The joy of marriage: Billy Goat Grump

I wrote this on 6/12/03, after I read a news article.

BILLY GOAT GRUMP
By BumbleBeeBoogie

"That's it! I've had it! I'm not living with you anymore!" The gunshot echoed across the field, interrupting the goats’ search for scarce green grass on the drought-ravaged patch of land, sending them into a dusty circular stampede.

Pearl's ma and pa farmed this land for thirty years before it was sucked into the expanding Oklahoma City. By the time Pearl inherited the 10 acres, farming on that scale was a losing proposition. Her family-owned patch of land couldn't compete with the big government-supported corporate farmers, who got special treatment from the banks, tax breaks from the government, and beneficial water rights from corrupt county commissioners.

Then Pearl met Tom, who's family were goat herders on rented land. It was a match made in heaven. Pearl had land that was no longer viable for farming and Tom had goats with no land on which to graze them.

Tom and Pearl both had been losers in the love game. The heat and hard work of her hard-scrabble life had taken it’s toll on Pearl’s appearance. She just wasn’t pretty. Tom wasn’t bad looking, but his obvious lack of ambition and perpetual smell of goats kept the women away. They both saw this merger as their last chance. Each, for their own reasons, decided to forget about love and get married.

Trouble started right away. Pearl had absorbed her parent's work ethic. She worked from dawn to dusk inside the house and outside caring for the goats. She wasn’t getting the help she needed from Tom. That made her reject his disgusting groping under her nightgown in their bed at night when all she wanted was to sleep.

Tom watched the young people in town hugging and kissing. It made him ache for someone who would love him that way. He knew for damn sure he wasn’t getting much sex from Pearl. He did try to woo her by helping her build a coop for a small flock of chickens to produce eggs and meat for added income. Other than that, Tom mostly watched Pearl work and complained about her lack of interest in sex at the end of a long day.

Tom's constant whining about sex and his refusal to help with the work got on Pearl's nerves. After two years of nagging him about his laziness, Pearl's frayed nerves changed into outright hostility.

Tom enjoyed ignoring Pearl's complaints. After one of her tirades, he would mutter under his breath, "Bitch, shut yer mouth and get off my back," and return to ignoring her pleas for help.

One hot afternoon, when the tempurature reached 105 degrees, Pearl yelled at Tom. "Get off your skinny ass and feed them god-damned goats before they croak!"

"Piss-off, Bitch!" Tom snarled.

"What did ya call me?"

"Bitch!"

"You lazy bum. I tole you to feed them goats---right now! NOW! hear me?"

The suffocating heat may have been 105 degrees outside, but inside Pearl's head it rapidly rose to 120, and she erupted.

"If you don't feed them goats I'm gonna blow your head off, you rotten son-of-a-bitch!"

Tom got up from his recliner chair, puffed up his chest, and gave Pearl the Finger.

"Up yours!" Then he sat down with a smirk on his face.

Pearl stared real hard at Tom, then went to the hall closet and pulled her pa's pistol from the shelf. She marched back to where Tom sat and aimed the gun at his head.

"You got one minute to get yer butt in gear."

"Get out of my face, you dried up old hag! You ain't got the guts to shoot me!"

"Guts? Guts? I got more guts than you got balls, you useless piece of ****!"

"Oh, yeah," Tom shouted, grabbing his crotch; "show me---I dare ya!"

"That's it! I've had it! I'm not living with you anymore!"

The gunshot echoed across the field, scattering the goats in a dusty circular stampede.

The next day, the Oklahoma City newspapers had the following story:

OKLAHOMA CITY (Reuters) 6/14/03 - An Eldon, Oklahoma, woman has been charged with shooting her husband dead after an argument over who should feed the couple's goats, police said on Thursday.

Authorities charged Pearl Lynne Smith, 47, with first-degree murder for the death of her husband, Thomas Smith, 51. Sheriff's deputies responded to a domestic disturbance call at the couple's rural eastern Oklahoma home on Tuesday and found the husband dead, shot once through the chest.

"We were told that what prompted this disagreement was his failure to feed the goats," Cherokee County Undersheriff Dan Garber said.

Garber said the wife pointed a 9 mm pistol at her husband and demanded that he go feed the goats. Thomas Smith then dared his wife to shoot him, Garber said. When he took a step toward Pearl, she killed him with a single shot, Garber added.

The two had a history of domestic trouble, Garber said, and the argument over feeding the goats was the breaking point.

"Something like that is the trigger that unlocks something deeper," Garber said.

Pearl Smith is in jail on $100,000 bail, pending her arraignment on Friday, court officials said. She could face the death penalty if convicted.