A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck Page B

have been split to pieces. It was nothing but a raw stump.
    “Kill her,” I said.
    “What?” said Ira, his hand bleeding into the cuff of his shirt.
    “She’s dying,” I said. “And if you got any mercy at all in you, Ira Long, you’ll do her in. Right now. She killed the weasel. Isn’t that what you wanted to have her do, with all its sport? She’s crazy with hurt. And if you don’t kill her, I will.”
    “Mind your tongue, boy. You’re talking to your elders,” said Ira.
    “The boy’s right,” Papa said. “I’ll get a gun.”
    Until Papa come back with the rifle, little Hussy just lay on the ground and whimpered. Papa put a bullet in her, and her whole body jerked to a quivering stillness. Nobody said a word. The three of us just stood there, looking down into the dust at what once was a friendly little pet.
    “I swear,” Papa said. “I swear by the Book of Shaker and all that’s holy, I will never again weasel a dog. Even if I lose every chicken I own.”
    I got a spade out of the tool room, and dug a small hole, and buried her under the timothy grass, near an apple tree. I even got down on my knees and said her a prayer.
    “Hussy,” I said, “you got more spunk in you than a lot of us menfolk got brains.”

Chapter

12
    Pinky came home.
    I had her blue ribbon pinned up on the wall over my bed, and took it out to show it to her. She sniffed at it and that was about all.
    “You can be a right proud pig, Pinky,” I said, scratching her back. “You’re the best-behaved pig in the whole state of Vermont.”
    She just snorted to that, and I was glad she wasn’t getting too filled with herself. A swell-headed pig would be hard to live with. I ran into the house and put the blue ribbon back on its pin over my bed. When I got back outside, Papa was home from butchering. His clothes were a real mess.
    “Papa,” I said, “after a whole day at rendering pork, don’t you start to hate your clothes?”
    “Like I could burn ’em and bury ’em.”
    “But you wear a leather apron when you kill pork. How come you still get so dirty?”
    “Dying is dirty business. Like getting born.”
    “I never thought of it that way. But I’m sure glad that nobody’ll kill Pinky. She’s going to be a brood sow, isn’t she Papa?”
    He didn’t answer. He just walked over to the fence and looked at my pig. Swinging his leg over the rails, he knelt down beside her and run his hand along her back. He looked at her rump real close, smelled her, and felt her backside with his hand.
    “What’s wrong, Papa? Is Pinky ailing?”
    “No, not ailing. Just slow. She should of had her first heat by now. Weeks ago. We could a bred her to boar at the third. Maybe she’s barren.”
    “Barren? You mean …”
    “I don’t know for sure, boy. Just maybe she’s barren.”
    “Like Aunt Matty?”
    “Yes. But that’s not to talk of. You’d hurt Matty if’n you said barren to her face. The hurt’s inside her. No need to fester it.”
    “And you think Pinky’s barren? Tell me true, Papa.”
    “Yes, boy. I think she be.”
    “No,” I said. “No! No!”
    My fists were doubled and I hit the top rail of the fence, harder and harder. Until my hands started to hurt.
    “Rob, that won’t change nothing. You got to face what is.”
    He climbed over the fence and walked to the barn, his tall lean body moving as if it knew more work would be done that day, tired or no.
    “Rob!” Mama called to me from the kitchen door, and I left Pinky and ran up the hill to where she was standing, drying her hands on her apron.
    “Go get a squirrel,” she said, smiling.
    Inside the house, I took the .22 rifle off the lintel over the fireplace, dropped some cartridges in my pocket, and went back outside. I should of been happy, going squirrel hunting, but I just wasn’t.
    There was a stand of hickory trees up on the west end of the ridge, on the yonder side of the spar mine. Now that it was autumn, the walnuts would be ripe and eaten.