Billie the Kidd
A goat named Billie, a church far too big for its island, and the well-practiced grammar of leaving.
A cross on the high ground, the lagoon falling away on both sides, and a long way to look in every direction.
The Gambier keep handing us small islands to get lost on, and this week it was Mekiro and Akamaru. I met the two friends I have been sailing with in a pub in Brest, on the far side of the world, where I looked at the pair of them and said I did not know them but I thought I wanted to go wherever they were going. Five thousand nautical miles later the arithmetic still holds. There have been belly laughs and a fair number of mornings spent regretting the night before, and somewhere in the middle of it the three of us became something close to brothers.
On the shore of Mekiro we met a fourth. His name was Billie, and it did not occur to any of us at first that Billie was a goat. He took to one of my friends straight away, the way some animals decide a thing and simply commit to it, and led him off on a tour of the island while I got the drone up. By the time I caught the two of them they had an understanding. We spent the day hiking Mekiro together, all four, and it was a good day, the kind you do not narrate while it is happening because you are too busy being inside it.
