When he had come back to the farm that night he was very drunk and none of the cats would sleep with him but Goats, who was not allergic to the basic rum smell, had no prejudice against drunkenness, and revelled in the rich whore smell, as full-bodied as a fine Christmas fruitcake. They slept heavily together, Goats purring loudly whenever he woke, and finally Thomas Hudson, waking and remembering how much he had drunk, said to Goats, “We’ve got to take the medicine.”
Goats loved the sound of the word, which symbolized all this rich life he was sharing, and purred stronger than ever.
“Where is the medicine, Goats?” Thomas Hudson had asked. He turned on the reading light by the bed but it was dead. In the storm that had kept him ashore, wires had blown down or been shorted and not yet repaired and there was no electricity. He felt on the night table by the bed for the big double Seconal capsule, the last one that he had, that would put him to sleep again and let him wake in the morning without a hangover. He knocked it off the table as he reached in the darkness and he couldn’t find it. He felt all over the floor carefully and he couldn’t find it. He had no matches by the bed because he was not smoking and the flashlight battery had been overused by the servants while he was away and was dead.
“Goats,” he had said. “We have to find the medicine.”
He had got out of bed and Goats came down on the floor, too, and they hunted for the medicine. Goats went under the bed, not knowing what he was hunting, but doing all he could, and Thomas Hudson said to him, “The medicine, Goats. Find the medicine.”
Goats made whimpery cries under the bed and ranged all of the area. Finally he came out, purring, and Thomas Hudson, feeling over the floor, touched the capsule. It was dusty and cobwebby under his fingers. Goats had found it.
“You found the medicine,” he had told Goats. “You wonder cat.” After he had washed off the capsule in the palm of his hand with some water from the carafe by the bed and then swallowed it with a drink of water he lay, feeling it take hold slowly, and praised Goats, and the big cat purred at the praise and always afterwards medicine was a magic word to him.
At sea he used to think about Goats as well as Boise. But there was nothing tragic about Goats. Although he had been through some truly bad times he was absolutely entire and, even when he had been beaten in some of his most terrible fights, he was never pitiful. Even when he had not been able to walk up to the house and lay under the mango tree below the terrace panting and soaked wet with sweat so you saw how big his shoulders were and how narrow and thin his flanks, lying there, too dead to move, trying to get the air into his lungs, he was never pitiful. He had the wide head of a lion and he was as unbeaten. Goats was fond of the man, and Thomas Hudson was fond of him and respected and loved him. But there was no question of Goats being in love with him or he in love with Goats as there had come to be with Boise.
Boise had simply become worse and worse. The night he and Goats had found Boise up in the aguacate tree, Boy had stayed out late and not come in when the man had gone to bed. He was sleeping in the big bed then in the bedroom at the far end of the house where there were big windows on all three sides of the room and the breeze blew through at night. When he woke he listened to the noises of the night birds and he was awake and listening when he heard Boise leap up onto the window ledge. Boise was a very silent cat. But he called to the man as soon as he was on the window ledge and Thomas Hudson went to the screen and opened it. Boise leaped in. He had two fruit rats in his mouth.