Seasick Goats

WHEN NILLY HEARD Lisa’s dad, the Commandant, tell her she had to go to school, he remembered he was supposed to go to school himself. Wherever it might be. And if he was fast, maybe he would have time to eat breakfast, find his backpack, and if absolutely necessary, brush his teeth and still tag along with someone who knew the way to his new school.

He squeaked between the moving guys’ legs and into the house. And there, in a cardboard box in the hallway, he saw his trumpet. He exhaled in relief, snatched it up, and clutched it to his chest. Nilly and his sister and mom had arrived with the first load of stuff the night before, and the only thing he’d been worried about was whether the movers would forget the box with his trumpet in it.

He cautiously placed his lips against the mouthpiece.

“A trumpet should be kissed. Like a woman,” his grandfather had always said. Nilly had never kissed a woman in his whole life, at least not like that, not right on the mouth. And truth be told, he hoped he wouldn’t have to either. He pressed the air into the trumpet. It bleated like a seasick goat. There aren’t many people who’ve heard a seasick goat bleat, but that’s exactly what it sounded like.

Nilly heard someone banging on the wall and knew it was his mom, who hadn’t gotten up yet. “Not now, Nilly!” she yelled. “It’s eight a.m. We’re sleeping.”

She pretty much always said “we,” even if she was alone in her bedroom: “We’re going to bed now” and “We’re going to make ourselves a cup of coffee.” As if Dad weren’t gone at all, as if she still had him in there—stored in a little box, and every once in a while when Nilly wasn’t there, she would take him out. A tiny miniature Dad who looked like the Dad Nilly had seen in pictures. Miniature meant that something was really small, and it made sense that of all people, Nilly would have a miniature dad, since Nilly was the smallest boy Nilly had ever seen.

He went down to the kitchen and fixed himself some breakfast. Even though they’d just moved in the day before, he found everything he needed, because they’d moved so many times, he knew pretty much where his mom would put stuff. The plates in the cupboard on the left, the silverware in the top drawer, and the bread in the drawer below that. He was about to sink his teeth into a thick slice of bread with salami on top when it was snatched out of his hands.

“How you doing, dwarf?” Eva asked, sinking her teeth exactly where Nilly had been planning to sink his teeth. Eva was Nilly’s sister. She was fifteen and when she wasn’t bored, she was mad. “Did you know that the pit bull is the world’s dumbest dog?” Nilly asked. “It’s so dumb that when it takes food from the dwarf poodle, which happens to be the world’s smartest dog, it doesn’t get that it’s been tricked.”

“Shut up,” Eva said.

But Nilly didn’t shut up. “When the dwarf poodle knows the pit bull smells bread and salami and she’s coming to take it away from him, he usually smears slime from elephant snails on the bottom of the slice of bread.”

“Elephant snails?” Eva scoffed, eyeing him with suspicion. Unfortunately for her, Nilly read books and thus knew quite a few things she didn’t know, so his sister could never be totally sure if what he was saying was a Nilly invention or something from one of those old books of their grandfather’s. For example, this might be something from the book Nilly read the most, a thick, dusty one called Animals You Wish Didn’t Exist.

“Haven’t you ever seen an elephant snail?” Nilly yelled. “All you have to do is look out the window—there’s a ton of them in the lawn. Big, ooky ones. When you squish them between two books, something oozes out of them that looks like the yellowish green snot that runs out of the noses of people who have grade-three Beijing influenza. There’s no snot worse than authentic third-degree Beijing snot. Well, apart from elephant snail slime, that is.”

“If you lie anymore, you’re going to go to hell,” Eva said, sneaking a quick peek at the bottom of the slice of bread.

Nilly hopped down from the chair. “Fine with me, as long as they have a band there,” he said, “and I get to play the trumpet.”

“You’re never going to get to play in any band!” Eva yelled after him. “No one wants a trumpet player who’s so small, he doesn’t even come up to the top of the bass drum. No band has uniforms that small!”

Nilly put on the itty-bitty shoes that were sitting in the hallway and went out onto the front steps, stood at attention, pressed his lips together, placed them against the trumpet, and blew a tune his grandfather had taught him. It was called “Morning Reveille” and was designed to wake up sleepyheads.

“Attention!” Nilly yelled when he was done, because his grandfather had taught him that, too. “I want to see both feet on deck and eyes front! Everyone ready for morning inspection, fall in and prepare for the playing of the royal anthem. Attention!”

The movers obeyed, snapping to attention on the gravel walkway and standing stiffly with Nilly’s mom’s five-seater oak sofa between them. For a few seconds it was so quiet that all you could hear were cautious birds singing and a garbage truck that was making its way up Cannon Avenue.

“Interesting,” Nilly heard a jovial, accented voice say. “There’s a new Commandant on the street.”

Nilly turned around. A tall, thin man was leaning against the wooden fence of the house next door. His white hair was just as long and unkempt as the grass in his yard. He was wearing a blue coat like the one the wood shop teacher at Nilly’s last school had worn, and he was also wearing something that looked liked swim goggles. Nilly thought he was either a Santa Claus who’d lost weight or a crazy professor.

“Was I bothering you?” Nilly asked.

“Quite the contrary,” the bushy-headed man said. “I came to see who was playing so well. The sound brought back wonderful memories of a boat trip on a river in France many, many years ago.”

“A boat?” Nilly asked.

“Precisely.” The man closed his eyes dreamily, facing the sun. “A riverboat that was carrying me, my beloved, my motorcycle, and a bunch of goats. The sun was just starting to set, the wind was picking up, the water was a little choppy, and then the goats started bleating so vigorously. I’ll never forget the sound.”

“Hi,” Nilly said. “I’m Nilly. I’m not sure what to say to that.”

“No need to say anything,” the man replied in his accent. “Unless you want to say something, of course.”

And that’s how Nilly met Doctor Proctor. Doctor Proctor wasn’t Santa Claus. But he was kind of crazy.