“And four people showed up here with their bingo cards all at the same time so Ellie and Cora had to give out beer and fried pickles at nine a.m.,” Zander added with a grin.
Zeke laughed. “And which of you got the call?”
They all looked at Knox. Who gave a heavy sigh as if he was very put upon.
“Why are they his problem?”
Jill was as startled as anyone to hear her voice ask the question.
They all looked at her in surprise.
Zeke recovered first. “These four—” He pointed to Knox, Zander, Bailey, and Michael. “All get the calls at different times. And they rock-paper-scissors to see who has to actually handle it. They are all public servants—”
The public servants all rolled their eyes.
“So we all think it makes sense. Zander is the sheriff, Michael is fire chief, and Bailey is with Wildlife and Fisheries. And then Knox gets all the random calls when people don’t know who else to call.”
“Or when they don’t want to deal with Zander,” Michael said.
They all nodded their agreement. Including Zander.
“I work very hard to make it so people never really want to deal with me,” Zander said. “That way the calls I get are actually important.”
“It was Pastor Carson who called this morning,” Bailey said. “So Knox couldn’t swear at him.”
“I never swear at citizens calling my office for help,” Knox said.
“Not out loud anyway,” Zander said.
Knox didn’t deny that.
“I guess he knew better than to call 9-1-1 for it and figured the city manager’s office would be able to handle it,” Michael said.
“Sure, goat herding is right in my job description. Page three, paragraph two.” Knox’s tone was dry.
“But you did take care of it,” Bailey said with a laugh. “They call you because you always take care of everything. They all know very well that eighty percent of what they call you about is not your job, but you’ll get it done.”
“What was I supposed to do?” Knox asked. “I can’t call any of you because you’ll tell me it’s not your job. If I call Griffin, he’ll just tell me they’re not his goats. I can’t call Fletcher when he’s at school. He can’t leave a classroom of third graders. And Jordan will just say Benny’s doing her job and what a good girl she is.”
“Jordan’s great with alpacas, but the goats don’t listen to her worth a shit anyway,” Zander said.
They all nodded at that as well.
“You could call Tori or Josh or Sawyer or Maddie about the goats,” Bailey said. “They are their goats.”
“I’m not calling Tori about the goats,” Knox said with a sigh. “She’s got a newborn and…”
Bailey leaned in. “And what?”
The big guy shrugged. “It’s Tori.”
“And she’s so sweet that you wouldn’t want to upset her by being upset about her goats,” Bailey filled in, with a knowing smile.
Knox rolled his eyes, but he didn’t deny it. So, the grumpy guy had a soft side.
The rest of them laughed.
“Why not call Sawyer or Maddie or Owen?” Zander asked.
“They’re always out on the bayou. What are they supposed to do? Turn around with a boat full of tourists to come back to deal with the damned goats?”
“Good point.” Bailey gave Zander a look and they both grinned.
Knox was clearly put out, but he was also reasonable about the whole thing. “She never herds them back to the barn.”
“Are these the same goats Zeke tried to kill last night?” Jill asked.
“They are,” Michael confirmed.
“Were you just waiting for Benny to show up to take care of the goats?” Jill asked Zeke.
She felt his fingers grab the tips of her ponytail and give a playful tug, but he answered, “I saw something dart out in front of me and I swerved to miss it.”
“But once you knew it was a goat, and that there were more of them, you were thinking Benny would come and round them up so you didn’t have to actually take them back to the barn, right?” Jill asked.
“I figured she’d already herded them to the motel, actually.”
“And you were just going to let her keep them there until the motel manager called Knox?”
The big man growled.
“I had a concussion,” Zeke said quickly.
Jill lifted a brow. “Are you saying that the concussion influenced all of your actions last night and that you can’t be held responsible for anything you did?”
He gave her a slow grin. “Oh no, things cleared up nicely after I got that ibuprofen from you.”
She returned the grin. Then realized the entire table was watching them.
With interest.
And that Michael knew at least enough of the story—like the part where Zeke had gone back to her room with her—to make them even more interested.
“So if the goats keep getting out, why would you not just fix the gates and the pen?” Jill asked, trying to change the subject.
They all laughed.
“We’ve definitely tried that. There’s one goat who always can figure a way out though,” Bailey said.
“We don’t call him Satan for nothing,” Zander said.
“You call him Satan?” Jill asked. Wow, none of these people were very nice to goats.
“We definitely call him Satan,” Knox said.
“But the girls decided that was mean, so they make everyone call him Stan,” Bailey said.
Jill looked at Zeke. “The girls?”
“Tori, Maddie, and Juliet, my cousins’ wives, and Kennedy, one of my cousins.”
Yeah, this place was a lot like Bliss. Everyone was related to everyone else.
“Don’t worry, you’ll meet them all soon enough,” Zeke said.
Worried wasn’t exactly what she was feeling. More like exasperated. Already.
But if these people were one big happy, boisterous family, and Griffin was a part of it because of Charlie and his partner, Tori, Jill realized that avoiding all of this would take some work.
It was definitely one reason she’d liked living in a bigger city. The bigger the place, the more anonymous you could be and the more your business stayed your own. Small talk and gossip and just hanging around seemed like such a waste of time. Didn’t these people know the planet was dying around them?
The climate was changing, water levels were rising, and entire animal species were edging closer and closer to extinction.
She knew from experience that it could be difficult to make people understand how penguins that lived almost entirely on an island just north of the equator had anything to do with their own lives. But that was one of the beauties of the work that zoos did.
Initially, Jill had thought she would travel the world and literally get her hands on penguins in their natural habitats. But as she’d grown up and learned more, she realized that zoos, animal parks, and preserves did a lot of important educational work as well. These relatively small groups of humans who cared about the animals directly weren’t big enough to save them by themselves. Larger groups had to become interested.
Jill took a deep breath. She knew she sometimes let her passions and personal mission cause her to judge other human beings and how they chose to spend their time and resources. It was part of the reason she’d chosen to bring the penguins to Autre versus anywhere else.