A Day No Pigs Would Die (6 page)

“We haven’t had that yet,” I said.

“’Course you haven’t. Trouble with teachers today is, they don’t diagram. All they think of is the Bunny Hug.”

“We haven’t had that either.”

Aunt Matty went fishing into her big pocketbook
once again. She pulled out an armload of things that she didn’t want, and finally some paper and pencil.

“So,” she said, writing as fast as she talked, “I am going to write out a sentence, and
you
can diagram it. Hear?”

“Yes.”

“There now. J
ack hit the ball hard with Joe’s yellow bat.
Let’s see you diagram
that.”

“I can’t, Auntie Matt.”

“I know you can’t. But any schoolboy who gets a D had better learn. First off, what’s the subject?”

“English.”

“What?”

“English is the subject I got a D in.”

Aunt Matty wiped her face with the hanky I blowed my nose into. She gave a big sigh (like Solomon when he’s pulling the plow and comes to the end of a furrow) and I knew that grammar sure was a tribulation.

“Rob,” she said real soft, “I used to teach English, and there was one thing I never did. Know what that was?”

“Played the cornet?”

“Not exactly. I never got angry. A good teacher does not lose her temper, no matter how stupid her pupils are.”

“That’s good,” I said, “because in our school they sure are some dull ones.”

As Aunt Matty fanned herself with the hanky, I wondered what she was thinking about. I was joyful to hear that Aunt Matty didn’t get mad. An angry teacher is bad aplenty, but I didn’t know how good I could fend off an angry Baptist.

Picking up the pencil, Aunt Matty started to draw some lines and circles (and a few other geegaws that I’d never seen before and never seen since) on the sentence about Jack. She put a zig-zag here, and a crazy elbow joint there. There was ovals and squiggles all over the paper. It was the fanciest thing I ever saw. The part about Jack was still in sight, but now it had arms and legs that thrashed out in six directions. It looked to me like a hill of barb-wire. And the worse it got, the prouder Aunt Matty was of it.

“Behold!” she said at last, trying to pry loose the pencil from her own fingers.
“That
is a diagram!”

I wasn’t about to make sport of it. Aunt Carrie always said that only the foolish defy the Dark Spirits. I didn’t know the truth of it, but years back in the town of Learning, somebody had come across an old woman who was a witch. She’d just look at a barn and it’d burn to cinders. She could dry up a creek with one crack of her knuckles. And sour your
cow’s milk before it bubbled in the pail. One look from that old witch, they said, would mildew silage and peel paint. Must have been a Baptist.

“Gee, Aunt Matty,” I said. “I ought to get A in English now for certain.”

“Here,” she said, handing me the paper that she’d sweated over like it was canning. “Take it up to your room and pin it on the wall.”

She pushed the paper to my hand, and I felt the unholy touch of it all the way upstairs and down.

“Did you thank Aunt Matty?” my mama asked me. “Can’t forget manners.”

“Thank you, Aunt Matty. Now I got to do chores. If’n it don’t get done, they’ll be a nevermind of fuss ’tween I and Papa.”

I was careful not to slam the door. Just outside, Pinky was waiting for me, and we raced each other to the barnyard fence. And just as I took leave of the house, I heard all of Aunt Matty’s bracelets go rattling, and I heard mama say:

“How was the first lesson?”

“Next time,” said Aunt Matty, “I’ll teach the Pig.”

Up on the ridge north from our house, it was open field. You could walk for most of a mile before reaching the woods.

The grass was high now. And seeing as I’d worked all day on the hay wagon with Papa, it sure felt good just to know that evening chores were done, and I could lie on my back in the soft grass and do nothing except wait for evening.

Pinky was with me, and she was lying down too. Even though she hadn’t put in a lick of work all day. But there she was, a mound of white pig in a whole field of purple clover and kickweed. Here and there was a stand of wild paintbrush. Most of it yellow, and some red. It didn’t seem to want to mix with the clover, and it just kept to its own kind.

The whole hillside was purple clover; and in the early sundown, it looked more purple than I’d ever
see it. Pinky was rolling in it. Over and back, over and back. I knew it felt good to her, because I was lying in it myself, and the clover felt right and good to me. The clover was getting ripe now, and you could take a big red-purple ball of it in your hand, and pull out the flower shoots. They were good to suck, and tasted just as sweet as the bee honey that was made from them.

Drawing one between my front teeth, I squeezed the sugary nectar into my mouth and spit out the pulp. It sure tasted good. I’d tried to get Pinky to taste some, but I guess that pigs just don’t cotton to clover none.

Just overhead, I could see a hawk drawing a circle in the sky. He was low for a hawk, and he must of just left his nest on the ridge and was making his first circle of evening flight. He went higher, with little moving of his wings. As he passed over us, I could see the red of his tail—like a torch against the softer colors of his underbody.

He went up, up, up. His circles were wider as he drifted south over the open meadowland of our farm. So high that he was only a dark speck with wings. The clouds above him were orange now. Like when Mama poured peach juice on the large curds of white potcheese. At the western-most turn of his circle, I almost lost him in the sundown.

But now he was returning. I wanted him to come
back so as I could watch him circle. As the tiny speck of him passed over my head, he stopped. For an instant he didn’t fly at all, and just appeared to be pasted against a cloud, not moving. Then he got bigger, and bigger. I couldn’t see any wings, as he was falling fast as a stone. I sat up in the clover to watch his dive, and for a minute I thought he was coming down for me.

I knew a hawk wouldn’t bother me none, so I sure knew it weren’t me that hawk was hunting. And down he came; down, down, down. Not moving his wings at all, like they was pegged to his sides and he couldn’t brake his fall. He was going to hit the ground for sure, and I jumped on my feet to see it.

Whump! The hawk hit only a few rods from where I was standing in the clover. Just the yonder side of a juniper bush where the clover wasn’t near-by at all, and where it once had been open meadow-land for pasture. He hit something as big as he was, pretty near. And whatever it was, it was thrashing about on the ground. Seeing his talons were buried in its fur, the hawk was being whipped through that juniper bush for fair. But all he had to do was hang on, and drive his talons into the heart or lungs.

Then I heard the cry. Full of pity it was, and it even made Pinky get
to
her feet. I’d only heard it once before, a rabbit’s deathcry, and it don’t forget
very easy. Like a newborn baby, that’s the sort of noise it is. Maybe even a call for help, for somebody to come and end its hurting. It’s the only cry that a rabbit makes its whole life long, just that one death-cry and it’s all over.

The cottontail rabbit had stopped kicking; and the hawk was resting after the struggle, probably trying to get his breath back. So I didn’t move. Pinky either. We both stood stock still, up to our knees in that clover like we was hitched. That old hawk saw us, you can wager on that. He saw us for certain sure, but it didn’t mean spit to him.

I started to move forward real slow through the stand of clover, toward the hawk. Trying to keep the juniper bush ’tween the two of us, and hoping that big white pig didn’t come crashing along to see what was up. Took about three steps and that was all. Mr. Hawk snapped those big wings out and whipped ’em fast, so off he went. I could tell that rabbit was dead, the way it hung all loose in the talons of that old redtail. The hawk went off and away from us, flying low and close to ground until his speed was such as he could climb. To him that rabbit must of been a burden and a half, but it sure was going to be a hot meal.

The
grass
whipped
on my
legs as I ran after him, fast as I could. So I could see where on that ridge his nest was that I knew he’d circle back to.
Pinky didn’t want to miss a trick, so she was right at my heels. But I lost sight of the hawk. He just plain melted over a hilltop and out of sight. I sure would of wanted to see his nest. And to see him tear up that fresh rabbit and feed his little ones. I bet soon as he landed at his nest with his kill, all his brood had their beaks open, wanting to get some hunks of warm rabbit down their gullet.

Any rabbit we ever shot, Papa always rubbed its belly hair up the wrong way, to see if it was healthy. If he felt bumps on the belly, then he’d bury it because of it being down with rabies. If it was sound, it was pie.

It made me hungry just to study on it. I’d tasted rabbit plenty of times myself, and it was better than goose. Mama was one good cook when it come to tanning a rabbit in her oven. There wasn’t one mighty thing that either Papa or me could rifle that Mama couldn’t put in the pot.

So if those young hawk nestings went after that rabbit meat, it was only because they got to it ahead of me. I didn’t know if Pinky would like rabbit or no. But all pigs are meat-eaters. Sure ought to be with forty-four teeth, Papa said. That was more teeth than I got. So maybe old Pinky would of eat rabbit. All I know is, a sow hog will eat her brood if she’s not fed right. That what Papa says.

I sure fed Pinky good. Just to make sure she
got to grow right, I give her as much corn, wheat, barley, rye, oats, and sorghum as I could work out of Papa or Mr. Tanner. She also got some of Daisy’s good fresh milk. Any time I went fishing, she got fish. And all the soybean meal and alfalfa I could muster. Mama said, “Rob, you feed that pig better’n you feed yourself.” I guessed it was true. She was my pig. Mine. And I was going to be dogged if she’d eat improper.

That was just food. She drunk about ten pounds a day of water. And like Solomon and Daisy, she liked her water cold and fresh. I was at Jacob Henry’s once and he was watering the stock. They had a horse and a cow, and only one bucket, so Jacob always had to water the horse first. Because a cow will drink after a horse, but no horse will drink after a cow. And a cow’ll drink three pails to one for a horse. But the horse got to drink first.

I kept a record of how much I fed Pinky, and wrote it all down up in my bedroom. The way I had it figured, for every three hundred fifty pounds of feed I give, she ought weight-gain a hundred. As I was setting there in the clover, chewing on a juniper berry, Pinky come over and rub against me. And it was some rub, because she sure was growing. I’d a give up pie for breakfast if I could of growed like she growed.

“Pinky,” I said, “you get took good care of. You got shelter and shade, and your crib is well drained. There’s always dry straw for you to sleep on, and the sump hole by the brook for mud to roll in. I even wet down the yard for you so the dust don’t creep in your nose.”

She snorted. I knew she wasn’t saying thank you or anything, but it sure was fun to pretend so.

“You’re welcome, Pink. And I’m going to keep right on taking care of you proper. Because do you know what you aim to be? You ain’t going to be pork. No, missy. You’re going to be a brood sow, and have a very long life. You get to be sized good, and heat up like a sow pig ought to, and we’re going to breed you to Mr. Tanner’s boar. Just wait until you see Samson. He’s about the best breeding boar in Learning, according to Papa. You and Samson are going to get mounted and mated, and the first litter ought to be at least eight. And after that, ten.”

All this here talk of motherhood didn’t seem to take to Pinky. She moved away from me and snapped at a bee.

“Bee,” I said, “you must be the last one out tonight. Better get home to your tree. It’s getting dark.”

The whole sky was pink and peaches. Just looking
up at it made you feel clean, even if you worked all day. We walked down the hill together; Pinky looking close to the ground the way she always did, and me watching the sundown. The old sun just seem to back off and leave us be.

We got home, and I penned Pinky up for the night, and gave her an extra big goodnight hug. I was walking back toward the house and met Papa coming to the barn. One of the kittens was there too, and I picked her up and carried her. The tiny claws dug into my shoulder, right through my shirt, until I held her close to make her fret no more of falling.

Papa had been mending a harness trace for Mr. Sander, and I waited while he slowly put all his tools away, each to its proper bed on the wall of the tackroom. Then we went outside and sat on a bench on the westerly side of the barn, me still holding the kitten on my lap, and we watched the sun go down. The pink become purple, and the purple turned to what Mama called a Shaker gray.

“Papa,” I said, “of all the things in the world to see, I reckon the heavens at sundown has got to be my favorite sight. How about you?”