Dead Goats Upstream (And men who stare at goats) (DAY 4)
Preamble (The First)
The story of ^’0*hn* (for so his name was pronounced in his native tongue) is not easily shared. Not in English anyways. This is primarily due to not knowing how to pronounce the “^’o” combination of letters that makes up the first part of his name. Most people make a clicking sound like they’re talking to a horse, but actually it should be more of a “pop-crack-mnguu” sound.
Because the name is actually rather fun to try to say the story gets lost with people concentrating on clicking and popping and asking, “Was THAT right?” And before long people just want to eat some Rice Crispies and completely forget that there was a story about to be told.
To sort out this dilemma I had determined to shorten the name down to Ohn. Then I though to really make it accessible I should ‘Ameracanize’ it too – hence the new name of John. But please try to remember it’s much more of a tribal name and much more of an indigenous story than a name like John may lead you to believe.
DEAD GOATS UPSTREAM- the Story of John
Men Who Look at Goats was a stupid movie with nearly no redeeming features. The story was ill conceived at best, most of the premises were ridiculous to the point of being insulting (eg. drugs are a reasonable way to sort out life problems and our destiny is contained in our doodles…) and despite a reasonably deep cast list it was nearly impossible to feel any emotional response to any of the characters.
It did have one redeeming feature, however. There were a lot of goats in the movie and they reminded me of the story of John.
John was a perfectly normal person from a tribe that was perfectly similar to those around him in a time and place where most people were happy most of the time so long as there was plenty to eat and drink, stories to be told, and the sun to keep them warm.
Preamble (The Second)
Remarkably there is no second preamble. So this is really just more of an intermission. Please continue reading the story as penned.
DEAD GOATS UPSTREAM- the Story of John (Part 2)
John was normal, but he was not exactly the same as everyone else in the tribe. When the waters of the river turned bad and made the people sick most of the tribe lashed themselves and sacrificed goats to the gods to ward off the evil in the water. John couldn’t see a direct correlation between hitting himself and the water getting better so he went a little less gingerly with the whip and a little more heavy on thinking about what he could do.
John had heard that bad spirits could be beaten from the blood of a goat by pouring it on hot rocks. They crackled and hissed and as the demons left the blood it lost its color and become white and harmless.
He wondered if the same would be true of water. So he took a scoop of water and walked it to the fire. It too hissed! The demons had left! He was sure because they had taken the water with them. All that remained was the fire and the sound of his fellow tribesman whipping themselves.
John wondered if the demons could also be caught by putting rocks in a gourd and pouring the water through. His idea was that the demons would get bumped and banged on the rocks and eventually trapped allowing pure water to pour through.
So John filled a gourd with gravel and pouring the water through. He made his little brother drink what came out. His brother was very upset to report the water tasted just as bad as before. He told his little brother to go whip himself some more and not to come back until he was good and whipped. In the mean time he tried a different combination of rocks and clay and dirt. He poured the water through and again the brother announced that it tasted terrible. John admonished the boy for not whipping hard enough and sent him to whip some more. Then he made another combination of rocks and soil and black rock dust. Again he called his little brother and told him to drink what went through the rocks. This time the water came through sweet.
The brothers announced they had a cure and all day the villagers lined up to drink the sweet water from John’s gourd.
At this time one of the elders of the tribe, who had been by and large ostracized for his stance on self whippery (He was against it.) approached John and asked him to come for a walk with him.
“Where to, old man? I haven’t much time as I must make many more gourds to help our people have sweet water – since the river is no longer sweet.”
“Two days, the man replied.”
John became angry and cursed the ancient road bump who was slowing his progress. He then set about his plan to make many gourds.
John worked all night. He carefully examined what was in the gourd that made the water sweet and replicated it in many other gourds. By the time the morning had come he had made enough gourds for every hut to have it’s own.
By mid morning he had distributed all of the gourds and being very tired from the lack of sleep and from saying ‘no no, it was nothing really’ so many times he decided to have a nap. He had only just closed his eyes when there was a knock at the door of his hut. And then another. And another. He could hear many voices outside. What? His gourd didn’t work?
He summoned his brother to come to him. “Get me some water from the river. Do it quietly and come in the back door so the crowd doesn’t see you. And mind you don’t spill any – it makes too much mud in here.”
So his brother brought the water, they poured it through first one, then two, then three gourds. Each time the little brother reported that it tasted terrible.
Out through the crowd John went. He muttered a few “why don’t you go whip yourselves” on his way to the river.
“The water’s changed.” Said, the Old Non-Whipper as John stared at the river. “It’s worse.”
John, who had originally liked the non-whipper, had then despised him because he would take John away from the task of helping the entire community to go for a walk, then really despised him for stating so obvious an explanation that he himself hadn’t even thought of it replied curtly: “go, um, NOT whip yourself.”
Though both men, under different circumstances, would have appreciated the odd humor of this remark, on this day it failed to deliver its full comic potential. After a pause the old man did reply, “Would you like to go for a walk?”
Each day John built a new solution to cleanse the water of its demons. Each day he experienced success, but only in degrees, and his apparatus became more and more complicated (looking more and more like what we would call stills) and cleansed less and less water. As if the personal sense of failure wasn’t enough there was another problem. There wasn’t much whipping going on anymore. The people were all too sick, or too dead.
Each day the old one invited John to go for a walk. And each day John said no.
Until the day that John said yes.
That’s when they went for a walk. (Profound, huh?)
The old man was in fine form and didn’t mind noting that John looked a little green between saying “it’s a shame.” And, “I really have something to show you. This is really going to knock your socks, um, sandals off.”
After a day’s hike the old man’s eye’s lit up and he said, what do you see there in the stream that feeds into the river?
It was hard for John to miss the rotting goat. The flies that danced around the maggot covered flesh were a dead give away.
“There is no demon in the water.” Said the old man. “But if we remove this rotting goat the water will run pure. I would have done it sooner, as I have in the past -while the others whipped, but plainly this is a two man job. That critter’s wedged b’neath a rock, but good. Of course ever since the whole non whippery campaign no one has been much inclined to listen to me. Think I’m ‘going off on that again.’ I was hoping you could help a few days ago before people got real sick and what not, but I guess you were pretty busy. Every day it gets a bit worse I suspect. Never mind. Let’s see what we can do about this.”
Thankfully John and the Old One managed to remove the goat. They went home, ran enough water through John’s apparatus to help the sickest among them, had a good sleep and woke up very pleased to discover the water was again sweet.
No one believed John or the Old Man when they told them about the goat. They only went on whipping themselves and a new religious sect was even born where the rocks from John’s gourds were arranged on necklaces and sold at the yearly tribal gatherings as holy relics that would purify any water that they touched. (John did not get a royalty on said sales.)
John and the Old Man were by and large ostracized for being religious weirdos. Since they didn’t get as sick as often and their backs were not all cut up they decided to call it a draw and not get mad at the villagers. John’s little brother grew up to become a Goat herder who was pleased that John and the Old Man kept the goats out of the river and even more pleased when the people bought goats from him when John and the Old Man failed to do so. (Keep them out of the river that is.)
Story copyright Stephen Bleile 2009