*
When the goat still did not materialize the next evening, the Beauregards helped Zan summon fellow retirees, a pack of island children, and lobstermen not too tired from their day on the water. Still, they turned up not even a tuft of black goat hair. Some drove circles around the island’s perimeter road. Most spread themselves in a scraggly line, moving from the populated southern end to its wild north. Zan couldn’t tell them that crashing through the understory, snapping branches and shouting “Nan! Goat!” was more likely to scare the creature deeper in than it would summon her out.
Light still lingered in mauve and rose over the water, but of course Zan understood there were nets to repair, and bedtimes approaching for children and for lobstermen rising early the next morning. She stood by the town dock where they had gathered, thanking each searcher as she knew was expected.
“Don’t stay out too late,” a round-faced fisherman said. “No use looking in the dark.” She only nodded. A blast from the mail boat’s horn announcing its last run of the day covered whatever words the man might have added. Without explaining herself, Zan turned from him and jogged down the pier, radio bouncing at her hip with each step. She stopped opposite the captain, who leaned over the gunwales, hauling in the lines holding the boat.
“Lost your goat, I hear,” he said.
“Can you help me find her?” She twisted her ring.
“Depends.” He lifted his hat to scratch a thinning scalp. “What kind of help?”
“Maybe she swam out a short way, and got stranded on one of the little rock islands?” Zan wanted the captain to stop winding rope and checking dials. “If you took me round the island, I could look?”
“You have money for passage?” He started to unlatch the ramp. “We only take cash.”
“You’d make me pay?” She was too startled to mask her outrage. “You know they don’t pay me until end of summer, don’t you?” The clerk at the town’s one store knew she was to get groceries on credit, as lighthouse keeper.
“Rules are rules,” he said, shrugging. “And I already broke them for your goat once. Sorry, dear.” Zan felt her face heat. She opened her mouth, then closed it.
“But you’re the captain!”
“I don’t make the rules.” He tugged at boxes and bags stacked on the deck, anything not to look at her eyes. “Wouldn’t be right of me to take your money, anyway,” he said gruffly. “Wouldn’t want you wasting it on the impossible.”
“Who would know?” She tried to pitch her voice over the engine spluttering to life.
He shrugged and shouted back, “One of the lobstermen might take you!”
Zan looked left, then right. Darkness was already slinking over the rocks from the sea. Fishing boats rocked at their moorings, silent. Lobstermen would be in bed. And surely, morning would be too late. She couldn’t bear to act too late again. The sharpness behind her sternum deepened. She trudged back up the hill, ears straining for the faint, familiar bleat from the pines.