The smell of goats

It was starting to get dark when he walked in through the kitchen door. The smell of goats
was about him.

- Where have you been? – asked the bustling mother.

- Oh, about.

- You’ve been up in the hills again, with those damn goats. I can smell them on you.

He grunted, indifferent.

- Use your words, boy! You’re starting to sound like a goat.

He rested his tired gaze upon her.

- What do we pay the goat-herd for, if you’re going to spend all your day up there?
We need you for work in the fields. And what will the goat boy say of you,
anyway?

- He treats me like the rest.

- Like a goat?!

- Like all the rest.

- Well, I can’t do with a goat for a son, your father’s getting too old to work the fields
alone and you need to learn how to do it for when he can’t go on.

- The goats love me, mother.

- The goats love him! – She cackled – This household doesn’t need love, boy, it
needs a young man’s hard work.

He could see the shadow of his father approaching the door. He left the kitchen for bed.

The next morning, he got up and walked towards the hills again, before his mother awoke.