Here’s an incarnation of a short short story I wrote ©1996. The original, which was written in a much stronger ethnic voice than this version, won First Place in the short-short fiction category of a Tennessee writer’s association that year. In announcing the award, the final judge mentioned that it caught the eye of the judges particularly because it was written in the second person–the only entry so written. It’s fiction, although drawn heavily from events of my life on a farm.
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All your life up this moment when things feel out of sorts and wrong somehow, you can feel it in that rock in the bottom of your stomach. But that day a long time ago, you were sleeping so hard, the rock didn’t warn you. You wake up and Pa’s pulling you from the bed by your hair. Didn’t hear you call, you say, cause you were sleeping on the good ear. He thought you were lying; the only thing that saved you from a whipping was Pa seeing that stuff oozed out on the pillow from your bad ear.
You wash up, scraping the crusty dried gook from your ear with a fingernail, then clean it out with toilet paper and a q-tip, then you brush your teeth. You poke cotton in the bad ear, put an extra bit in your pocket for when the first piece gets all gunked up. On the way downstairs to eat your breakfast of grits and eggs you hear Pa talking to Mama in the kitchen. Better get that youngun’s ear looked at soon’s the butchering’s out of the way. You don’t want to go to a doctor, so you keep quiet, don’t complain. Maybe they’ll get so busy they’ll forget.
To ward off a bad day, you snap your fingers on your right hand three times, snap, snap, snap. The fingers on the left hand too weak, don’t snap so good, but you try anyway, sn-, sn-, sn-, One day when they’re stronger maybe they’ll make a snap too. You ride the bus to school. Most days school bores you, but on butchering day you’re so glad to work those arithmetic problems you hate.
You play red rover red rover with fourth graders at recess. Don’t bother yourself thinking how the day started. Don’t see Chief Beilling drive in his red pickup truck, open the door and drag the big rifle from the gun rack. Don’t see him spit on the ground and open the box filled with bullets capped off with brass heads. You close your eyes when he walks over to the lot fence where the dumb cows eat their last supper. Cows look up at Chief, slobber dripping from their mouths, but wise too late. KA POW! You don’t listen. Too late the cows start to run but fall to their feel and die anyway while they’re still running. You close your eyes, poke your fingers in your ears, and don’t see or hear any of it.
He’s called Chief even though he’s not an Indian. Why, you reckon? Who he is, he’s a short fat bald man. He used to work in a store cutting meat where he lived before. Now he lives in Providence with a big fat wife name of Pearl who balls her white hair up on her neck. Makes their living shooting cows and hogs, gets cowhides and two dollars. What kind of father Chief be, you wonder. May be a good thing that Chief and his wife never had children.
Get out reading book, Miss Myrtice says. She looks down at you over her glasses while you read out loud. Say words wrong and you get a whack on the knuckles with her ruler. You don’t care, just keep busy all day. Ask questions you already know answers to so you don’t think about cows hanging by their hind legs, getting scalded with big vats of boiling water, hides being split from bodies with schlish schlish of a knife’s blade going through clean as a whistle. Chief chops them in half with his big meat cleaver, whack whack whack. Forget how he takes his long shiny butcher knife, cuts each half into roasts and steaks and stew, leaving scraps for Mama to grind into hamburger.
In the noisy lunchroom at noon you ignore the boys making fart noises with their lips while you eat all your lima beans and cheese, leaving the slaw you don’t like. Sick feeling comes when you recall fresh blood smell. You go outside, lean against the tree and take deep breaths. It’s okay. God give man dominion over animals.
In music Miss Lamb tries teaching rhythm. You scrap the peg over the washboard every time she point. Each scrape reminds you that Mama will be hanging cow intestines on the clothesline. She scrap away cowpoop with a dull kitchen knife. She will call you to hook up a water hose, then stand and rinse where she points. When they good and clean she will boil them on a stove in a big pot. Grandma will come to eat tripe stew. The stench will fill up the house and cling to everything. You’ll not be able to eat meat for a long time. Make no never mind, Grandma will say, just be glad you got food to eat on the table.
You feel a whack on your knuckle. Pay attention, Miss Myrtice says, then the bell rings and school is over. You ride the bus back home. If you don’t look up you won’t see smoke rising where Pa and brothers work. Chief done left.
Do your chores, feed and water the chickens. Leave your shoes on the porch, shoes smeared with chicken mess will not be good for school. You walk barefoot over the sandy yard. Feel mess squeeze up between toes. Never mind. You can wash your feet off at the spigot afterward. Step on less anyways when you pay no attention or sometimes you try to on purpose.
You collect eggs, even the ones from hens that keep trying to set, pecks you when you sneak your hand under them. Don’t panic when you see snake in chicken nest. Only a chicken snake, not poison. Wash eggs, pack in crates, stack on the porch for egg man tomorrow. No bitching now! How you think you get new coat? How you think sister get new dress for senior banquet.
- suckling pigs
Finish with eggs, slop sow and pigs. Brothers too busy butchering today. Use both hands, concentrate, or you spill swill from slop bucket. Pa shouts, Careful, don’t let sow knock you down, trample you in mud like she do her piglets.
Stupid sow–fat and lazy–do noting but eat and suckle, eat and suckle, and she lays on one piggy, breaks his back on the hind end. Not dead, you see him try to get up. Squealing, so hungry he try to get to his mama for supper. Sow don’t care, always has more pigs than teats anyway. One dead pig one less pig to suckle. (picture from FreeDigitalPhotos.net)
You take pig, so tiny, in arms. Carry him home, him squealing to beat the band. Find box, old rags to keep him warm see if he’ll drink milk from baby bottle. Pretty please let me keep him, Pa, pretty pretty please? And Pa says yes. You so happy you don’t feel rock in your stomach no more.
You call pig Buster. He goes from a tiny pink piggy to a big red hog with bristly hair, a boar. He follows you everywhere–like a two-legged puppy. He likes it when you tickle his back with a stick. Smiles at you, oinks back when you talk to him. Sometimes you lie daydreaming in a cool shade the oak trees spread over the sandy back yard. You use Buster’s fat pig belly for a pillow.
You forget all about that rock in the bottom of your stomach. You such a stupid kid you think that happy feeling last forever. Don’t even think what would happen when Buster got through growing, good for nothin’ except eating up expensive food and dragging over Mama’s flowers. Not worth a teetotal dam, Pa says.
So one day, you come home from school, you see drag marks all over the yard but Buster won’t come when you call him. Stupid kid you might be, but now the rock, the one used to warn you about bad things coming? That rock back now, telling you all you need to know. That rock is sooo heavy to carry sometimes.
