Colin Winnette - Haints Stay

“You spend much time with hogs?” said John.

“I’m worried it is going to rain,” said Bird.

“Rain would be good,” said John. “But it won’t rain.”

“The clouds are all bunched up and thick,” said Bird. “The air is all heavy like a sponge.”

“Don’t get your hopes up,” said John.

The drought had been going for nearly two months now. It was getting to the family, cutting into what they could produce for trade. They were scraping by on what the animals brought in. The well was keeping them in enough water to survive and keep the creatures from dying off. But the situation could not hold forever.

“I have made that mistake,” said John, carrying the pig like a child across the yard and into the barn. “It’s only optimism. There’s no harm in it. But it does sting.”

He bound the animal’s feet and hung them from a small hook overhead. The earth beneath them was dark and hard. He removed a knife from a metal sheet hammered into the wall and began to saw the throat of the pig. It curled its body and tried to swing from him. Or that was how it looked. Either way, it struggled and gurgled and bent against John’s grip. Then the animal lost its voice. John held the neck strong and cut deep. It sounded like a thick rope working into an oak tree. Then the sound went hollow and blood fell from John’s arms and the pig’s throat and the creature began to thrash. John stepped back and the pig spun its body round and round, extending its head as far from its feet as its body would allow, spraying blood along the walls in a circle. On the wall then, Bird noticed there was fresh blood and old blood and stains that were unrecognizable.

Finally, the pig stopped. It centered and the corpse spun steadily on the rope. Then John took it down and carried it to a large iron table at the front of the barn.

“If we got some rain,” he said, “things would grow. There would be nothing to be afraid of. We would have more money and more food. It’s as simple as that.”

John slit the creature from groin to sternum with a thin curving blade. It seemed to bloom slightly, its purpled organs pushing out but not spilling. He pulled them tenderly from the cavity and set them in several buckets behind him. Bird could not recognize the various parts, but they were each glossy, with deep coloring.

“No need to cower in the doorway,” said John. “She’s as dead as she’ll ever be.”

Bird was still at the mouth of the barn. He had backed out during the bleeding and was hovering there since. He did not need to advance. The image was grisly and the smell was worse.

“It smells,” he said.

“That’s iron,” said John. “Blood. Entrails. That’s food and what makes it food. You’d be better off knowing these things and accepting them. Whether or not you stay with us or take off on your own some day, you’ll need to accept what feeds you and what it takes to stay fed.”

Bird had not given this the slightest bit of thought. Staying or going. He knew he would not ever go back into the woods. He was suspicious of town.

He stepped into the barn and joined John by the pig. John was working a new smaller knife beneath the skin of the animal and it was lifting away fairly easily. A few white threads like cobwebs clung to the underside and stretched between the skin and the muscle, but John was not forcing anything. It came off more or less like a snake’s skin, in several large pieces.

Bird began to tremble. His head went warm and he collapsed. When he woke Martha was at his side. It was evening. He tried to lift each limb to determine if he was bound, but all three rose.

“You fainted,” said Martha, “at the sight of a butchered pig.”

Bits of the pig came back to him. He pictured it spinning and screaming its low scream.

“John moves fast,” she said. She had a small book in her hands, which she closed and set on her lap.

“What time is it?” said Bird. “Am I safe?”

“Of course you’re safe, little one,” she said. “You’ve lucked out being found and brought here. There are far worse places to be brought.”

“Is John mad?”

“No.”

“Why did I faint?”

“Because of all you’ve been through, would be my guess,” said Martha. “When John found me, I was mute and uncivil. I cannot reenter my old way of thinking but I remember being fairly terrified of any sounds I might make and the looks they would draw.”

“I don’t want to faint,” said Bird. “I want to be able to help and slaughter pigs.”

“There are lots of ways to help aside from gutting animals.”

“I want to be able to do what’s needed,” said Bird.

“There is a variety to our need,” said Martha.

“How long does a pig last?”

“For eating, they can last several months. Selling them, they go much more quickly.”

“How long does it take to sell one?”

“John traded the bulk of yours this afternoon.”

“Then we’ll butcher a new one tomorrow,” said Bird.

“I think tomorrow you’re riding for town,” said Martha.

“Why? What if I don’t want to go?”

“There’s a doctor there who will need to see your wound. And there is trading to be done.”

“My wound is fine.”

“You’re striking an attitude with me, little one. There’s no reason for it.”

“My name is Bird and I’d like to butcher a pig tomorrow.”

“That you’re stubborn and proud is all you’ll prove by doing so. Do as we need, not just as you like.”

She rose and patted him on the head then.

“You are a handsome boy with an eager heart and we are grateful to have you.”

The water had vanished beneath the sand but Brooke could still follow its coloring. The sand was a bit darker and looser where the stream ran. He could extract the water from the sand using a sock, and carry on. There was no certainty at all in the direction he had chosen. Many towns set themselves up alongside a water source, but not all, and there was no telling what the situation with this water would become. It had already begun to leave him. He was out of wood and keeping warm only by applying his clothes and coat as a poor kind of blanket. It was brutally cold at night and hot during the day. It occurred to him to follow the stream the opposite way, back in the direction from which they came, but he had walked for several days in this direction and doubling back was a hard decision to make.

There was one man among them all who had put up a considerable, worry-worthy fight. Either an ex-soldier or a man with soldierly inclinations. It turned out that his barn was home to a historical armory of sorts, topped off with a cannon and enough balls and powder to give them lasting trouble.

The fighting between them was extensive and this man had the upper hand. It ended, finally, when he bothered with the cannon. Brooke and Sugar were given enough time to approach the barn on horseback. Before the lengthy pause of his wheeling it and gathering the supplies, they had been hiding in the trees, moving about to avoid his rifle fire. He was a miserable shot. At first, they read his pause as their success. They imagined him gunned down and bleeding. They pictured victory. They were cautious in their approach, avoiding the door at the front of the barn and moving quickly past the windows at its sides. How he did not hear them is still a mystery to Brooke. The cannon fired on the trees where they had initially been held up. It cleared a great path, which then surprisingly snapped back into place. A few of the older trees lay stricken, but the younger, thinner ones bent and bent back as if it were a child’s game. The barn was filled with smoke then and the noise was of a stunning kind. Ears ringing, Brooke and Sugar broke in through the front door. The man had fallen back from the cannon blow and was discovered by them on his rear in a bit of horse mud. His horses were dead around him as if stricken by a plague. A goat was in the corner, without its mind. They shot the man and butchered the goat. They lived on its meat for the following week.