Pope Lick Nuisance
by Thomas Pluck
It wasn’t easy growing up in Pope Lick.
I bet you can guess why.
It’s named after Pope Lick creek, which snakes all the way through the woods of our town, and a hundred-foot-tall railroad bridge crosses overhead like the skeleton of a steel dinosaur. Those woods are also home to a legendary monster, an ornery goat-headed creature said to haunt the trestle and the surrounding woods. A monster so fearsomely ugly that anyone brave or stupid enough to walk across the bridge’s span would leap to their deaths at the sight of him. Or maybe the creature would butt them off the edge to their doom.
The folks who fell weren’t in condition to tell.
Older kids snickered that the Pope Lick Monster was the result of an illicit union between a lonely farmer and his favorite nanny goat, but no one knew where the tales came from. Some said he was the Devil, which I’m more inclined to believe, because my town isn’t full of people who would do such things, even though kids from the city in Louisville liked to call us ‘Pope Lickers.’
#
Pope Lick kids bonded because of that name-calling. The Louisville teens lucky enough to have cars to borrow and friends to take riding in them like to make use of Pope Lick creek’s remote location and sinister legend for slow journeys in the moonlight.
Us kids not blessed with such good fortune would hide in the woods as their cars stopped beneath the trestle. Waiting as the driver whispered tales of the Goatman and his bloody axe to the girl shivering at his side. Telling how the last girl got dragged out the door, and if she didn’t stay close, the Goatman would leap onto the hood waving the head of his latest victim.
About then one of us would make a little noise:
Baa.
The driver usually paused and peered into the woods. Then begin again, trying to frighten his date into a cuddle.
And we’d make the noise again.
He’d frown in disbelief and flick the brights on. Hoping maybe it was an owl with the hiccups. And the girl would punch his arm and roll up her window.
All the while one of us—-we took turns—sneaked up on the driver’s side. And just when the driver was ready to stick his head out to challenge the darkness and affirm his machismo, he’d see the Goatman banging on the roof and waving a rusty hatchet.
Don’t matter what car they were driving, they raced out of there fast.
We’d jump and laugh and chase them as far as we could. Whoever got to be the ‘Goatman’ that night wore a burlap sack and a mask we made in wood shop and decorated with papier-mâché.
Now you can judge, but there wasn’t much else to do in Pope Lick if you were too young to borrow the car and had no money spend if you did.
I used to laugh at our victims, but I don’t anymore. Because one night atop that trestle, I learned what real fear was.
#
Summer heat and boredom had driven me and my pals witless. I’d won the game of mumblety-peg and had the hole in my shoe to prove it, so I wore the Goatman costume while we waited for our victims. The moon was high when a banged-up pickup truck squeaked and wobbled round the bend. This time, the engine sputtered out as they stopped under the bridge.
“Quit fooling around!” a girl’s voice cried.
“I think I flooded it,” the boy replied. “Guess we’ll have to wait it out...”
The driver yawned and stretched his arm around the girl’s shoulders.
The night echoed with a mournful bleat. That was Kenny. He had the best goat call.
“Who’s out there? You aren’t fooling anybody,” the girl said.
A low baafrom the other side. Closer. Patrick this time.
The driver stuck his head out.
I crept behind their truck. The mask didn’t fit me well. I was the smallest. I squatted by tailgate and adjusted the eyeholes.
“You think I was born yesterday?” the girl stomped out of the truck, hands on her hips. “Which of your buddies is out there?”
She spooked me so bad I yanked the tailgate down with a shriek of rusty metal. The driver looked out the back, saw my goat mask glowing red in the taillights, and just about jumped out of his skin.
His truck started on the first try. It sprayed me and his would-be date with dust and gravel as he roared off. She ran after him, shouting words unfit for print.
I choked and coughed, removed my horned cap, and opened my eyes to a tall freckled girl probably two years my senior, glaring at me. “I bet you think you’re real funny!”
She grabbed my ear.
It hurt more when I tried to pull away.
“Well, I hope you’re happy. You’re finding me a ride home.”
My pals snickered in the bushes and left me to my fate. The girl’s name was Katie Mae, and she didn’t let go of my ear once as I led her toward the road.
She didn’t know where I lived. If my parents found out we played tricks on people I was sure to get in trouble, so I cut through the woods toward where the main road should have been.
“You better not be tricking me,” she said, digging into my ear with her thumbnail.
“What were you doing out so late with a no-good coward like that?”
“That’s none of your business,” she said, with a shake of her head. “Maybe in a couple years you’ll figure it out.”
I thought about risking a torn earlobe and running for it. My curiosity about after-dark car rides had me enjoying her company, despite her sharp fingernails.
She was funny and kept her cool, lost in the woods at night.
#
In daylight I knew these trails, but night turned them into a tangled maze.
“You better not be lost!”
“I’m not lost. It just looks different at night.”
I saw a dim light ahead, and followed it through the branches. I’d never seen the place before. The trail opened to a tin shack caught in a strangle of vines.
“No way you live here,” she said. “I know you Pope Lickers are country, but that looks like something out of a fairy tale.”
“Hey. We have houses just like everyone else.”
“That’s exactly what I said, genius.”
I’m not sure what exactly drove me to follow my curiosity about the shack. Perhaps shame at having been caught in a prank, or wanting to show off to an older, smarter girl.
Katie let go my ear as I crept toward the place. “Are you crazy?” she whispered.
I peered in the open doorway. An oil lamp lit a sad little room. Nothing but a hay bed and a single chair with a crate for a table.
A sealed mason jar of clear moonshine sat on the table. Katie beat at cobwebs hanging from the doorway. I was short enough to get by them without ducking. And whoever lived here must have been short enough, too.
I struggled with the lid on the jar of booze. Katie tugged it from me and wrenched it off.
She sniffed the contents and made a face like she’d swallowed a live frog. She pushed the jar into my hands. It smelled like turpentine and might have burned out my nose hairs. I capped the jar and stuffed it in my pocket.
“Put it back! You’re too young to drink.”
“So are you.”
“I’m not drinking any. It might be poison.”
I wanted to test it with my home chemistry set. Or bring it to school. But that might not be the smartest idea.
“What’s that smell?” Katie said.
“Other than moonshine? I dunno. Animal?”
“Smells kinda goaty,” she said, wrinkling her nose. She pointed at the wall. Pin-up cutie pictures on ten penny nails. And two unadorned nails as close as snake eyes, like to hang a tool on. She lifted the lamp. The dust had left an axe-shaped shadow where the weapon had been.
We both gasped.
Leaves rustled outside. Then we heard the bleat.
Katie Mae held up the lamp. The way it lit her perk of a nose made her look small and frightened.
Something made me step outside.
“Kenny! Pat! Stop fooling around!” I puffed my chest out. “This isn’t funny, guys!”
A rusty axe thunked into the door jamb.
Katie and I screamed and ran like mad through the woods. She swung the lamp for light, and I found a trail. Something busted through the brambles behind us. She gripped my belt as I hauled toward the moonlit ridge of the train tracks.
We made it to the top I turned for the trestle. It was a hundred feet down once you got on the bridge.
“No way! Are you crazy? Go back down the other side!” She jumped over fallen branches and slid down the steep hill.
A creature with yellow eyes burst from the woods, sniffing the air. It looked like a goat walking on two feet, horns high in the air. This wasn’t a billy goat, it had horns like I’d seen on an ibex at the zoo. And it blocked the way back to the woods.
I had no choice but to brave the trestle.
Then I remembered I had stolen from the Goatman.
I shouted, “I got your liquor!” and waved the jar of moonshine. The beast bound onto the tracks and I ran like the Devil was after me.
Hooves clacked on the rail ties as he bleated angrily in pursuit. His horns jabbed my back and sent me tumbling toward the edge. I curled up in a ball around the jar, and a nubby hand gripped my shoulder, as I lay waiting for the axe to fall.
“If you broke that jar I’ll gnaw your thumbs off!”
I blinked up at the horned beast hunkered over me.
“Well? Hand it over.”
The moon revealed a hairy buck-toothed face with a yellow pair of side-slit goat eyes. He bore a gnarled crown of twisted horns, a threadbare coat, and cracked, cloven hooves. He yanked the mason jar from me and checked the contents.
I stared as he dipped a knobby finger into the moonshine and had a taste.
“Ain’t you scared I’ll chop you to pieces?” He nudged me toward the edge. My spine turned to water, as I saw the creek a hundred feet below, between the railroad ties.
“Naah.”
The Goatman narrowed his eyes. “That some sort of joke at my expense?”
“No sir. I mean, no.”
“Then how come you ain’t begging for your life?”
I don’t know why. Maybe because I knew Katie was watching. Or I was simply stunned with wonder at seeing a legend with my own eyes.
“I ain’t scared, because all those tales of how fearsome ugly you are, they’re uh, quite exaggerated.”
The Goatman bared a snaggle of yellow teeth. “You’re a good liar, boy. Tell me why I ought to let you live, when you’re trespassing on my property?”
The sign on the bridge read Norfolk Southern Railroad, but I didn’t argue with him. “Have mercy, Mr. Goat!”
“That’s Mister Goat Man!” he hollered. “I’m part goat, and part man. Don’t you forget it.”
He smelled like he leaned more toward goat. And from what I knew of billy goats, I made my plea. “I meant no disrespect, Mr. Goatman.” I told him about the prank we played, how it left Katie stuck in unfamiliar woods, and that I had promised to get her home.
The Goatman scratched his chin. He wore a shapeless hat, with his horns poking through. “Reckon I’d do the same,” He looked off at the moon. “But it’s unlikely I’d ever find a girl for me.”
“Oh, don’t say that, Mr. Goatman.” He was handsome, as goats went.
“I’m cursed to loneliness, boy.”
“Why? There are plenty of goats—”
“What do you take me for?” He swatted me with his hat.
“No offense!”
“It’s a real quandary. My man half don’t like goats, and my goat half don’t like humans.” He crouched and took a slug of moonshine. Then he passed the jar to me.
There were goat hairs on the glass threads.
“Uh, no thank you. Too strong for me.” He nodded, and had some more.
“So, uh... how’d you come to be?”
“Don’t rightly know,” he said. “Earliest I remember’s when I was but a little kid, barely weaned. I stood on two legs, and scared the farmer good. He came at me with his pitchfork, and I fled to the woods. Folks run from me, so I live off what I can steal. It’s a low way to live, but there’s not much else for a Goatman to do.”
“You could join the circus.”
“And live in a cage? No thank you.” He capped the jar, stood with a stretch. “You been good company, but I’ve got a reputation to protect. You can go, but I’m gonna have to gnaw off a finger.”
“What?” I turned to run, and he grabbed my belt.
“Would you rather take the plunge?” He narrowed his goaty eyes. “Pick one!”
I held up my hands, the fingers curled like peel ‘n eat shrimp. I was fond of all ten of them.
“Hurry up now, or I’ll take five!”
I winced and held out my little finger.
The Goatman’s crooked teeth closed on my knuckle with a goaty grin. I closed my eyes.
The rails began to shake. The steam engine blasted its horn.
I yanked my hand away, losing some skin, and ran as fast as I could, into the path of the oncoming train.
The Goatman cackled and kicked his hooves. “I can jump, boy! You can’t!”
Katie topped the ridge. The train lit her up like an angry barn cat. She hurled the lamp overhand, and it crashed at the Goatman’s hooves.
I fled the train like a wild man as the Goatman danced in the flames. He bound over the edge with a scream.
The train whistle drowned out Katie’s shouts, but I read her clear. I wasn’t gonna make it. I dared look back as the locomotive bore down on me like rolling thunder. A mile of boxcars stretched back like a river of iron.
Over the edge was certain death. I climbed down between the ties. I peeked up and knew how mice felt at the approach of a boot. I ducked under as the train shuddered paint flakes off the bridge around me. I would never hang from my fingers long enough for the cars to pass.
I heaved up, lit by the engine’s one big eye, and unhitched my belt as the whistle shrieked in protest. I buckled it tight and looped my arm through, and fell to swing by my elbow as the cowcatcher nearly took my head off.
I dangled and kicked like a hanged man, heart pounding louder than the locomotive, while below me the Goatman fled through the forest and left a firefly trail of smoldering underbrush.
#
My arm went numb as the trail rattled off into the night. I dug at the splintered ties with my good hand. Made the mistake of looking down at tiny Pope Lick creek.
“Hey.” Katie Mae offered me a hand.
I took it, and hauled myself up. “Thanks.”
“That was real brave,” she said, and kissed me smack on the lips. “Now pull up your pants and get me home.” She turned quick. Her hair twirled and whipped my cheek.
My face burned as I unbuckled my belt from the railroad tie and looped it on as I ran after her. Below the trestle, the brush smoldered and burned, and I wondered if the Goatman and his hidden shack would survive.
But mostly I wondered how to convince Pa to let me borrow the truck, so I could return Katie Mae to whatever magical place she hailed from.
The hiding was worth it.
I never played the Goatman again after that. His legend lives on, and when we tell our tale, everyone thinks it’s just a cute story about how we met.
She calls me her billy goat, and when I get ornery, she still gives my ear a pinch.
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Goatman image by Kim Parkhurst, used with permission, all rights reserved.