A Day No Pigs Would Die (13 page)
Read A Day No Pigs Would Die Online
Authors: Robert Newton Peck
Papa lived through the winter. He died in his sleep out in the barn on the third of May.
He was always up before I was. And when I went out to the barn that morning, all was still. He was lying on the straw bed that he rigged for himself, and I knew before I got to him that he was dead.
“Papa.” I said his name just once. “It’s all right. You can sleep this morning. No cause to rouse yourself. I’ll do the chores. There’s no need to work any more. You just rest.”
I fed and watered Solomon and Daisy. And milked her. Then I threw some grain to the hens, made sure they had water, and collected the eggs. One was still wet from laying. I remember there was only seven eggs; five whites and two brown. I wiped off the specks and carried them up the hill to the
cellar. Then I went into the kitchen where Mama and Aunt Carrie were already moving about. Now that I was thirteen I was taller than both of them. I put an arm around each one of them, and held them close to me.
“Put my meal in a basket,” I said. “I’m taking Solomon into town to see Mr. Wilcox. Papa won’t be coming up for breakfast. Not this morning, and not ever again. I’ll be back in about two hours, but first I’ll stop and tell Matty and Hume. And some others.”
“You go,” Mama said. “Carrie and I will make do just fine. There’s not time to tell your sisters. And scattered all over Vermont, they couldn’t come.”
“I’ll write letters to all four,” I said. “Now about the funeral. Does he have any good clothes?”
“Yes,” Mama said. “They been ready for some time, up in the camphor chest at the foot of … our bed.”
“Mama, if you could get them out and be ready when Mr. Wilcox comes, it would be a help.”
“They’ll be,” she said.
I kissed each one of them on the brow, and went outside to yoke up the ox. I stopped Solomon at the front gate, went inside and got something (which I never did eat) tied up in a clean checkered napkin and went into Learning.
I told Mr. Wilcox, who was a good Shaker man and who took care of our dead. After telling Aunt Matty and Hume, I came on home. I made just two more stops. To tell Mrs. Bascom and Ira, and to tell Mr. and Mrs. Tanner. By the time I got home, Mr. Wilcox was already there. His bay gelding was just outside the barn hitched to a small rig. Behind the driver’s bench was a coffin. It was unpainted wood and there were no handles. It was a gift from the Circle of Shakers in the town of Learning. Somewhere I’d find money to pay Mr. Wilcox. His fee would not be high as he was also the County Coroner.
“People will be coming at noon, Mr. Wilcox,” I said to him, as he was preparing Papa.
“Everything will be ready, Robert.”
“Thank you, sir.”
I told Aunt Carrie and Mama about the time of the funeral. I knew they’d be ready, in their best and plainest.
“They won’t be many coming,” I said. “Maybe six and that’s all.”
“Rob,” Mama said, “I’m glad we’ve got you to handle things. I couldn’t of done it alone.”
“Yes, you could, Mama. When you’re the only one to do something, it always gets done.”
I dug a grave in the family plot in our orchard.
After that I hunted for a chore, just anything to do. The day before Papa died, we’d been mending a plowshare out in the tackroom. Instead of just waiting for the people to come, I worked on it a bit. And just about got it righted.
Before I walked out of the tackroom, I noticed something I’d not took note of previous. It was the handles of Papa’s tools. Most of the tools were dark with age, and their handles were a deep brown. But where Papa’s hands had took a purchase on them, they were lighter in color. Almost a gold. The wear of his labor had made them smooth and shiny, where his fingers had held each one. I looked at all the handles of his tools. It was real beautiful the way they was gilded by work.
As I stood there looking over his tools, I had the hanker to reach out and touch them all. To hold them in my hands the same way he did, just to see if my hands were sized enough to take hold.
Under the tools, I saw an old cigar box that was gray with dust. Inside was a wore-down pencil stub and a scrap of old paper. Unfolding the paper, I saw where Papa had been trying to write his name. One of the “Haven Peck”s was near to perfect, and he almost had the hang of it. The paper was dry and brown, as if he had practiced for a long time. Carefully folding the paper back into just the way he
had folded it, I rested it in its box and closed the lid.
Then I went inside to change clothes, as it was almost noon. As a young boy, I’d had a black suit that Mama made me. But I always felt like a preacher in it. Besides, now it was way too small. And what Papa owned was too spare. So I just put on a new pair of work shoes that were tan, and a pair of Papa’s old black trousers which I turned up inside and stuck with pins. I wore one of his shirts with no necktie. I looked at myself in the mirror, to make sure I had the dignity to lead a family to a grave. I looked more like a clown than a mourner. The shirt didn’t fit at all. And the tan work shoes just stuck out like I was almost barefoot. I ripped the shirt off and threw it on the floor. “Hear me, God,” I said. “It’s hell to be poor.”
By noon, they’d all come. Just after we got Papa dressed and his coffin into the house.
Aunt Matty and Hume were the first. Mrs. Bascom came with Ira Long. Only her name was now Mrs. Long, legal and proper. But in my mind she always was Mrs. Bascom. Mr. Tanner and his wife came in the black rig, with a pair of black horses. I went out to meet them.
“Thank you for coming, Mr. Tanner.”
“Robert, my name is Benjamin Franklin Tanner. All my neighbors call me Ben. I think two men
who are good friends ought to front name one another.”
“And I’m Bess,” his wife said, “from here on.”
As the Tanners joined the others in the parlor of the house, I looked up road. Another wagon was coming. It was May and Sebring Hillman. And from town came Isadore Crookshank along with Jacob Henry and his folks. Last to come was Mr. Clay Sander, the man my father slaughtered for. Along with several of the men that Papa worked with. There would be no work on this day. A day no pigs would die.
I was glad they came. Some of them were dressed no better than I. And some not even as well, but they came. They came to help us plant Haven Peck into the earth, and that was all that counted. They’d come because they respected him and honored him. As I looked at all them, standing uneasy in our small parlor, I was happy for Papa. He wasn’t rich. But by damn he wasn’t poor. He always said he wasn’t poor, but I figured he was just having fun with himself. But he was sober. He had a lot, Papa did.
The coffin was open and lying on the long table in the kitchen. It was the only place for it to be under our roof. Papa was a tall man. But he was not to be seen from the parlor where all our friends gathered,
and I was just as pleased. A man can’t rest when he’s looked at.
As eldest son, it was my place to say words about my father. I didn’t know what I was going to say. It wouldn’t be much. What I thought about Papa couldn’t of been said. Being his son was like knowing a king. “Haven Peck,” I said. “Devoted husband and father, a working farmer and a good neighbor. Beloved by wife, four daughters, and one living son. We are all grateful to know him. And we ask only that his soul enter the Kingdom Hall, there to abide forever.”
Mr, Wilcox had coached me a bit as to proper words, so I guess I did all right. We left the parlor and filed through the kitchen, to look at Papa for one last time. Lots of folks said “Amen” as they passed by.
We closed the box of raw unpainted wood, nailing down the lid. Then six of the men raised it up, and walked with it out to the grave I dug in the orchard. With lowering ropes, they let it down into the ground onto two small cross boards, so that they could pull the two ropes out again. There was something in the Book of Shaker that it was unfit to bury the ropes with a coffin. Probably because rope was so dearly priced. It would be an earthy reason.
I had placed two shovels there at the open grave.
As soon as the coffin was down, Ira Long and Sebring Hillman (two of the sturdiest) started to shovel the soil into the hole. The first shovelfuls had some Vermont rock in them, and the stones hit the wood like a drum. But then as more and more dirt was added, it sounded softer and softer. When all the earth was finally replaced, they packed it down with the flat of their spades. There was no marker, no headstone. Nothing to say who it was or what he had done in his sixty years.
We all walked away then, Aunt Carrie and Mama on either side of me. They both looked and walked so proper, and I was proud to be between them. Mama’s sweet face was so plain and so empty. What she missed most was not to be spoken of. We all would long for a different parcel of him.
“Rob,” said Ben Tanner, as everyone took leave, “if Bess or me can lend a hand or help in any way, just ask.”
“Thank you, Ben,” I said. “You’re a goodly neighbor.”
“The way you said that,” Ben said, “you sort of sounded like your father.”
“I aim to, Ben.”
Then they were gone. Mama and Aunt Carrie were busy in the house, scolding each other to keep from weeping. I changed into my work clothes, and
scraped a wood shim for the door of the milk house.
Solomon had a cut on his eye (I didn’t know from what) and I treated it with boric best I could. I cleaned up the tackroom and sharpened a scythe. I cut a fresh sassafras tree and prepared it so as it could boil into a new bow for Solomon’s yoke, and bored a hole in both ends for the cotter pins.
At chore time, I pailed Daisy. Fed, watered, cleaned, and put down fresh straw. Then I ate supper with Aunt Carrie and Mama. There wasn’t much to eat, except beans. And we’d lived on those all winter. Beans and pork. And none of it was easy to swallow.
After the supper dishes were washed and dry, I could see how tired Mama looked. Carrie, too. So I sent them upstairs to bed, each with a hot cup of tea.
As I knew I couldn’t sleep, I put on my coat and walked outside. I took a look in on Daisy and Solomon, and they were both quiet as vespers. Both of them were getting old, and they liked being in the barn. Even on a nice spring night such as this.
Something brushed against my ankle. It was Miss Sarah, just to say hello. Before she went out on the meadow to hunt moles.
I don’t know why I walked out toward the orchard. All the work there was done. But I guess I
had to give a goodnight to Papa, and be alone with him. The bugs were out, and their singing was all around me. Almost like a choir. I got to the fresh grave, all neatly mounded and pounded. Somewhere down under all that Vermont clay was my father, Haven Peck. Buried deep in the land he sweated so hard on and longed to own so much. And now it owned him.
“Goodnight, Papa,” I said. “We had thirteen good years.”
That was all I could say, so I just turned and walked away from a patch of grassless land.
Turn the page for a preview of the next book about Rob Peck and his struggle to save the family farm.
Excerpt copyright © 1994 by Robert Newton Peck
Published by Laurel-Leaf
“Robert,” he said, “thank you for coming on time.”
I smiled. “You can bank on me, Ben. Just as you could always count on my father.”
“Punctuality is a Vermont virtue. Perhaps our only.”
Mr. Benjamin Franklin Tanner, our neighbor, returned his watch to a pocket and held out a hand. Ben’s handshake was firm yet friendly. Together we walked toward Mr. Tanner’s freshly whitewashed horse barn.
“No school today?”
“Yes, but I don’t go too regular. I like school a lot. And my teachers. But we somehow got to keep our home. So the eighth grade can possible do without me.”
Mr. Tanner understood. My father, Haven Peck, died two weeks ago; I’d skipped school a few days
to work our farm, taking over for Mama and Aunt Carrie. Ben didn’t scold. I had choices to make. And made them.
We stopped in the long aisle outside a box stall where a stallion smell was male strong. It was seven o’clock on a May morning, so I had to squint to see beyond the stall bars. Inside, a powerful horse turned to stare at us. His name, neatly lettered on the gate shingle, read:
GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE
“This big gentleman might turn a lick frisky,” Ben warned, sliding the door a foot, “so best we don’t spook him. Easy boy,” he told his chesty gray.
“He’s right handsome,” I said. “Always is.”
General nickered.
Pulling a carrot from a shirt pocket, Ben Tanner snapped off a short orange log, offering the treat on his open palm. General Lee sniffed it, approved, lipped and munched. As he ate, Ben touched the stud’s massive neck with a cautious hand, then slipped a well-oiled halter over head and ears, fastening the buckle tongue to a snug but comfortable notch.
“Now then, Robert, let’s parade him out into the morning where I can see to check him over,
to certain that he’s sound. Mr. Haskell Gamp’s coming at ten o’clock and bringing a wet mare.”
We led General from his stall to a work area, a wide doorway that looked up to the main house.
“Here’ll do,” Ben told me.
Raising a hoof, General rapped the thick oak floor with his iron, making a hollow sound like a drum.
“Our friend knows something’s up.” Ben winked at me. “Perhaps he reckons he’s fixing to entertain a lady visitor. That’s the reason he wasn’t free in the meadow last night. I boxed him so he’d behave quieter.”
While I gripped the halter strap with a firm ten-finger purchase, Ben Tanner patted the gray withers, his hand floating softly and slowly, to inform General of his exact location and friendly intentions.
Bending low, he hefted a front hoof.
“Around any horse, Rob, be it familiar or strange, it’ll usual serve best to fetch up a front leg first. Even if you purpose to tend aft. Working with an animal’s brain saves time and sweat. A carrot’ll do ample more than a whip or a nose twitch.”
“Papa said such,” I agreed. “He killed hogs, but he had a gent’s way about him.”
Looking up at me, our neighbor offered a sad smile. “Indeed. I truly miss Haven Peck. So does Bess.”
It was sort of magical. Because hardly had Ben Tanner spoke his wife’s name, she appeared, walking toward us in a pink-and-white apron, carrying a glass of something in each hand.
“Morning, Mrs. Tanner,” I said, although I’d been told to use their first names.
“A morning to you, Rob,” she said with a smile. “Now, the pair of you, don’t start thinking you’re royalty. I’m cleaning out the cooler, and I happened to have two glasses of buttermilk in the way. So here you go. Partake.”
Ben downed his, I mine. It tasted rich and right restful. Bess wiped a corner of my mouth with a clean hanky and returned it to her apron pocket. As we handed our empty glasses to her, she took them with a wry face.
“The trouble with buttermilk,” she said, “is that the empty glass looks so untidy.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Thanks a lot.”
Ben nodded. We watched her amble back toward her kitchen, a dirty glass in each hand. Ben stood there holding his gray stallion until his wife disappeared inside the house. “At times,” he said
softly, “I treasure Bess so much that it’s all I can do to keep from letting her know it.”
He moved slowly to the stallion’s rear, maintaining contact, his shoulder brushing General’s furry flank. Winter was still thick on him, along with stall dust.
“How’s his hoofs?” I asked.
Stooping, Ben grunted. “Three appear solid. Now let’s handle number four.” Cradling the hoof between his knees, Ben used his thumbnail to chip off a few brown clods of dried mud. “Frog’s firm. The inside rim of the hoof feels soft and moist. That’s a blessing. Hard hoofs make a hard-hearted horse.” He paused. “But his shoe begs a reset.”
Ben left, returning with smithing tools. Under his armpit was a short fullering bar. In seconds, he loosened the problem shoe and pried it off. The iron fell clanking to the wood.
“Will we use a fire?” I asked.
“No need. Were I to attend him fresh footwear, I’d shoe hot. No other way.”
It made me almost grin to remember. Papa wouldn’t trust any farrier who would shoe cold. A mare was a lady who deserved warm slippers on her feet. I could hear Papa teaching me. I’d never forget any of his earthy reason. I carried his
lessons with me, hurting like a pebble in a boot that I’d never empty out.
Whack. Whack. Whack.
The noise of Ben Tanner’s hammer brought me back to where I was now standing, steadying my neighbor’s stallion.
Releasing the hoof, Ben straightened up slowly with a groan of age. “There,” he said, “he’s repaired. But before I twist off those nail points, cast your young eyes down yonder and lend me your opinion.”
As Ben held the halter, I squatted to raise the hoof. It felt solid set. Even all around. “Snug tight,” I said. Before rising, I discovered a few brown burdock burrs on General’s fetlock. Small ones. Placing my free hand on the pastern, to steady the leg, I eased off the burrs. Then I stood.
“Robert, you have a genuine touch for animals. That’s why I asked you to help me with my stud horse. You do possess a Peck manner. A quiet Shaker way.” Ben clapped a hand on my shoulder. “Never had I ever see a human being, man or boy, tame a pig the way you done last summer. That Pinky of yours, formerly mine, was close to a household pet.”
I nodded. “My mistake was giving her a name.”
“A shame you and your pa had to butcher Pinky. She was barren. Her end was a sorrow for you, Robert. Yet rightful and proper.” Ben sighed. “Manhood is doing what has to be done.”
Remembering that dreadful December day, I realized that Papa had also killed a part of himself. Ben knew all about it. Said so. He and Bess meant a lot more to me than just neighbors. I ached to thank him, but I never seemed to find the right words.
Before I could say anything, General Robert E. Lee tossed his mighty head twice, and rumbled his throat.
“This boy must’ve took a whiff of something he didn’t like,” Ben said. Looking at me sideways, he asked, “You been breakfasting to beans?”
Laughing, I pleaded innocent. “No, just some of Mama’s chicken giblet stew, spoon bread, vinegar, and turnips.”
“Hold him steady,” Ben said, “while I fuller that hoof to prosperity.”
Using tongs, he twisted off a silvery nail spike that was prickering up through the hoof, and bit off a second. He’d barely finished ironing when the stallion set to prancing his legs up and down, and I couldn’t manage to settle him.
“Whoa,” I whispered. “Whoa now, General.”
Ben stood. “Horse, what’s got into you? There’s not a bother of anything to smell.”
As he spoke, I sudden knew that Mr. Ben Tanner was dead wrong. Looking downroad, I spotted a horse and rider coming our way at a trot. I noted a bridle but no saddle; the horseman seemed to sit unsteady as he bounced along, feet pointing out on both flanks of the horse as though he weren’t too comfortable at riding. He rode stiff-legged.
“Somebody’s coming, Ben.”
The stallion wouldn’t hold still. He persisted his dancing, snorted, and shook his mane. His tail arched as he fluttered a louder noise in his throat. A bear of a sound.
“Hold him, Robert. Help me.”
It was hard to believe that somebody would actual ride a wet mare toward a stud. Yet this man rode closer, trying to contain his mount. It was a bay. A deep brown with a black mane and tail.
“Dang!” Ben spat. “It’s Haskell Gamp. That uppity man never could tell time, even if’n you painted a clock on his face. I particular asked him not to appear until ten o’clock, so’s I could afford General some extra oats and plenty of water to humor him down.”
When the mare nickered, trouble exploded.
There was no holding General Lee, now that he could see and hear a heated female he’d earlier caught wind of. Nostrils flaring, he reared high, boxing the air with his front hoofs. Ben tried to cling to the halter. His legs and my legs left the ground as I heard the halter snap. The gray stallion busted free.
As my hands clawed and clutched at the mane of the rearing horse, the stud bucked, wheeled away from me, and attacked his owner. Ears back, he bared his teeth, then bit deep into the flesh of Ben’s body, between his neck and shoulder. Ben Tanner’s mouth opened, but the force of those long and powerful horse jaws silenced his scream.
The gray, with his teeth planted into human meat, shook Ben worse than a terrier shakes a rat. Blood splattered.
What eased Ben was because a in-season mare was present. As the stud charged her, Mr. Gamp fell off. On the ground, he lay yelling for help among eight active hoofs, his hands trying to protect his face from the dust and danger. When a stallion and a mare are both eager, it’s more ruckus than romance. Nature’s violent way.
Kneeling to Ben, I watched it all happen.
As General was trying to smell the bay’s rump, she kicked at him. Below, Mr. Gamp still held one
of the bridle reins, and screamed. Above him, the two horses madly circled, ears back, around and around. Wild-eyed, the stallion was trumpeting, grunting, his hind legs spread and braced. Underneath him, he was extended, rigid, trying to gain position. Soon his teeth found her neck, clamped, and held. The mare’s neck arched, her head twisting one way and then another in an effort to escape the pain.
General was larger, stronger, and not to be denied his stallionhood. As the bay began to tire, General dominated her with his superior weight, strength, and desire.
The stud mounted the mare, had his way, and their unity ended as sudden as it had begun. The animals shuddered, froze for a breath, then parted. Both become docile.
A dusty Mr. Gamp rose slowly to his feet to stagger to where Ben lay bleeding. Ben Tanner’s shirt, what little of it hadn’t been ripped off, was soaked dark with blood. Skinning off my own shirt, I quickly wadded it to a bundle, then pressed it against the gushing wound, pushing the soft cloth to Ben hard as possible.
After a spell, his bleeding slowed and clotted. Gamp did little except stand there, whining, eyes red and face flushed. A dirty mess of a man. Fear
flooded his face. As he leaned close, his breath was sour as sin. Removing a pint bottle of whiskey from his pants pocket, and backing away, he uncorked it with his teeth to gulp a swallow.
Then a second.
To me, it become clear that Mr. Gamp had probable been halfway to mellow when he’d arrived on his mare. So, standing up, I walked to him, took the bottle from his trembling fingers, and poured the remaining whiskey to the Vermont soil. There was a temptation in me to throw that bottle away, as far as I could pitch it. Or smash it. Yet I did neither. I merely handed it back to Mr. Gamp, so he’d keep it for a time.
I hoped he would remember this day, and how much hurt he’d heaped on a good man.