Hog Wild

THIS afternoon we butchered. The sticky sweet smell of fresh pork and the rusty odor of blood seem to reek from every inch of my body. It was a well-built barrow, though, fat enough to make a nice bucket of lard. When I begin to lose this sickening smell that hangs around so close today, my mouth is going to water for the headcheese.

Somehow I keep seeing the look in that hog’s eyes, little round pig eyes, dull as buttons and tight into his head. It always bothers me when the hog comes to life after I stun him, before he is stuck. But this one haunts me more. I went down to the feed lot to see how the other barrows are coming — force of habit more than anything else, I guess. Ever since I began feeding that crazy one, I keep going down to watch him.

I put him in there the same day as the barrow we butchered, but I hate to admit it. He isn’t half that size. The crazy one has me stumped; he does everything an ordinary pig never thinks about doing, and not a thing pigs ought to do. He wasn’t a runt, but was started wrong from the first. The funny thing about it is the way he keeps me coming down to look at him. If you told me six months ago I should be spending my spare time down at the feed lot, watching a crazy hog, I should have said anybody who did that was crazy himself. But now — I don’t know.

The barrow stuck to his business of eating and getting fat, kept his eyes to the ground. Hogs are made that way, you know — can’t see anything above their necks, and their snouts get in the way of their seeing much on either side.

This other hog sometime or other got a look at the sky, and it jinxed him — he wanted something, after that, the other hogs never knew was there. He feeds a little bit and then rolls over on his back and kicks his feet at the clouds. By the time he gets rolled back and decides to eat some more, the trough is pretty well empty. I throw him an apple now and then and he wolfs it down, and then back he goes, rolling on his sharp backbone and playing with the sky. None of the other hogs get apples out of my pocket, and it makes me wonder about that hog and me.

Nature never meant a pig to know the sky, and, now he’s found out about it, that pig is no good as a pig. He gets older and tougher all the time, but not fat; he’ll be no good to me at all, but he gets the apples and keeps me hanging on the fence.

That hog has notions. He used to lie down right in front of the barrow we butchered today and kick up at the sun, just inviting the barrow to fall on him. It might have mashed some of the notions out of his crazy skull, but he took the chance and the barrow never stepped on him. Maybe that was because the barrow kept his eyes on the ground where decent barrows are meant to look. Anyway, the wild one wasn’t trampled.

It seems to me I can see a queer sort of light in the crazy hog’s eyes — maybe the other hogs see it too, or maybe they just think he is no real hog for acting that silly way. They give him plenty of room, though, and he rolls around, upside down and right side up, when he ought to be storing away some of the feed I throw him and making pork for my family. Even when it pinches in my pocketbook, I go on admiring that hog for worshiping the sky.

He comes of straight stock, bred for four generations on my own farm, and the best brood sows all the way along. Maybe his breeding was too good. I don’t know. Sometimes it makes me boil to think how much there is about that bog I don’t know.

No honest pig ever had a disposition like his; most of them fight and shove each other around, and the only really intelligent look I ever saw before in a hog’s eye was meanness. The crazy one never gets mad — just goes his way, trying once in a while to coax some of the others to play with him. He trots along, looking down like any other hog for a little while; then all of a sudden he gives a half whirl and there he is, looking at things that were beside him or behind him.

It makes his meat different, too; that hog will never be good pork chops. He is happier a hundred times than the cross fellows around him, if any hog can be happy. I never should have thought about such a thing before, but now — I don’t know. Maybe a hog can be happy if he turns life upside down and looks at the sky. I don’t know.

All I know is that there is a different look in that hog’s eyes than in those of any other hog I ever saw. All I know is that once he tried to get the barrow we butchered to lie down beside him and look up at the sky. All I know is that the barrow kept going the way hogs ought to go, eating the way hogs ought to eat, and grunting and shoving at the trough. All I know is that when I stuck him this afternoon, and he rolled over on his back, the barrow got the same sort of crazy glint in his eye. Somehow I keep seeing the last look in that barrow’s eyes — the look when he saw the sky for the first time in his life.

MARGARET TINLEY