2019/2020
Vol. 15

From Lincoln to Cadillac

1984; Headland, Alabama, USA

It was 1984 in Headland, Alabama. Flowers were sprouting from the ground, and the air was warm with the joy of spring. Headland is a small town in southern Alabama, surrounded by flat fields as far as the eye can see. It has a population of about 3,000. Modest wood-frame houses sit between towering pecan trees. Headland has a town square, and within a few blocks are shops, several churches, and most of the population.

In one of these little houses lived the Van Dykes, a family that was friends with my grandfather. The two families were close — so close that my mother and grandfather trusted the Van Dykes to care for a baby goat that they were bottle-feeding, while my mother and her family visited Washington, DC.

The Van Dykes’ youngest son, Jason, fell in love with June Bug, the baby goat, and then he desperately wanted his own pet goat. He talked his father into buying two nanny goats, and since they didn’t have a pen yet, my mother’s family returned the favor of goat-sitting.

By the time the Van Dykes’ pen was built, the goats had multiplied to seven. A set of triplets and a set of twins had been welcomed earlier that year by the two nanny goats.

The weekend before Easter, Mr. Van Dyke drove up to my mother’s house in his truck with a trailer in tow. He started loading up the goats with my grandfather’s help. The cry of a scared baby goat sounds like a human child screaming. My mother was in her room, sobbing. After Mr. Van Dyke and the goats were gone, my grandfather comforted my mother by saying that the goats would be back in no time and that the Van Dykes did not know what they were getting into.

At the Van Dykes’, the goats had a small pen, about the size of a bedroom. It was nothing compared to the acres of land the goats had enjoyed at my mother’s home. The nanny goats were unfazed by the new fence surrounding them. Jumping it with ease, they destroyed several neighbors’ gardens. The Headland Police received three separate complaints about the Van Dykes’ hungry goats.

Behind the Van Dykes’ house was the First United Methodist Church of Headland. The pair of nanny goats escaped for the fourth time on Easter Sunday. When Mr. Van Dyke came out of the church, he found the mischievous goats. They had spent the morning jumping from Lincoln to Cadillac and from Cadillac to Lincoln in the church parking lot.

That afternoon, Mr. Van Dyke took the goats back to my mother’s house, where they would live happily for the rest of their lives.

Along with getting his goat, Mr. Van Dyke had gotten angry neighbors and more than he had bargained for.

Sara Naylor; Alabama, USA

Illustrator: Erica M. Kalista; Missouri, USA

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