Little Joe (4 page)

Keller nodded and pulled out his jackknife. “This pie goes right in my fridge in the hog barn.” He cut through the foil and sniffed. “No sharing.”

Eli heard squealing and caught sight of a mess of hogs in Keller’s pen. A sow, candy pink and panting, looked down at her empty feed tub and yawned. Eli wondered if she was the pig Keller showed at the fair last year—the sow who fell asleep in the middle of the show ring and didn’t wake up till the class was over.

Keller held the chicken potpie away from the groveling hogs, hoisting it above his head, which was high. More than a foot taller than Eli, Keller was the only near six-footer in fourth grade. Eli knew Keller’d repeated Mrs. MacFarland’s class before, at least once. And he figured Keller would be six foot for sure if he let his hair grow. But Keller was always coming around the house for a trim. Ma said he could have any haircut for free.

“Careful. Watermelon’s a biter,” Keller warned. Eli watched for any sniveling, open mouths and tried not to step on the feed tubs. They’d been turned over by Keller’s crop of Sour Patch hogs—a bunch of weanlings, piglets and sows who were rooting the upside-down containers
into the filthy snow with their grunting snouts. Keller named all his hogs after the candy he sold on the school bus. Sour Patch were by far his best seller.

Watermelon took hold of Eli’s pant leg.

“Are you taking Watermelon to the fair this year?” Eli asked, tugging hard to set his pant leg free.

“Don’t know yet.” Keller slapped Watermelon on the backside to get him moving and out of mischief. “Too early to tell how their hams’ll fatten up by the fall.”

Keller walked into the barn and pulled open a rusty refrigerator door. He took out a slice of pepperoni pizza to make room for the potpie.

Two little piglets with big pink ears and silky white faces came over. They wiggled their snouts in the air and stared up at Eli with long white eyelashes. Then they saw Keller and squealed.

“The one on the left rants up already, so he’s out of the question.” Keller swooped down and scooped up the other with one arm. “This one’s so pink, naming her Strawberry’s a no-brainer.” Keller pulled out a tiny pair of clippers from his back pocket. “Needle teeth,” he said, trimming the pointy tip of a fingernail-length tooth. “If you don’t keep an eye on ’em, they’ll cut up the sow’s teats real bad and all the babies go hungry.”

The piglet gazed up at Keller, who reached for a bottle
stopper and nursed the piglet with it. “It’s just sugar water,” Keller said. “They’re so dumb ’n’ ornery, they’ll eat anything.”

Eli smiled at Strawberry looking happy inside Keller’s camouflage vest. She gripped the bottle stopper like it was her mother and made all sorts of suckling sounds.

“This one sure likes to camp out,” Keller said, blushing as the piglet snuggled closer. “So when’s he gonna get snipped?”

“When’s
who
gonna get snipped?” Eli asked.

“Your bull calf.”

Pa hadn’t said anything about Little Joe getting castrated. “He’s staying a bull, far as I know.” But Eli couldn’t be sure. Whenever the milkers had bull calves, they always got sold. Pa just kept the heifers.

Keller shook his head. “They always tell you they won’t snip ’em. Then when you’re not looking—like if you’re asleep or you’re off visiting Grandpa’s—even a friend—they bring in the vet and get it done.”

Eli tried not to think about it. He looked at the market swine book next to the fridge. Most of the cover had been torn off or eaten.

“It’s just easier to make ’em steers,” Keller said. “If all bulls stayed bulls, there’d be more cows than people and folks sure would get sick and tired of eating steaks.”

Didn’t Grandpa say Little Joe looked good enough to stay a bull calf?
Eli thought.
That any bull sired by Apple Wood would take top dollar at the County Fair?

“When do you start training your hogs?” Eli wanted off the subject of bulls.

“You mean showing them the cane?” Keller laughed and put down the piglet. “Giving them a real bath instead of letting them roll around in wallow water?” Keller crouched over an old sink. “The hardest part’s getting them used to a hog snare so’s you can shave their bellies with the electric razor,” he said. “That’s what this swill’s for.” He took the lid off a great big kettle and grinned.

Eli wrinkled up his nose. It smelled awful. Like a mishmash of everything you weren’t meant to eat—leftovers gone bad, eggshells, banana peels, fish bones, too.

“Guess I’ll start training right after squirrel season, I suppose.” Keller took the kettle of swill into the hog pen and righted the feed tubs with his Wolverines. “Or between coyote and bee season.”

“Bee season?” Eli shook his head. He knew better than to believe Keller outright. “Never heard of one.” Eli’d read in the Game Commission manual Pa kept by the phone that you could kill woodchucks and weasels anytime except Sundays and crows most weekends. But bees?

“That’s when the bees get all fat and start buzzin’
around the manure heap.” Keller squatted beside the wire fence of the hog pen.

“Then what do you do?” A bunch of pigs started biting each other’s shoulders to get to the swill.

“I catch ’em with my bare hands.” Keller reached into the sky and snatched a fistful of air. Watermelon jumped a few inches to try and take a look, then bit a few tails and got up to the swill.

“Doesn’t that sting?” Eli’d stepped on a fallen hornets’ nest once, chasing Tater through the grass in his bare feet. He didn’t think anything could hurt so much for so long.

“Not to me,” Keller said. “I’m immuned.”

“But why’d you catch a bee for anyway?” Eli knew about honey, but that’s what bees made, not what they were made of.

“I eat ’em. Tastes just like candy, you know. With a little fuzz on top. No different than biting into a honeycomb, only crunchier with more stuff squirting out.” Keller put his mouth around the pigs’ automatic waterer and took a swig. “Can’t always eat pizza.” He wiped his wet face with a sleeve.

“That’s disgusting.” Eli laughed. “Worse than swallowing swill or eating bees.”

“Not when you’re a thirsty hunter.” Keller sighed. “I just might go bear hunting for the next few days. Climb a tree and wait till I see one.”

“It’s not the time for hunting bears. They’re still denned up.” Eli looked at Keller. “Besides, Pa says you got to be twelve to shoot anything legal.”

“Who says I’m not twelve?” Keller patted the top of Eli’s head like he was Tater. “Besides, I didn’t say nothing about shooting. It’s bow and arrow season.”

Eli had a bow and arrow set, too—a junior one—but he couldn’t go telling Keller that. He figured Keller had a real one for sure—adult-sized and powerful enough to kill a bear when it wasn’t bear season.

“The males come out if there’s a break in the cold.” Keller picked a fingernail clean with the tip of his jackknife. “If not, there’s always squirrels, possums and turkeys.”

“You can kill them with a bow and arrow, too?”

“You can kill a turkey with a rock, if you need to. But I prefer bear meat. Tastes just like chicken, you know.”

Eli didn’t think so. He’d tried some when Pa bagged one a few years ago. It was sweet and greasy like ketchup you forgot to shake. But he didn’t want to tell that to Keller either.

Keller nudged a panting pig with the tip of his boot.

“What’ll happen to your hogs when you’re away?”

“They could lose a little weight. Specially Black Raspberry.”

The Sour Patch pig looked over at Keller and burped up some pepperoni pizza.

“Won’t your ma and pa feed them?” Eli hadn’t seen them around much.

Keller took a clump of gravel and threw it at the horse barn. The panting pig just stood there hyperventilating, watching the stones hit the barn door.

“What’s wrong with this one?” Eli asked.

“Candy bloat. Haven’t been selling as much as I’d like and the expiration date passed on some. Can’t sell old candy, so I gave it to the hogs instead. He’ll burp it out.” Keller scratched the pig’s prickly ears, then took a bucket and filled it with water.

“It’s contagious, you know—scours.” Keller brought the water bucket to the panting pig. “Don’t get too close to that calf of yours or you’ll get the runs, too.”

Don’t Let Go!

“Nobody’s gonna be changing Little Joe,” Grandpa said.

Eli poked his head under the bull calf to make sure. He smiled. Keller’d been wrong.

“He’s the spittin’ image of his sire, Apple Wood.” Grandpa patted the top of Little Joe’s shoulder. “And his grandsire, too. Sweet Cider made it all the way to the State Fair.”

Eli liked finding Grandpa in the barn whenever he came home from school, even though he wasn’t sure Pa did. But Pa never told stories like Grandpa. Or treated the barn like family. Eli knew how Grandpa’s own pa had built the barn by hand, hauling bluestone for the foundation behind a stubborn ox with horns as wide as a tractor.
How the smell of the plank walls was like family and how you never washed your chore coat so the animals would smell that you were family, too.

Spider hopped into the hay manger. She dug deep and found Little Joe a mouse. It tried to wriggle free, but Spider kept it under her paw, waiting for Little Joe to notice. Little Joe sniffed at the mouse, then Spider chased it up the stanchion wall.

“Calmest thousand-pound bull you’d ever seen, Sweet Cider was,” Grandpa said. “And so meaty and thick in the brisket, see.” Grandpa poked at the dimpled spot below Little Joe’s chest. The sudden move made the bull calf take a step back. “But when Sweet Cider walked into that show ring—seemed like he was floating, he was so light on his feet. Know how I know?” Grandpa took off his glasses and wiped them across his green Dickies coat. “’Cause I was there. Watchin’ your pa all in his whites, fussin’ with his milking cap in the dairy barn, waiting for his class. Got me so nervous I headed to the show ring and watched the beef show. I’d seen plenty of bulls at dairy shows—dairy bulls are downright nasty, I tell you. They could kill a man. But these beef bulls … calm as kittens.”

Eli stretched down to stroke Spider and tried to imagine Pa in a milking cap, vanilla white and starchy. He wondered which cow Pa’d taken to the State Fair. “What
number was that, Grandpa?” he asked. “The milker Pa took to the State Fair?”

Grandpa snorted at the cold wind. “It was Old Gertie’s ma—Hattie.” He picked off a piece of hay from the manger. “Just because you part with an animal or it might end up on your dinner plate don’t mean you can’t be nice to it … give ’em a name.” Grandpa tossed the hay bit into the bedding. “That’s where me and your pa disagree.”

Little Joe sniffed Eli’s hands for any treats, then butted Fancy’s udder to get the milk to flow.

“Yes sir, nature sure is something.” Grandpa bent down and eyed Little Joe. The calf’s curly black lashes were shut tight while he suckled. “It knows Little Joe’s drinking milk, not nibblin’ on grass. And it sends that milk straight to the fourth stomach—no detours—so he gets the goods straightaway.”

Eli knew cows had four stomachs, but he wasn’t exactly sure why.

“Know how it knows?” Grandpa smiled. “’Cause Little Joe’s sucking, not tearing up mouthfuls of grass. That’s why if a calf don’t nurse, you got to feed it through a baby bottle. Lapping up milk from a bucket won’t get it to grow. Remember Old Gert and her last heifers? They were twins, and we fed Annabelle with a rubber lamb nipple, she was such a tiny thing.”

Eli wondered where Annabelle was now.

Little Joe poked his head up, then licked his wet lips, making a smacking sound.

“Fancy’s milk is all he needs right now. Once Little Joe starts grazing, nature’ll see to it he chews the cud for hours, burping it up from the other stomachs till it’s tender enough to be food.”

Little Joe had nursed out. He gave Spider a sniff, then let her lick his milky muzzle.

The sun strengthened, and Eli could see the air move around Little Joe’s moist whiskers. Dusty bits of grain floated past them and would soon settle over anything that didn’t move, coating the barn with a powdery film.

“Nature sure made Little Joe a fine bull calf,” Grandpa said. He pulled out a copy of the
Angus Journal
he’d rolled up in his back pocket. “Turn to page ten,” he told Eli.