by Scott Underwood

Created on: September 18, 2008

The Pigs

He was going off again. She knew how he hated to leave. The fire was dipping an swaying, lashing at the dark like a driver lashing his mules. The heat in their cabin made her breathless, but this is how he wanted it. He was sweating. She could see that he was almost out the door. He drank down a shot of his fine scotch whiskey as he ran a cleaning brush through the Springfield, 30.06's barrel. The rifle seemed to be sweating with him.

"I hate for you to leave, Joe," she said.
"I hate to leave."
"Why you have to go, Joe?"
"A man's got to feed his family." The grating swish of the cleaning brush scraping the inside of the barrel was replaced by the soft sigh as Joe began to run a greasy cleaning patch through the barrel. Silvia thought that Joe cleaning his rifle was like Joe coming to her bed. "Besides, them pigs is ruining the land. The land's all tore up. A man's got to take care of the land."
"Okay, Joe."
Joe took another drink. A drop of the scotch dribbled down his chin. Sylvia thought of what he would smell like when he came home. Gun oil. Sweat. Scotch. Smoke. Blood.
The heat beat Joe out the door. The night's refreshing night air invaded the cabin.
#
Sylvia dreamt her lonely dreams. Joe had taken the horse through the green, velvet hills. It was spring and the land was ripe. Sylvia thought of Joe and the boys on their hunting party. She wondered if he were really hunting them pigs in the hills, them pigs that came down into the farmlands and destroyed the land. It wouldn't be the first time Joe had left with his rifle and a urge for pork and only come back to be questioned by the sheriff about a murder in one of them Okie camps. He said them pigs were ruining the country. He could just as likely been talking about them Okies as them wild boars in the hills.
But the fact stayed always with her, We were all hungry for meat, and no matter what was right, the kid's bellies needed to be filled. A man that can't feed his family is no man at all.
He's fought in the war. Got a lung full of gas. He's got a right to feed his family, an if a pig has to die, it must die.
#
The hills that had seen so much of life pass through the valley beneath them also watched Joe and the boys ride together up through the valley, following the river that was running brown with sediments recently washed from the hills. The hills watched the men ignore the big wild hog that rooted through the pasture of cabbage planted by the rancher that had hired them to hunt. The hills

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