So, the other day, I am fiddling around with OpenAI trying to figure out how I am going to cope with and/or use artificial intelligence's ability to create written documents, and I had an idea. Can artificial intelligence create a fable that makes a decent point? I asked ChatGPT to write me a fable about an Ozark man who has a wandering goat. Within thirty seconds, there it was. It wasn't really very good. It had everything that a fable needs, but it all seemed lifeless, and the totems and plot devices seemed rather irrelevant, kind of like someone who knows what all the puzzle pieces are but doesn't care what the puzzle is supposed to look like when it's done.
I told my correspondence friend Patrick Gillespie about my experiment with ChatGPT and artificial intelligence, and he said, "Heck, I can write one in just a few minutes," and he did. He sent me a really decent short fable about an Ozark man and a wandering goat. Now, it may have taken him more than a few minutes, but it sent an email with the story in it that same day.
Well, the challenge was on, so I decided that I would write my own fable about an Ozark man and a wandering goat, and I set a timer on myself at one hour, which is one hour longer than ChatGPT took and probably twice as much time as Patrick took, but it is 2600 words long. Oh! And this is the first cut. No revisions yet! See what you think about it. As always, ENJOY!
The Wandering Goat
Bud Stricklin lived in a small but sturdy cabin on the steep slopes of Pitcher Ridge that rose above the peaceful and friendly Richwoods Valley. He had built the cabin from rough-hewn timber of those same hills with his own two hands and topped it off with a corrugated tin roof that shined like diamonds in the evenings when the setting sun’s rays struck it. For many years after the cabin was built, folks in the valley would watch as the gleam left the tin roof, and they would wait to see if Bud hung an oil lantern out on his front porch calling them to come and dance in his front yard as he stood on the porch and sawed away at lively reels on his fiddle. Whenever the light was on the porch, all the people in the valley walked up the winding, wide path to the cabin and sang and danced and laughed until they only had enough energy to walk back down the slope to their homes. It was good times for all when Bud summoned the folks to hear him fiddle.
But tragedy struck Bud Stricklin one day when his beloved Elsie died giving birth to what would have been a son had the infant lived any longer than his mother. Bud buried them in a plot on a higher ridge behind his house, and all the folks came to the funeral and mourned with Bud, but then they didn’t see him anymore. For a while, the sun still glinted off the roof of his cabin, but then the brush and trees grew up so that the shine couldn’t be seen. Folks watched for glow of the lantern on the porch for months or maybe a year, but the lantern was never set out, and some of the younger kids never even knew about watching for the invitation. The path up the ridge, even near the bottom where it made a Y with the main road through the valley, grew up with weeds and grass, was covered with fallen limbs and trees, and rutted out by the rain. The people of Richwoods Valley knew that Bud Stricklin was still up there in his cabin because every day at the same time white wisps of smoke would curl up through trees from the pipe of the wood cook stove as Bud made his supper, but they all felt it best to leave him up there with his dozen yard chickens, his untuned fiddle, and his grief until he was ready to be something other than alone. More than likely, most people thought he would die up on the ridge by himself.
One day, as Bud Stricklin was washing up the dishes after supper in a routine that was even deeper and duller than his grief, he was surprised by a noise outside that was not made by one of his chickens or any of the other wild animals prevalent here in the dark woods of the hillside. It sound like somebody said, “Nah!”
With his iron skillet in one hand and his tin drinking cup in the other, Bud walked onto the front porch, and there, standing in his yard and nibbling on a Johnson grass stalk, was a white, nanny goat with big gray spots. She had a leather collar around her neck with a bell attached to it, but the bell had no clapper, and so it made no noise when the goat moved.
“Get on outta here!” Bud hollered and shook the tin cup and iron skillet over his head.
“Nah!” said the gray and white nanny with the usual insolence of any nanny goat you ever heard.
Bud stepped down onto the porch steps and beat his tin cup against the iron skillet, which made an awful loud clanking sound that rung and echoed through the whole woods, “Go on! Get!” he shouted.
“Nah!” the goat bleated again.
Bud noticed that his beating of the cup on the skillet had bent the cup nearly unusable, so he ran into the house just as angry as a wet wasp, rushed into his bedroom, pulled his .22 rifle off its rack on the wall, and stormed back outside in a regular ol’ tiz, but by the time he hopped down off the porch and raised the rifle sights to aim at the goat’s head, most of his anger had subsided, and he felt pretty foolish being a feller who would threaten to shoot a harmless nanny goat. He climbed back up the steps and sat in a rocking chair with the .22 across his lap and watched the goat eat. With each stalk of Johnson grass that it ate, the goat would eat the seed clump at the top first, then eat the stalk bite-by-bite from top all the way to the ground. After about thirty minutes of watching, Bud made a decision.
“I reckon that you can stay the night by earning your keep with the weedin’, but tomorrow, I’m takin’ you home.”
“Nah!” bleated the nanny goat.
The next morning, Bud woke up the same time as he always did, got out of bed and dressed in the same manner he always did, and ate the same breakfast that he always ate, but all the rest of his deep and dull routine would be broken taking this nanny back to her supposed home in the Richwoods Valley. After eating breakfast and washing his dishes, Bud fetched a twenty-foot rope from the lean-to on the side of the chicken house, put it through a loop on the goat’s collar with a bell on it that had no clapper, and took off down the hill. He didn’t really have to lead the goat. She just kind of followed along behind him.
It had been so long since Bud had been down the path that the once wide and smooth trail was in bad, bad shape. Bud picked up limbs that had fallen into the trail and rocks that had rolled into it as he trudged down the ridge with the goat in tow, but he had nothing to fix the deep ruts that had been washed, to cut the dead trees that had laid across the road, nor to trim the weeds and grass that had grown up waist high. A fifteen-minute walk to the bottom of the ridge took nearly an hour, and Bud was bushed by the time he got to the Y with the main road, so he made up his mind that he would leave the goat at the first house that he came to in Richwoods Valley, which happened to be the home of his friend, Joe Stewart. Bud walked up to Joe Stewart’s front door with the goat trailing on the rope behind him, pounded angrily on the door, and waited. Joe answered the door.
“Why Bud Stricklin, it’s been a long…” Joe began, but he was cut off quickly.
“This your goat, Joe?” Bud asked in a voice too loud for speaking to other people.
“No, it’s not mine.” Joe replied, rather shaken by the gruff loudness of Bud’s voice.
“You know whose it is?”
“Can’t say that I do. No one in the valley raises goats. How you been doin’…”
“Well, here! You find out who it belongs to,” Bud said, thrust the rope into Joe’s hand, and turned to march across the yard and back to the road uphill to his ridge.
“Nice to see you, Bud,” Joe hollered, but Bud gave no indication that he had heard a sound.
The next morning, Bud awoke at the same time he always did, got dressed as he always did, but, instead of making and eating his breakfast, he walked out on the porch because he had a strong sense that the nanny goat would be there. He wasn’t disappointed. She was standing in the yard, eating Johnson grass from top to bottom. A five-foot piece of rope, chewed to a fray at the loose end, hung from the goat’s collar with a bell on it that had no clapper.
“I don’t suppose you would just go away,” Bud pleaded.
“Nah!” bleated the nanny.
Without even eating breakfast, Bud headed back down the hill with goat in tow, but remembering the state of trail the day before, first he went to the lean-to on the side of the chicken shed and grabbed his cross-cut saw. It took him more than three hours to get to the Y with the main road because he cut and cleared every tree and limb from the path as he went down. When he got to the bottom, he leaned the saw against a tree and took off towards Richwoods Valley. He didn’t have to lead the nanny with the rope. She just followed him. Since Joe Stewart had failed in his forced duty of finding the goat’s home, Bud went to the second house on the road, which happened to be where John Ramsey lived. Like the day before, Bud strode up to the house and banged on the door. The goat waited and grazed in the yard.
“Good to see…,” John began as he opened the door, but he was cut off by Bud who spoke a little quieter today.
“This your goat, John?”
“I’ve never owned a goat to my recollection. You want to come in and…” John started to offer hospitality, but that wouldn’t work for Bud.
“I left this goat with Joe Stewart yesterday, but it was back at my house this morning. Maybe, you can find a way to keep it until you find its owner,” Bud announced curtly and turned to march off.
“I’ll put it in the barn,” John yelled out at Bud’s back, “Good to see you, by the way.”
The next morning, Bud woke up at the same time but walked to the front porch in his underclothes instead of getting dressed. There was that nanny eating the Johnson grass from top to bottom. It had half of the yard clipped down to the ground.
“I don’t suppose there’s any way that I could convince you to let me get back to my routine is there,” Bud pleaded in an unexpectedly calm voice.
“Nah!” bleated the nanny.
This day, on the way down into Richwoods Valley, Bud carried his weedwhacker and cut all the weeds and grass down so that the path looked like a real walking trail again. This day, he went to the third house on the main road, Jacob Hess’s house, and he gave the Hesses the goat, but the end result of this day was exactly the same as the two before. The next morning, when he woke up, the nanny goat was in his yard eating Johnson grass from top to bottom with a frayed rope tied in the leather collar with a bell that had no clapper.
But, Bud Stricklin was bound and determined to get rid of the nanny goat, even though he was beginning to appreciate her company, so every day for fifteen days, he walked down and worked on the wide and winding path that went from his cabin to the Y with main road, the nanny, untethered, straggling along behind him, not being led but just following. And each day for fifteen days, he visited a different neighbor in Richwood Valley until he had visited them all and left the goat at every household. This process had become a new routine for Bud.
On the sixteenth day though, Bud got up in the morning, saw the goat in the yard, and went back to bed. The exertion of working, walking, and visiting had plum wore him out, and he needed a day of rest, and he took it. Later that day, he was pleasantly surprised to find himself lying in bed as the sun was going down, but he felt pretty good about the whole changing of his routine, and he wanted to thank the nanny for her help, so he put on his clothes and walked out to the front porch. The nanny goat wasn’t there. He walked out to the chicken shed. She wasn’t there. He called out for her though he had no idea what her name was. She didn’t come. Bud was a bit concerned about the nanny though he did realize that she wasn't usually at his cabin in the evening, only once since he had known her had she been there in the evening. Still, he felt that he ought to let her know that she was welcome anytime, so he went into his house and found his old oil lantern, lit it, and hung it on the front porch for the first time in as many as ten years.
As it happened, Bud’s visits in the Richwoods Valley had people thinking and talking about Bud, and it had people looking up on Pitcher Ridge every night again even though the shine on the cabin’s corrugated tin roof was still hidden by trees and vines, and every one of the neighbors noticed when they saw the lantern hanging from the front porch of the cabin. They couldn’t see the lantern, but they could tell by the glow that it was there, and they all started walking up the hill to hear Bud play his fiddle. When they got to the wide and winding trail off the main road and up the ridge, they were surprised to find that it was cleared and fixed and that it was as smooth and welcoming as it had ever been from the Y with the main road all the way up to the cabin.
Well, imagine Bud’s amazement when he begins to hear the murmur of a crowd easing up the hill, and then suddenly the whole Richwoods Valley community is standing there in his front yard.
“What are y’all doin’ up here?” Bud asked them all because he really hadn’t thought it through.
Bud’s nearest neighbor, Joe Stewart spoke first, “Why, we saw the lantern hung on the porch and thought you were ready to play the fiddle for us again, Bud.”
“The lantern wasn’t for you. It was for the goat,” Bud spoke earnestly but immediately regretted what he said.
“So, you don’t want us up here?” an unrecognized voice questioned from the middle of the pack.
Bud looked at all of his neighbors in the soft glow of the lantern, and his eyes began to tear up as he realized how eager they were and how long it had been since they had danced a lively reel.
“Of course, I do,” Bud laughed, “Why do you think I cleaned the trail?”
Bud got his fiddle off its stand on the dresser and tuned it up, which was no easy task considering how long it had been sitting, and he stood on his porch and played lively reels for all the people of Richwood Valley who sang and danced and laughed until they barely had the energy to walk back down the hill to their homes. Finally, when all the people had finished their “goodbyes” and “See you soons” and headed back down the hill, Bud noticed the nanny goat at the near dark edge of the yard, gnawing at the last stalk of Johnson grass to be found on the entire place. He walked down to her and untied the five-foot rope, frayed on the loose end, from the leather collar with the bell that had no clapper.
“I don’t suppose that you’ll be here in the morning,” Bud asked thoughtfully, “Will I ever see you again?”
“Nah!” the nanny goat bleated just as insolently as a nanny goat usually does.