Goddam Goats

Flash fiction, 100 to 1200 words. Regular Posts Start Tomorrow

Submissions are now open. Please join for our email notifications of new stories.

Goddam Goats 
for Roger and his 911

by Lester L Weil

Growing up, I always wanted to be a musician. But after becoming good enough to play professionally, I discovered that anywhere I could make a living doing that—well, I just didn’t want to live there. So I packed up my clarinet and hightailed it for the backwoods.

Life was pretty good there. The problem was, I really loved to play the clarinet. I did my farm thing during the day, changed irrigation pipes, dealt with my contrary bull, worked on my goddam tractor that was always broke—it almost had more welds than original metal. But at night after dinner, I missed playing the clarinet.

The clarinet is an instrument that really needs other instruments to play with.  I wanted to play woodwind quintet music. But I was out here in the backwoods. So I scouted around and found a flute player—not so rare, except this one was best friends with an oboist. And I also found a good enough french horn player.

So far so good. But I searched high and low, and there was not a bassoonist in the whole southern counties who could play diddly-squat. There isn’t much music written for flute, oboe, clarinet, and horn. I needed a bassoonist.

Then a miracle happened, a professional bassoonist decided to chuck it all and buy a farm. And he ended up here in my part of the backwoods. He could really play, as good a musician as I was. The quintet was now complete and we played. And played well.

The only important things I brought with me to the backwoods were my clarinet and my pristine classic 911 Porsche.  Because the quintet was scattered over 150 miles and the bassoonist lived in the center of it, we practiced at his house. But he had goats, and they ran free.

Now—Goats have baby goats. Baby goats love to run and jump, and especially love to climb. Baby goats playing are cuter than…well, just about anything.

But the sight of baby goats scampering up the back of my 911 to play king of the hill is definitely not cute.

Goddam goats.  GET OFF MY CAR!!!

What a guy has to put up with just to play the clarinet.

5-14 Published in Doorknobs and Bodypaint 2014

Lester L Weil

Leave a Reply