A Day No Pigs Would Die (2 page)

“Haven Peck.”

Somebody was yelling out Papa’s name, but I couldn’t see anything. And it was real strange, because my eyes were open. They sort of stinged. So I blinked, but the fog was still there.

There was a wool blanket around me. I could feel the wool rub against the raw place on my arm, but the hurt of it seemed to keep me awake. And keep me alive.

There were more voices now. I heard Papa answer, and the man who was carrying me asked him, “Is this your boy? There’s so much blood and dirt and Satan on him, I can’t tell for sure. Besides, he’s near naked.”

“Yes,” said Papa. “That’s our Robert.”

And then I heard Mama’s voice, soft and sweet like music; and I could feel her hands on my head
and my hair. Aunt Carrie was there, too. She was Mama’s oldest sister, who lived with us.

Strong hands were touching my legs now, and then my ribs. I tried to say something about not being in school. Somebody had some warm water and washed my face with it. The water had lilac in it, and smelled right restful.

“We’re beholding to you, Benjamin Tanner,” said Papa, “for fetching him home. Whatever he done, I’ll make it right.”

“Better look to his arm. It got tore up worse than proper. May be broke.”

“Haven,” I heard Mama say, “the boy’s holding something in his hand. Can’t make it out.”

I felt them taking something from my right hand. I didn’t want to render it up, but they took it.

“I never see the like of it,” Mama said. “Like it’s near to be alive.”

I could hear Mr. Tanner’s rough voice over the others. “I know what that is. It’s a goiter.”

“Goiter?”

“Where’d he get it?”

“It’s an evil thing. But for now let’s tend his arm. Mr. Tanner, we may got to cut away part of your blanket.”

“Ain’t mine. Belongs to my horse. So cut all you’re a mind to.”

I felt Papa pulling the blanket down off my right shoulder, until it got caught in the clotted blood. I heard his jackknife click open, and cut away part of the wool.

“I tied my bandana on his arm,” said Mr. Tanner, “so he wouldn’t bleed dry.” When Papa loosened it up, Mr. Tanner said, “He’ll bleed again with it loose, Haven.”

“He will,” said Papa, “and that’ll be a good thing for his arm. Let it open up and holler out all the dirt. Only way to treat a wound is to bleed it, ’til it’s clean as a cat’s mouth.”

“True.”

“Lucy,” Papa spoke soft to Mama, “better get a needle threaded. He’ll want sewing.”

He picked me up in his arms, carried me into the house and to the kitchen. He laid me flat on the long lammis table, face up. Mama put something soft under my head, and Aunt Carrie kept washing me off with the lilac water while Papa cut off my shirt and took off my boots.

“The poor lamb,” said Mama.

Somebody put a hand on my forehead to see if I was cool. It was followed by a cold wet cloth, and it felt real good. Funny, but it was the only thing on my entire body that I could feel. Then I felt the first of Mama’s stitches going into the meat of my arm.
I wanted to yell out, but didn’t have the will for it. Instead I just lay there on my back on that old kitchen table and let Mama sew me back together. It hurt. My eyes filled up with crying and the water ran in rivers to my ears, but I never let out a whimper.

When I had took all the sewing to be took (and by this time I must of been more thread than boy) Papa burdened me upstairs to my room. I could smell Mama, crisp and starched, plumping my pillow, and the cool muslin pillowcase touched both my ears as the back of my head sank into all those feathers.

“Tell Mr. Tanner,” I said.

Mama rushed to where my head was, and Papa and Aunt Carrie were at bed foot.

“Tell Mr. Tanner,” I said again, “that were he to look up on the ridge, he’ll find a calf. I helped get it born. Afterward, old Apron was still choking so I had to rip the ball out of her throat. And I didn’t mean to skip school.”

“I’ll be,” said Papa.

“Where are your trousers, Rob?” said Aunt Carrie, who took quite a stock in appearances.

“Up on the ridge. When I tied ’em round a tree they got busted some. I’m sorry, Mama. You’ll just have to cut me out another pair.”

Mama put her face right down close to mine, and I could smell her goodness.

“I’m preferenced to mend busted pants than a busted boy.”

“I … I can’t feel nothing in my right hand.”

“That’s ’cause it’s resting,” said Mama. “It wants to get well, and so do you. So right about now your Pa and Carrie and I are going to tiptoe out of here and let you get some rest. You earned it.”

They left. And I closed my eyes and went right off. Later I woke up when Mama brought me a dish of hot succotash and a warm glass of milking, fresh from the evening pail. The bubbles were still on it.

“That’s real good,” I said.

At bedtime, Papa came upstairs with his big shoes kicking one of the risers, and brought me one of the last of the winter apples from the cellar. He pulled up a chair close to my bed and looked at me for a long time while I ate the apple with my left hand.

“You mending?”

“Yes, Papa.”

“I ought to lick you proper for leaving the school-house.”

“Yes, Papa. You ought.”

“Someday you want to walk into the bank in Learning and write down your name, don’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I don’t cotton to raise a fool.”

“No, Papa.”

I tried to move my right arm, but it made me wince up. I couldn’t help but make a noise about it.

“She bit you up fair, that cow. Clear to bone.”

“Sure did. I always thought cows don’t bite.”

“Anything’ll bite, be it provoked.”

“I guess I provoked old Apron. Boy, she sure did some provoking on me.”

“You put a hand in her mouth?”

“Yes.”

“You rip out that … goiter?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Was that ’fore or after the calling?”

“I disremember. All I recall is that Apron was choking something fearful with a piece of stuff in her throat that she wanted me to fetch out.”

“So you tore out that goiter.”

“Yes, sir. Her calf was hung up, too. So I tore him out. Tore my pants and tore myself. Between me and the calf and Apron, we tore up a good part of Vermont as well as each other.”

“How do you feel?”

“Like if I die, at least I’ll stop hurting.”

“Best you don’t complain, a boy who skips school and don’t get no stick put on him.”

“No, sir. I won’t complain. Except when I move
it sharp and sudden, my arm is real numb. It’s the rest of me that’s in misery.”

“Where?”

“My backside and my privates. I’m stuck so full of prickers, it makes me smart just to think on it. Every damn—”

“What’d I hear?”

“Every darn pricker in Vermont must be in me, working their way through, and coming out the yonder side. It’s enough to sell your soul.”

“Well, if your soul looks as poorly as your carcass, I don’t guess it’ll bring much.”

“I don’t guess it will.”

Papa fished around in his pocket.

“Here’s two beads of spruce gum. One’s for me. But I don’t mention you’d want one.”

“Yes, I sure would. Please.”

“Here, then. Might help you forget where those prickers are nested.”

“It’s helping already. Thanks, Papa.”

The spruce gum was hard and grainy at first. Then the heat of your mouth begins to melt it down so that it’s worth the chewing. The bit that Papa gave me was rich and full of sappy juices. Except that every so often you have to spat out a flick of the bark.

“I saw sumac today, boy.”

“Is it ripe yet?”

Out of his pocket, Papa pulled a twig of sumac that was finger-thick and four-inch long.

“How’s that look?”

“Papa, that looks real good. Got your knife?”

Papa cracked out his knife, ringed the bark, and set a good notch at one end. All there was left to do now was to bucket soak it overnight, just enough to slip the bark sleeve. And boil it to kill the poison.

“That’ll be some whistle, Robert.”

“Sure will.”

“A boy with a whistle as fine as this won’t have no earthy reason to skip school. You of a mind to agree?”

“I agree, Papa.”

He stood up, big and tall with his head not quite bumping the roof of my bedroom.

“Don’t be going to sleep with spruce gum in your mouth.”

“I won’t, Papa.”

He bent down and pulled the crazy quilt up around my throat. I could tell by the smell of his hand that he’d killed pigs today. There was a strong smell to it, like stale death. That smell was almost always on him, morning and night. Until Saturday, when he’d strip down to the white and stand in the kitchen washtub, up to his shins in hot soapy water,
and wash himself clean of the pigs and the killing.

He smelled the best on Sunday morning, when I sat next to him at Shaker Meeting. He smelled just like the big brown bar of soap that he used, and sometimes there was some store-bought pomade on his hair. But when you kill pigs for a living, you can’t always smell like Sunday morning.

You just smell like hard work.

I was abed for almost a week.

My first day up was Saturday. I planned it that way so I’d have me two days out of bed and out of doors, without a mind for schooling.

“Good,” said Papa when he saw me hobble down to breakfast in the kitchen. “I can use a hand, and you look ready as rain.”

I limped a bit more than need be, but it didn’t do a lick of good. An hour later, we were resetting a post in the fence that set Mr. Tanner’s land apart from ours.

“Fences sure are funny, aren’t they, Papa?”

“How so?”

“Well, you be friends with Mr. Tanner. Neighbors and all. But we keep this fence up like it was war. I guess that humans are the only things on earth that take everything they own and fence it off.”

“Not true,” Papa said.

“Animals don’t put up fences.”

“Yes, they do. In the spring, a female robin won’t fly to a male until he owns a piece of the woods. He’s got to fence it off.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Lots of times when you hear that old robin sing, what he’s singing about is … keep off my tree. That whistle you hear is his fence.”

“Gee.”

“Ever see a fox?”

“Sure. Lots of times.”

“I mean really watch him. He walks around his land every day and wets on a tree here and on a rock there. That’s his fence. I can’t tell of any more than that, but my guess would be that all living things put up a fence, one way or another. Like a tree do with its roots.”

“Then it isn’t like war.”

“It’s a peaceable war. If I know Benjamin Franklin Tanner, he’d fret more than me if his cows found my corn. He’d feel worse than if it was the other way round.”

“He’s a good neighbor, Papa.”

“And he wants a fence to divide his and mine, same as I do. He knows this. A fence sets men together, not apart.”

“I never looked at it that way.”

“Time you did.”

As we were talking, I looked up from my work and Papa from his. What we saw was the oddest parade in the county, coming down the ridge and across the meadow. It was Ben Tanner and his cow, Apron. She was looking clean as clergy. Kicking along under her belly and trying to get hold of a teat was not one calf, but two! Alike as two peas. And Mr. Tanner was carrying something.

“Morning, Haven.”

“A day to you, Benjamin.”

“Morning, young Rob.”

“Morning, Mr. Tanner.”

I wasn’t really looking at our neighbor as I spoke. What caught my eye was the finest pair of bull calves you could ever try to see. They were blacker than Apron, but with a patch of clean white up the front, like a chin napkin.

“Bob and Bib,” said Mr. Tanner. “And the Bob of it is after you, Robert.”

“Well now,” said Papa.

“A matched pair, they be. Always wanted a yoke of matched Holstein oxen to take to Rutland. Now, thanks to your stout son, Haven, I got me the pair. Finest oxen in the county, they be. And come Fair time a year, they’ll do Learning proud.”

“Apron had
two?”
It was all I could say. “Two, and that’s all. But they right there, balls or no balls, make a pretty pair of bull calves. And Robert, I thank you again. Here’s a pig for your trouble.”

From under his coat, Mr. Tanner fetched out a small white ball of piglet. She had a pink nose and pink ears, and there was even a wisp or two of pink in the fork of her toes.

“You mean—this pig is going to be
mine?”

“Yours, my boy. Little enough for what you did.”

“Gosh’em Moses. Thanks, Mr. Tanner.”

Mr. Tanner handed me the pig and I took it. She kicked and squealed a bit, but once I held her close up to my chest with both arms, she settled down and licked my face. Her spit was a sad smell, but I didn’t care. She was
mine.

“We thank you, Brother Tanner,” said Papa. “But it’s not the Shaker Way to take frills for being neighborly. All that Robert done was what any farmer would do for another. It don’t add up to payment or due.”

I felt sick. Real sick. Papa wasn’t going to let me have her.

“Haven, when is the boy born?”