Bridport Prize by Benedict Pignatelli, pint of Beamish

One of the pocáns was dead. Lying in the pen, her neck snapped. The little ones got so excited when they heard him coming, stuffing their heads through the small gap in the trough, hopping up on anything, falling over one another to get to their meal, it was a surprise it hadn’t happened before. Nothing to be done. It was the smallest of them, the weakest. He recognised her. Feeding the pocáns was his favourite time of the day, usually. The cute little babbies, so excitable, stumbling about in the straw to get their food or their hay. He’d been looking forward to it since he woke up.

She lay there, still warm. Could be asleep, almost.

It wasn’t like he hadn’t seen dead pocs before. When the older ones stopped giving milk, when their condition went or the mastitis got too bad, he’d take them out to a wheelbarrow full of meal and slit their throats. One of his first memories was helping his uncle on the farm, slaughtering lambs by the dozen. But there was always a point to that. They were old, or they had served their purpose. This was such a senseless death. The others ignored their dead sibling, too excited to get their breakfast, they hopped around on the straw as if she wasn’t there.

He picked up the body roughly, by the legs, and dropped it behind the digger. He had a lot to do and he was behind. He’d dig a hole in the woods later. For now there were things to be done. He was late to milking as it was. He could get them all milked in ninety minutes if there were no delays, but it could stretch to twice that on days like this.

A couple of the pocs were fighting in the pen. The auld matriarch was putting a new arrival in her place. She was a wild nanny stolen from the mountains by some bored idiot during Covid, then abandoned on the farm. Her long, untamed, peppery hair and winding horns cut an intimidating figure as she rose onto her hind legs, slowly and purposefully. Then twisting, pirouetting down, smashing her horned head against her foe.

He’d have to do something, separate the newcomer. Once the rain stopped he could feck them all outside and they’d do better.

An enclosure needed to be built out behind the barn. Fences erected. He had to pull the thistles out of the far field, in anticipation of the pocáns going in there for the summer. There were five or six does still pregnant, they’d likely all deliver at the worst moment, so he had that to look forward to. And he had to go into town today. Too much to do. He hadn’t had a day off in months.

He finished the last round of milking and ushered the adult animals back into their pen with the help of Beamish, over excited as usual. He’d trained Beamish himself so he couldn’t be too annoyed. He was still young, he’d learn. Over in the small pen the pocáns, the babies, had gotten out of their enclosure and were causing havoc, eating up anything they could find, nibbling at the milking equipment. Pulling up the roses.

 

Pocs. He’d read there was some link between the Irish word for goat and the púca, the shapeshifting, cloven hoofed chancers of Irish mythology. And then surely there was some link with them and Shakespeare’s Midsummer Puck. Cousins maybe. He wasn’t surprised the goats’ ancestry lay in trouble-making demons. Little fuckers.

He hadn’t finished that article, he’d been reading it with one eye on the mastitis in the nanny he was milking. He never got to do anything properly anymore. Everything else in his life, academic, social, romantic, walked in the shadow of the herd. Nothing was sacred.

Wellies off, hands washed, into town to see his accountant. He had to be back by four for the afternoon milking. Off to Ballymore to get the 65 bus into Dublin. Only €2.20 or so, and sure a taxi would cost you hundreds.

He passed Newtownmountkennedy and the bus stopped where all them refugees had been dumped the night before. Rounded up from their tents in the city centre and packed off to Trudder House. Herded out to Wicklow like some unwanted herd of goats.

Thirty or so black lads trying to get on. Polite like, a bit pushy and shovy maybe, but no real rowing. Bus driver threw a fit all the same, yelling and cursing, they didn’t have Leap cards, or they didn’t have coins for the bus. One of them appealed to the other passengers. He was a tall, broad shouldered Somalian in a dark polo neck, and he asked, very articulately, what kind of developed country was he in where you couldn’t pay with contactless on the bus, or a bank note even? Who carried exact change anymore?

Wasn’t a bad point.

In the end the driver wouldn’t let them on. Fecked them all off and left them on the side of the road, all still polite, asking what they’d done wrong. Two women sitting behind JP applauded, said they were a danger to society and should be sent home. There were general nods and murmurs of agreement on the bottom floor of the bus.

JP had read a book recently, all about Syria and refugees and how horrible it would be if the dictators and the war and the torture and the fleeing from your home happened in Ireland. He’d only skimmed it, quickly distracted by the goats as ever, but everyone had loved it. It won all the awards, anyway.

It was all well and good supporting the cause when it was hundreds of miles away. Apparently another thing entirely when the cause turned up on your morning commute and wanted the seat next to you.

JP found the applauding women irritating. Fecking like to see how they’d get on, trying to follow public transport etiquette on some country road in Sierra Leone, or wherever. The stop before about thirty scrote school kids got on, shouting and screaming and nobody paid them any mind. They were Irish so they didn’t care. Irish and white.

There were a few dark haired goats in with the young pocáns. Slightly different cross of breeds, bit bigger, more boisterous. While the others would reach up on their hind legs and nibble at his jacket, these bigger ones would leap at him, often taking the wind out of him as they tried to pry the meal from the bucket in his hands. He was rougher with them in kind, batting them away and sending them flying. He thought of the refugees out in Trudder House and wondered about his goats and the different way he treated them.

He supposed he understood the general fear, it was a change and people didn’t like change. He didn’t like change especially. He’d never spoken to a black man before, not really. The odd comment here or there maybe, in town, asking for directions or whatever, but never more than that. Not that he minded them, he rarely spoke to anyone unless they had four legs and a pair of udders.

They were saying there wasn’t room for all these refugees. JP had two hundred acres, and he lived alone on the farm. Hardly sardined in with his neighbours, all farmers and landowners themselves. He had a whole field he didn’t use because there was a sacred tree on the land, a beautiful ancient hawthorn, supposedly occupied by fairies, and he’d been warned not to interfere with it. Couldn’t be too much trouble with space if he was able to keep entire plots of land free for the imaginary friends of his ancestors to live in.

Town was packed, as usual. He’d seen his accountant, gotten a coffee, bought the Irish Times, had a pint in McDaid’s, and got on the bus home, happy to be leaving the hustle and bustle. As lonely as he got on his farm, JP wasn’t a man made for the city.

 

One of the does had given birth while he’d been in town. Back on the farm, he stood over her as she lay in the grass. She had a white coat. She’d prolapsed, blood and organs everywhere. JP pushed them back in tentatively but they were covered in the dirt so infection would set in soon. She wasn’t looking too good.

Across the yard he could see the body of the dead pocán from the morning. The crows had gotten to her already; eyes eaten out, guts opened up. An army of flies were swarming. It made him feel bad for how he’d handled her earlier. He should have picked her up more carefully. More respectfully. Buried her then and there.

And now another one would die, likely. Sometimes he hated his job and his life, alone, surrounded by death and hardship and no human interaction, not the laugh of a child nor a woman’s touch, not as much as a biteen of company of an evening, except the fecking goats. He looked back at the doe, lying splayed on the ground. He could take her to the vet, but he’d be down €350 and then if she died he’d be down a doe as well.

Still, maybe he’d do it anyway. The kid looked healthy at least. Its head was a little swollen, but sure that was to be expected. It wasn’t feeding, obviously. And without the colostrum from the first milk it’d be susceptible to disease as well.

Softly, he picked up the kid. The doe was pasty white, but her kid was dark skinned. It had little spots across its back. He pressed the bottle to the kid’s mouth and it began suckling, tentatively at first but with increasing confidence, getting the warm milk into him. Soon he drank with an intensity like his life depended on it, which of course it did. The soft suckling of the pocán soothed JP’s troubled mind. He held onto the kid and slowly rocked it from side to side as it drank.

About the Author:

Benedict has had short stories accepted by Stray Words Magazine and the Bull Magazine, and has been longlisted for the Bridport Prize (2021), the Masters Review Winter Short Story Award (2023-24), and the Fish Short Story Prize (2024). He is the current Editor in Chief of the Menteur Magazine