A Day No Pigs Would Die

by Robert Newton Peck

  From under his coat, Mr. Tanner fetched out a small white ball of piglet. She had a pink nose and pink ears, and there was even a wisp or two of pink in the fork of her toes.

  “You mean—this pig is going to be mine?”

  “Yours, my boy. Little enough for what you did.”

  “Gosh’em Moses. Thanks, Mr. Tanner.”

  Mr. Tanner handed me the pig and I took it. She kicked and squealed a bit, but once I held her close up to my chest with both arms, she settled down and licked my face. Her spit was a sad smell, but I didn’t care. She was mine.

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  To my father, Haven Peck …

  a quiet and gentle man

  whose work was killing pigs

  Foreword

  On a farm.

  Here’s where my boyhood began.

  Among an uproad clan of Pecks who could neither read nor write, had little to say and heavy hauling to handle. A boy must learn a farmer’s mission: how to turn grass into milk and field corn into hogs.

  How to aid birth. How to slaughter.

  At quieter moments, emptying a maple-sap bucket for sugar boiling, fishing through the thick lake ice in subzero weather, or carving a sumac whistle for a younger child.

  Milking at 5 and 5. Often in darkness. In between was our day’s work. The awesome burden of farming brutally arrived when, at age thirteen, I had to run it alone. Five acres of Vermont became a Sahara of raw responsibility.

  After a war, a timber camp, and slowly ripening to manhood, I made a simple man’s decision. To write. To sing memories of a farm, parents, and a pet pig. One by each, I lost them all. Yet recollection embraces them forever.

  A Day No Pigs Would Die was written to honor all folks who do hard work, and make harder choices. Before it became a book, it was a hymn in my heart. Then, plainly written in earthy dirt by a boy’s fingertip.

  In a sense, its purpose is akin to that of tilling a crop—to raise your spirit by rain and sunlight, and to grow you green.

  —Robert Newton Peck

  A farmer’s heart is rabbit soft,

  And farmer eyes are blue.

  But farmers’ eyes are eagle fierce

  And look a man right through.

  Chapter

  1

  I should of been in school that April day.

  But instead I was up on the ridge near the old spar mine above our farm, whipping the gray trunk of a rock maple with a dead stick, and hating Edward Thatcher. During recess, he’d pointed at my clothes and made sport of them. Instead of tying into him, I’d turned tail and run off. And when Miss Malcolm rang the bell to call us back inside, I was halfway home.

  Picking up a stone, I threw it into some bracken ferns, hard as I could. Someday that was how hard I was going to light into Edward Thatcher, and make him bleed like a stuck pig. I’d kick him from one end of Vermont to the other, and sorry him good. I’d teach him not to make fun of Shaker ways. He’d never show his face in the town of Learning, ever again. No, sir.

  A painful noise made me whip my head around and jump at the same time. When I saw her, I knew she was in bad trouble.

  It was the big Holstein cow, one of many, that belonged to our near neighbor, Mr. Tanner. This one he called “Apron” because she was mostly black, except for the white along her belly which went up her front and around her neck like a big clean apron. She was his biggest cow, Mr. Tanner told Papa, and his best milker. And he was fixing up to take her to Rutland Fair, come summer.

  As I ran toward her, she made her dreadful noise again, I got close up and saw why. Her big body was pumping up and down, trying to have her calf. She’d fell down and there was blood on her foreleg, and her mouth was all thick and foamy with yellow-green spit. I tried to reach my hand out and pat her head; but she was wild-eyed mean, and making this breezy noise almost every breath.

  Turning away from me, she showed me her swollen rump. Her tail was up and arched high, whipping through the air with every heave of her back. Sticking out of her was the head and one hoof of her calf. His head was so covered with blood and birth-sop that I had no way telling he was alive or dead. Until I heard him bawl.

  Apron went crashing through the puckerbush, me right behind. I’d never caught up. But because she had to stop and strain, I got to the calf’s head and got a purchase on him.

  He was so covered with slime, and Apron was so wandering, there was no holding to it. Besides, being just twelve years old, I weighed a bit over a hundred pounds. Apron was comfortable over a thousand, and it wasn’t much of a tug for her. As I went down, losing my grip on the calf’s neck, her hoof caught my shinbone and it really smarted. The only thing that made me get up and give the whole idea another go was when he bawled again.

  I’d just wound up running away from Edward Thatcher and running away from the schoolhouse. I was feathered if I was going to run away from one darn more thing.

  I needed a rope. But there wasn’t any, so I had to make one. It didn’t have to be long, just strong.

  Chasing old Apron through the next patch of prickers sure took some fun out of the whole business. I made my mistake of trying to take my trousers off as I ran. No good. So I sat down in the prickers, yanked ’em off over my boots, and caught up to Apron. After a few bad tries, I got one pantleg around her calf’s head and knotted it snug.

  “Calf,” I said to him, “you stay up your ma’s hind-side and you’re about to choke. So you might as well choke getting yourself born.”

  Whatever old Apron decided that I was doing to her back yonder, she didn’t take kindly to it. So she started off again with me in the rear, hanging on to wait Christmas, and my own bare butt and privates catching a thorn with every step. And that calf never coming one inch closer to coming out. But when Apron stopped to heave again I got the other pantleg around a dogwood tree that was about thick as a fencepost.

  Now only three things could happen: My trousers would rip. Apron would just uproot the tree. The calf would slide out.

  But nothing happened. Apron just stood shaking and heaving and straining and never moved forward a step. I got the other pantleg knotted about the dogwood; and like Apron, I didn’t know what to do next.

  Her calf bawled once more, making a weaker noise than before. But all old Apron did was heave in that one place.

  “You old bitch,” I yelled at her, grabbing a dead blackberry cane that was as long as a bullwhip and big around as a broom handle, “you move that big black smelly ass, you hear?”

  I never hit anybody, boy or beast, as I hit that cow. I beat her so hard I was crying. Where I held the big cane, the thorns were chewing up my hands real bad. But it only got me madder.

  I kicked her. And stoned her. I kicked her again one last time, so hard in the udder that I thought I heard her grunt. Both her hind quarters sort of hunkered down in the brush. Then she started forward, my trousers went tight, I heard a rip and a calf bawl. And a big hunk of hot stinking stuff went all over me. Some of it was calf, some of it wasn’t.

  As I went down under the force and weight of it, I figured something either got dead or got born.

  All I knew was that I was snarled up in a passel of wet stuff, and there was a strong cord holding me against something that was very hot and kicked a lot. I brushed some of the slop away from my eyes and looked up. And there was Apron, her big black head and her big black mouth licking first
me and then her calf.

  But she was far from whole. Her mouth was open and she was gasping for air. She stumbled once. I thought for sure I was going to wind up being under a very big cow. The noise in her throat came at me again, and her tongue lashed to and fro like the tail of a clock. It looked to me as if there was something in her mouth. She would start to breathe and then, like a cork in a bottle, some darn thing in there would cut it off.

  Her big body swayed like she was dizzy or sick. As the front of her fell to her knees, her head hit my chest as I lay on the ground, her nose almost touching my chin. She had stopped breathing!

  Her jaw was locked open so I put my hand into her mouth, but felt only her swollen tongue. I stretched my fingers up into her throat—and there it was! A hard ball, about apple-size. It was stuck in her windpipe, or her gullet. I didn’t know which and didn’t care. So I shut my eyes, grabbed it, and yanked.

  Somebody told me once that a cow won’t bite. That somebody is as wrong as sin on Sunday. I thought my arm had got sawed off part way between elbow and shoulder. She bit and bit and never let go. She got to her feet and kept on biting. That devil cow ran down off that ridge with my arm in her mouth, and dragging me half-naked with her. What she didn’t do to me with her teeth, she did with her front hoofs.

  It should have been broad daylight, but it was night. Black night. As black and as bloody and as bad as getting hurt again and again could ever be.

  Chapter

  2

  “Haven Peck.”

  Somebody was yelling out Papa’s name, but I couldn’t see anything. And it was real strange, because my eyes were open. They sort of stinged. So I blinked, but the fog was still there.

  There was a wool blanket around me. I could feel the wool rub against the raw place on my arm, but the hurt of it seemed to keep me awake. And keep me alive.

  There were more voices now. I heard Papa answer, and the man who was carrying me asked him, “Is this your boy? There’s so much blood and dirt and Satan on him, I can’t tell for sure. Besides, he’s near naked.”

  “Yes,” said Papa. “That’s our Robert.”

  And then I heard Mama’s voice, soft and sweet like music; and I could feel her hands on my head and my hair. Aunt Carrie was there, too. She was Mama’s oldest sister, who lived with us.

  Strong hands were touching my legs now, and then my ribs. I tried to say something about not being in school. Somebody had some warm water and washed my face with it. The water had lilac in it, and smelled right restful.

  “We’re beholding to you, Benjamin Tanner,” said Papa, “for fetching him home. Whatever he done, I’ll make it right.”

  “Better look to his arm. It got tore up worse than proper. May be broke.”

  “Haven,” I heard Mama say, “the boy’s holding something in his hand. Can’t make it out.”

  I felt them taking something from my right hand. I didn’t want to render it up, but they took it.

  “I never see the like of it,” Mama said. “Like it’s near to be alive.”

  I could hear Mr. Tanner’s rough voice over the others. “I know what that is. It’s a goiter.”

  “Goiter?”

  “Where’d he get it?”

  “It’s an evil thing. But for now let’s tend his arm. Mr. Tanner, we may got to cut away part of your blanket.”

  “Ain’t mine. Belongs to my horse. So cut all you’re a mind to.”

  I felt Papa pulling the blanket down off my right shoulder, until it got caught in the clotted blood. I heard his jackknife click open, and cut away part of the wool.

  “I tied my bandana on his arm,” said Mr. Tanner, “so he wouldn’t bleed dry.” When Papa loosened it up, Mr. Tanner said, “He’ll bleed again with it loose, Haven.”

  “He will,” said Papa, “and that’ll be a good thing for his arm. Let it open up and holler out all the dirt. Only way to treat a wound is to bleed it, ’til it’s clean as a cat’s mouth.”

  “True.”

  “Lucy,” Papa spoke soft to Mama, “better get a needle threaded. He’ll want sewing.”

  He picked me up in his arms, carried me into the house and to the kitchen. He laid me flat on the long lammis table, face up. Mama put something soft under my head, and Aunt Carrie kept washing me off with the lilac water while Papa cut off my shirt and took off my boots.

  “The poor lamb,” said Mama.

  Somebody put a hand on my forehead to see if I was cool. It was followed by a cold wet cloth, and it felt real good. Funny, but it was the only thing on my entire body that I could feel. Then I felt the first of Mama’s stitches going into the meat of my arm. I wanted to yell out, but didn’t have the will for it. Instead I just lay there on my back on that old kitchen table and let Mama sew me back together. It hurt. My eyes filled up with crying and the water ran in rivers to my ears, but I never let out a whimper.

  When I had took all the sewing to be took (and by this time I must of been more thread than boy) Papa burdened me upstairs to my room. I could smell Mama, crisp and starched, plumping my pillow, and the cool muslin pillowcase touched both my ears as the back of my head sank into all those feathers.

  “Tell Mr. Tanner,” I said.

  Mama rushed to where my head was, and Papa and Aunt Carrie were at bed foot.

  “Tell Mr. Tanner,” I said again, “that were he to look up on the ridge, he’ll find a calf. I helped get it born. Afterward, old Apron was still choking so I had to rip the ball out of her throat. And I didn’t mean to skip school.”

  “I’ll be,” said Papa.

  “Where are your trousers, Rob?” said Aunt Carrie, who took quite a stock in appearances.

  “Up on the ridge. When I tied ’em round a tree they got busted some. I’m sorry, Mama. You’ll just have to cut me out another pair.”

  Mama put her face right down close to mine, and I could smell her goodness.

  “I’m preferenced to mend busted pants than a busted boy.”

  “I … I can’t feel nothing in my right hand.”

  “That’s ’cause it’s resting,” said Mama. “It wants to get well, and so do you. So right about now your Pa and Carrie and I are going to tiptoe out of here and let you get some rest. You earned it.”

  They left. And I closed my eyes and went right off. Later I woke up when Mama brought me a dish of hot succotash and a warm glass of milking, fresh from the evening pail. The bubbles were still on it.

  “That’s real good,” I said.

  At bedtime, Papa came upstairs with his big shoes kicking one of the risers, and brought me one of the last of the winter apples from the cellar. He pulled up a chair close to my bed and looked at me for a long time while I ate the apple with my left hand.

  “You mending?”

  “Yes, Papa.”

  “I ought to lick you proper for leaving the school-house.”

  “Yes, Papa. You ought.”

  “Someday you want to walk into the bank in Learning and write down your name, don’t you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I don’t cotton to raise a fool.”

  “No, Papa.”

  I tried to move my right arm, but it made me wince up. I couldn’t help but make a noise about it.

  “She bit you up fair, that cow. Clear to bone.”

  “Sure did. I always thought cows don’t bite.”

  “Anything’ll bite, be it provoked.”

  “I guess I provoked old Apron. Boy, she sure did some provoking on me.”

  “You put a hand in her mouth?”

  “Yes.”

  “You rip out that … goiter?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Was that ’fore or after the calling?”

  “I disremember. All I recall is that Apron was choking something fearful with a piece of stuff in her throat that she wanted me to fetch out.”

  “So you tore out that goiter.”

  “Yes, sir. Her calf was hung up, too. So I tore him out. Tore my pants and tore myself. Between me
and the calf and Apron, we tore up a good part of Vermont as well as each other.”

  “How do you feel?”

  “Like if I die, at least I’ll stop hurting.”

  “Best you don’t complain, a boy who skips school and don’t get no stick put on him.”

  “No, sir. I won’t complain. Except when I move it sharp and sudden, my arm is real numb. It’s the rest of me that’s in misery.”

  “Where?”

  “My backside and my privates. I’m stuck so full of prickers, it makes me smart just to think on it. Every damn—”

  “What’d I hear?”

  “Every darn pricker in Vermont must be in me, working their way through, and coming out the yonder side. It’s enough to sell your soul.”

  “Well, if your soul looks as poorly as your carcass, I don’t guess it’ll bring much.”

  “I don’t guess it will.”

  Papa fished around in his pocket.

  “Here’s two beads of spruce gum. One’s for me. But I don’t mention you’d want one.”

  “Yes, I sure would. Please.”

  “Here, then. Might help you forget where those prickers are nested.”

  “It’s helping already. Thanks, Papa.”

  The spruce gum was hard and grainy at first. Then the heat of your mouth begins to melt it down so that it’s worth the chewing. The bit that Papa gave me was rich and full of sappy juices. Except that every so often you have to spat out a flick of the bark.

  “I saw sumac today, boy.”

  “Is it ripe yet?”

  Out of his pocket, Papa pulled a twig of sumac that was finger-thick and four-inch long.

  “How’s that look?”

  “Papa, that looks real good. Got your knife?”

  Papa cracked out his knife, ringed the bark, and set a good notch at one end. All there was left to do now was to bucket soak it overnight, just enough to slip the bark sleeve. And boil it to kill the poison.

  “That’ll be some whistle, Robert.”

  “Sure will.”