bruises and blisters. She fed him from her garden and with the milk of her one nanny goat that never left her. After he grew sound and healthy again she found that he wasn't so flighty as before. He could chop wood and carry water.
"And now, my son, will you listen to your mother?" She taught him ways of cultivating vegetables: thinning the carrots and turnips and beets; hilling the potatoes; keeping snails off the sorrel and chard. And he liked to work in the garden. Those plants nourished him in body and soul.
But he still felt uneasy every time she called him her son. "I am not your son," he would say. After months of this his anger began to seethe with gall, and he was afraid of it, afraid of what would happen. Yet he couldn't let her go on. Every time she called him her son he felt a deep pain. His anger made him think she was punishing him.
He shouted at her. "Please don't call me your son. I am not your son."
She calmly stood before him. He was surprised that she was not a bit afraid. After a moment she smiled. "Don't you see? You are my goat boy. Your face and body have changed, but I would know you anywhere. You are my wild one who loves the fields and forests. You came to me years ago out of the war, when that warrior in battle took me by my hair and fell on me. He was killed, that one. But you were born out of that pain to comfort me. And now you are born once more from the blood of that hungry angry giant. You have come back to me better than ever."
The boy stood silent, and in spite of his anger he began to fathom a little of what she saw. The next morning as he broke hard ground to make for more garden he remembered the crossroads. The blisters on his hands were reminding him of that hard place. At work here he struck a stone deep in the earth. And in spite of his blisters he dug around it and pulled it out. But all of a sudden it rolled and fell into his lap. Caught here a moment he felt the old chains. And yet as he rested and stared into the rough face of the stone his gall slowly gave way. He felt his own rough face. The stone had a fissure up its left side where it had almost broken, but it had not. He ran his finger along its crevice and whispered, "Who am I?"
The stone did nothing. It showed nothing. But the boy felt something, an easing of his old craving from that ancient stone. Then he crawled out from under it and shivered in the morning air. After this he became the son of Mrs. Nissa, and everyone called him goat boy.
They say that each of us is born just where we are meant to be, but sometimes it takes a bit of work to get there.