Goose
Goose
Tom Diamond
There were some geese down on the water, and they were very busy doing very little. It’s like they had a plan, but I’m not prepared to say whether something like a goose can know about something like a plan. Step one might be to swim over to the shore, and the next step—step two—might be to swim back to the very spot from which it had just left and make an awfully strange noise, like a shrill or feral wheeze. After that, it might flap its wings for no particular reason other than that this is step three of the plan. This is just an example. If you could ask the goose, he or she would tell you something else, but it wouldn’t make any more sense because staying on one little pond all day seems imprudent—unless you are a goose or perhaps a lily pad. Geese fly away when winter begins and return when it’s over. Even though their wings work all the time, that is all the traveling they get to do. A talking goose could not convince you that staying on one little pond all day is a good idea. At least, he couldn’t convince me of it.
I named this one Raylan because he reminded me of my son, Raylan, who stood upright and dignified, like he was taller than everyone, even the people taller than him. He would be a swan if everyone else was a goose. If there had been a swan there in the pond, I would have named it Raylan. I’d never seen one there though, so I named the most upright and dignified goose Raylan instead.
Raylan was a flirt. I mean the goose. I could tell by the way he would float by other geese like it wasn’t part of the plan, and I don’t think they knew better. They probably thought he was doing something else, and they were lucky enough to be close to it. This was his plan all along, though. He would glide by like it didn’t mean much to him, leaving graceful ripples behind on the water. How wonderful Raylan was, with his long neck held straight like that. If he’d been a person with a mother, she might tell him not to sit so straight because he was making the guests uncomfortable. It was perfectly becoming on a goose, though. I couldn’t look away.
The plan was to garner the attention of one goose whom I’d named Marilyn. I know it’s presumptuous, but I’d like to say Raylan was deeply in love. A delicate brilliance floated off her untarnished coat, her feathers a swirling milky white with a soft, earthly brown. She sweetly conveyed her dark beak and soft, small head around the pond so the other geese and I could take a look. I knew a woman named Marilyn—one with longer legs and a mortgage—and she’d once been married to Raylan—not the goose, but the man. I can faintly remember some of our conversations, and I’d always lose myself during those. She and Raylan were splendid together.
Marilyn the goose wouldn’t let Raylan meet her eye—she didn’t want to seem especially uninterested. This made me smile because Raylan didn’t either. Marilyn would be implementing her own plan, an important part of which was to appear entirely uninterested, as Raylan swam past, putting out his impressive neck as straight as he could. But he hadn’t figured out what else to do before he reached the other side of the pond. He couldn’t let the other geese see him turn around and try again, so he would rest a while on the beach before making his way back to where he’d started, hugging the shore opposite of Marilyn. This made it seem like he was doing something else, like he hadn’t been more interested in Marilyn than he was in the things on the other side of the pond. I can’t say for sure, but I think Raylan had all his spectators fooled. He made the trip at least a dozen times as I sat there, on a hard bench at the edge of the pond, though I can’t claim to have actually counted.
Something unexpected happened there on the pond then. Raylan was mid-lap, and Marilyn still didn’t seem to notice, just like all the other times. Then, it might have been a frog or elsewise a bug who made a noise. I wasn’t quite startled, but it distracted me from Raylan and what he was doing long enough for me to notice a small pile of eggs—each appreciably larger than one you might keep in your kitchen—resting on the beach under loosely packed twigs and sticks and things. I didn’t think much of it and returned my attention to Raylan, who made for the beach again. I knew he would land ashore—I’d seen it enough—but I didn’t think he would toddle over, use his beak to clear all the sticks and things, and saddle himself astride the eggs there. My nose crinkled, and my chin wanted my hand for a moment. I looked at Marilyn there on the water and then back at Raylan there on the beach and then up to the overcast sky.
A goose may not feel lonely. It would put me at some welcome ease to learn that geese get along each day and spend neither time nor energy on a thing like loneliness. I seldom even see a goose by himself. Other geese are normally around, and the noble among them would be there for the friendless and wantful. A goose is a member of a flock that will never leave him because he hasn’t got a personality. He has nothing to say about Christmas or grandchildren but pulls himself along fine anyway. Telling a goose he’s missed Christmas will conclude a conversation as soon as it begins. He’ll only shamble away, probably, though sometimes they’ll hiss at me. Surely they hiss for some other reason and not because I ventured a question about humanly concerns that geese don’t understand. I once inquired of Raylan—the goose—if he missed his grandfather. I laughed because he didn’t understand. Then he hissed at me. It’s unsettling, the way he does it, like he means to empty his feathered body of air right there in front of me. His beak opens wide, his neck extends towards the ground, and he makes his voice heard. The trees and I always listen.
Geese come around from disagreements with disarming civility. They’ll clash over food or territory, and they’ll hiss at each other, brandishing their wings and hurling pond water every which way. And then they’ll drop it. Like the hissing was the point of the thing. I applaud them for this. The senseless pique left by disagreement is distracting and unpleasant. I’d like to return to folks afterward as if I’m meeting them anew, the way geese can. But we can never hiss or hurl our way out of the fog. So I’m here in the woods, on my way home, resting on a small bench by the edge of this pond.
It appears I’ve miscast Raylan as Raylan. Raylan the goose, that is; see, I shouldn’t have called him Raylan because there he was, straddling the eggs. It is tradition in the goose community that a lady should warm her eggs under her feathery bosom like that. They do it for a month or so, as part of a process called incubation. It prepares the eggs for hatching. Raylan would have neither a hand nor wing in this, if the name I gave him were apt. Thus, I’d made a misstep and needed a new name. None were forthcoming there in the moment.
I couldn’t think of a new name for him for two reasons. Namely, geese do not embody names easily. For instance, picture a goose named Gary or some such. It takes time and patience for a name to grow into a fitting representation of and for a goose. I’d also come to adore Raylan. I wanted only for he and Marylin to elope to wherever it is geese go to consummate a divine goose love. But they didn’t look like they needed names anymore. I was here, on this bench, by this pond, becoming rather upset.
Walking home, as dusk began to settle, it was only a little farther to a clearing—to my way home—when I noticed my thoughts and sensations begin to conflate. My awareness became softly hazy. I faced an onslaught of feeling, inputs of feeling. The crickets and rustling leaves; the wind on my face and my feet on the ground; my thoughts on those lovely geese, and things… people I still miss dearly. It all sat down in my mind when it normally glides past, like a goose on the water when nothing means much to him. It’s occurred to me that it is not so pretty to be uninterested. See, in this life, I’m privy to have enough interest for me and more to spare; alas, I’d been distracted by the distracting and the unpleasant. The dead. That once interested me, it seems.
I found a tree, a large one, that could for a time serve as a safe companion there under the sinking darkness. I sat on the ground and rested against my tree. I gathered a pile of soil in each hand, turned my palms to the night, and let this soil drain slowly between my fingers. I looked up; the sky was clearing.
See, you must become interested before you reach the end of the pond, lest some passerby sees you and tells you what you're doing, and gets it all wrong.
