Fat & Bones

by Larissa Theule

  The chorus consisted only of baritones. They grunted and cleared their throats, warming up by reciting, “A perfect pig is pink and spry,” until their lips tingled.

  The musicians tuned up, harnessing their intestinal gases. Some time ago, when more of them had sported full sets of feet, the pen had boasted a robust percussion section, but those days were gone. They maintained the wind section thanks mostly to the discount slop that sloshed in the trough.

  The sun began to sink into the horizon.

  The wheat glowed.

  The musicians and the singers were ready.

  Apple took her place, her body silhouetted against the wheat backdrop.

  “This is going to be the best show ever,” said Jeremiah, settling himself on the ground. Until the farmer’s wife had taken Jeremiah’s two front feet, he had been the best drummer in the pen. He used to bang upon the trough with true ferocity. Now, the music had gone out of him. He used his two back feet, wrapped in ropes of long grass, only to maneuver his way through the mud. But he still loved to watch Apple dance.

  “Oh yeah,” said Esmeralda. “The best show ever.”

  She lunged out of the shadows and sank into the mud along the railing, nuzzling her bracelet so that the daisies perked up. She peered through the wooden slats toward the farmhouse. So far, nothing.

  All in good time, she thought. She smiled.

  Jeremiah smiled back. “Such a beautiful evening. And Apple, isn’t she a jewel?”

  “A real jewel,” said Esmeralda.

  “The way she dances, it just, I don’t know, it makes me feel—” Jeremiah choked up.

  Esmeralda felt she might throw up. “I know,” she said. “Me too.”

  A hush fell over the crowd.

  The baritones began in unison with a low sustained note.

  The winds chimed in, short bursts first, followed by soft breezy tones.

  And then, Apple began to dance.

  Apple knew how to move.

  When she arched her back, she looked as slender as a half-moon. When she kicked up her feet, she softened the hearts of her audience, made them think of when they were just piglets, fully limbed and free from the cares of the pen.

  She shimmied and she shook.

  She pirouetted and she tapped.

  She lifted her nose to the sky, and the sun seemed to balance upon it, to kiss her, to bless her.

  Jeremiah sighed.

  Those around him sighed.

  Esmeralda spat and looked again toward the farmhouse.

  Something was happening. The dead farmer’s son barreled out the door with an axe in his hand. His face was red and ugly. With enormous strides, he stalked off into the field—toward the fairy’s tree, not toward the pen.

  Esmeralda almost despaired, but shortly thereafter, the grey-haired mother emerged from the house with an apron tied around her waist, brandishing the meat cleaver in her hand.

  The cleaver. At last!

  Esmeralda looked up at Apple, twirling on the fence, twirling on those four lovely feet, and she knew that justice was about to be served.

  The winds tightened their tummies to emit a dramatic crescendo.

  The chorus harmonized, some notes clashing at first, then slurring into balance.

  Apple danced on, a vision of beauty bending to the will of the music.

  The woman came closer. She had treaded the route to the pen so often she could have walked it in her sleep. The meat cleaver caught the light of the setting sun and sent its glare across the audience.

  Someone gasped, “The cleaver!”

  Someone else shouted, “Dinnertime! Run!”

  The wind section scattered in all directions.

  The chorus cut off abruptly, leaving a note to linger in the air.

  Old Flossie, whose two feet let her walk only in a circle, spun around and around until Jeremiah escorted her away from the gate.

  Only Apple did not notice. She continued to dance, unaccompanied, as the woman swung the gate open.

  “Someone must tell Apple,” said Jeremiah, panic on his face.

  “You’ll never make it in time,” said Esmeralda.

  Jeremiah looked at the woman approaching. He looked at Apple. If he were to cross the pen, he would put himself at risk. But Apple! Who else would dance for them? Jeremiah twisted around to look at his feet. Could he afford to lose another?

  Jeremiah had the chance to be a hero.

  He turned around and fled.

  Esmeralda laughed softly, a flash of wickedness in her eyes.

  The woman wept and was blinded by her tears. She held out her free hand to feel the way, the cleaver raised in the other hand. She grabbed onto the railing and shoved her feet through the mud. Only a turned corner and a half-length of railing lay between her and Apple.

  Esmeralda could scarcely contain her joy. Behind her, the other pigs cowered in the shadows, attempting to hide their ornamented feet. They no longer cared about Apple, no longer cared about the dance.

  “Here, piggy-piggy,” said the woman between sobs. “I just need one little footsie. One little footsie is all I need.”

  Cowering behind Old Flossie, Jeremiah called out, “Apple! Apple! Look out!”

  But Apple was in reverie.

  She dipped.

  She spun.

  Her tail twitched, and her nostrils flared.

  “Don’t worry,” said Esmeralda. “I’ll take care of her.”

  “Oh, please do,” Jeremiah said.

  Esmeralda lumbered forward while the woman approached Apple from the opposite end of the pen.

  “Piggy-piggy, come here, piggy,” said the woman. She turned the corner. Another ten steps and her hand would find Apple.

  “Apple,” said Esmeralda softly.

  Apple did not hear.

  Esmeralda shrugged. What could she do? She had tried. She turned to watch the show—the real show, not Apple’s ridiculous tipping and dipping.

  This was what she wanted: a nice close-up view. She had been waiting a long time. Already the pain in her head receded.

  The woman came closer, extending her legs to secure her footing, her dress drenched in tears.

  In her hand, the cleaver whispered, “Blood blood blood, all I want is blood, fresh juicy piggy blood, blood blood blood.”

  Esmeralda had heard that whisper three times before. It sent chills through her now.

  But Apple did not hear the cleaver. She continued to dance.

  From the other pigs, her beloved audience, she received no help at all. They, too, heard the call of the cleaver and felt their remaining feet turn cold.

  The woman was just three steps away.

  The cleaver called out.

  The sun descended.

  Two steps.

  The sky turned red.

  The air cooled.

  One step.

  A member of the wind section could not contain his fear and released a long high note. Old Flossie whimpered.

  Apple pivoted, and the woman’s hand crept upon her foot, the fingers circling her tender ankle.

  Esmeralda grinned, her heart nearly bursting as the cleaver got ready to do its work on one of those four perfect feet.

  “Blood!” shrieked the cleaver.

  Apple did not feel the woman’s hand upon her foot.

  Or if she did, she did not care. She had a higher calling to attend to.

  Below her, Esmeralda could not believe her eyes. She could not believe that with a human hand upon Apple’s foot and the cleaver calling out, Apple continued to dance. Was she insane? What was the meaning of this?

  Indeed, Apple spun in the woman’s grasp as if there were no hand upon her at all. She twirled and twirled and twirled, ignoring the spiny white fingers.

  The wind stirred up a rhythm of its own, and Apple followed it. She lifted her hands to the sky. She lifted her face to the sky.

  And then, somehow, Esmeralda understood.

  She understood with all of her small heart. Something
bigger prevailed. She didn’t know what it was, but it was bigger than her, than Apple, bigger than the whole pigpen. It stretched up into the sky and back down to the earth and wrapped everything in between in what she could only compare to a warm coating of good, black mud.

  And she knew she couldn’t let the cleaver find Apple.

  Esmeralda looked behind her. Jeremiah hid his face. Old Flossie had fainted dead away. The others watched with their mouths hanging open.

  Pigs are not accustomed to sacrificing themselves for others. They are accustomed to being sacrificed to the dinner table, but they do not go out of their way to make each other’s lives easier.

  What Esmeralda did next went down in pig history.

  She lunged forward and knocked down the weeping woman. Then, she placed her foot, her last foot, adorned so lovingly with daisies, upon the woman’s chest.

  The cleaver rose high and called out, “Blood blood blood, all I want is blood, fresh juicy piggy blood, blood blood blood!”

  The bracelet of daisies fell to the mud. The woman crushed them with her thick boot when she stood up, Esmeralda’s foot in her hand.

  Lying immobile on the ground, Esmeralda looked to the railing. Her head had cleared. She tasted only sweetness now, for she had a first-rate view of Apple, dazzling in the sunset, taking her bow.

  While Bones slept like a baby even on an empty stomach, and Mrs. Bald lay forgotten on the kitchen floor, drowning in her own tears, Fat mixed a potion in his hole in the tree and looked forward to soaking in a bubbly bath. And above him, in a smaller, cozier, more charmingly decorated hole, lived a very sophisticated, very lonely spider. A spider who decided that tonight he would try something new.

  Leonard Grey III set down his pencil. He had been trying to compose a sonnet.

  He sighed. He couldn’t concentrate. Leonard mourned the dead man, who, in a fit of anger, had years ago thrown a pocket-sized book of sonnets, an unwanted gift, out the kitchen window.

  It had taken Leonard days to hoist the book up to his hole in the tree, where he had read it every day since, finding solace in the beautiful language.

  So what if he wasn’t good at sneaking about like a good spider should? So what if his family mocked him for his clumsiness and his love of tea? So what if loneliness sat upon him like a rock? He had his poetry.

  But that night, not even poetry could ease Leonard’s loneliness.

  Leonard sat in his doorway, staring at the blue-black sky beyond the heavy leaves of the tree.

  Below, a spider hung strung up in the fairy’s den. A cicada had warned Leonard earlier that tonight Fat was brewing a batch of Bluebell Blindness Inducer, which required a large quantity of spider blood, enough to drain a spider Leonard’s size to an inch of his life. And Leonard was no mite; he stood nearly as tall as Fat himself.

  Fat was holding another spider captive. Fat was going to drain that spider of its blood. And if Leonard could only learn to sneak, he intended to rescue that spider. Then maybe, just maybe, that spider would have a cup of tea with him.

  “It’s going to work,” Leonard said aloud, “I’m a spider, that’s what I am, and sneaky is my middle name.” He leaned too far out as he spoke and slipped.

  “Dagnabbit!” He scrambled back into his hole. He drew in a foot to cover his racing heart. “Breathe, Leonard, breathe.”

  He went inside and put the kettle on.

  He thought for a moment, deciding that before he attempted sneaking, he needed proper gear. He donned a stocking cap, boots, and sunglasses to conceal the glow of his eight eyes. Secrecy was vital.

  “I can do this. I am a spider.” He said it in his deep poetry-reading voice, but he couldn’t convince himself.

  Even so, stubbornly, he set forth.

  As he began a careful—whoops! He had forgotten about that bent piece of bark—descent toward Fat’s hole, he wondered what he and his new friend would talk about. Philosophy, maybe? Politics? Perhaps his new friend was a traveler and would tell him stories about other places in the world!

  Thunk. He tripped and fell upon an obliging leaf some four feet below. If the fairy heard him coming, he’d stand no chance of executing the rescue mission.

  His heart pounding, he raised and lowered his legs, settling each one back down on the bark. Though normally Leonard could see fine in the night, the sunglasses made everything blurry and dark. Leaves loomed all around him, rustling and settling in for the night.

  He neared the fairy’s hole. He flattened himself against the branch and took deep breaths. So far, he had not caused too much commotion, at least not enough to alert Fat of his approach.

  He heard Fat inside the hole, moving vials of potions about. The fairy was muttering the recipe for Bluebell Blindness Inducer. “Six bluebell petals. Three rabbit droppings. One cat hair. One human toenail clipping; thank you, Bald, may you rest in peace. Eight drops of midnight dew. And finally, a generous quantity of fresh, warm spider blood.”

  Leonard held his breath. Had he arrived too late? Had his new, yet-unknown friend already withered and died? Trusting his camouflage gear to conceal him, Leonard peeked into the hole.

  To the left, the fairy stood at his worktable with his back to the room, humming a song as he measured and mixed. His wings were threadbare, but his arms showed his strength. He was old but no weakling. On the table, beside a large beaker of blue liquid, lay a large knife with an intricately carved wooden handle.

  To Leonard’s right, a spider hung in the corner, legs tied together. He was either unconscious or asleep or dead; Leonard couldn’t determine which.

  It seemed too easy. With the fairy engrossed in his work, his back to the room, all Leonard had to do was sneak in, set the captive free, and the two of them could hightail it out of there, back up the tree.

  If Fat did turn around and see him, hopefully it would be after Leonard had set free the spider. Then the odds would be two against one. And Leonard had a feeling even Fat would hesitate to take on two spiders, even if one of them was a coward.

  Settling his stocking cap a little lower on his head, Leonard almost fainted from panic before silently scolding himself to get moving.

  He ran into the room before he could talk himself out of it.

  After a few steps he tripped, performing something like a somersault as he pulled out of the fall. He was almost there!

  And then, quick as lightning, he was thrown on his back, his boots waving in the air. His sunglasses fell off, and a foot landed upon them, a wrinkly foot that smelled like onions, squashing the dark lenses and twisting the rims.

  “Hello, neighbor. Pray, tell me what your hairy, lumbering self is doing in my hole,” said Fat, the long knife in his hands.

  Stunned, Leonard could only gurgle in response.

  “You are a terrible excuse for a spider,” Fat said, rolling his eyes, “I heard you when you were halfway down the tree. You might as well have hired a blue jay to announce your arrival.” He twisted the knife in his fingers. “Pathetic.”

  Leonard did indeed feel pathetic, splayed out on the ground, unsure of how he got there. The indignity was extreme.

  A thin whistling sound came from outside.

  He had forgotten the kettle!

  Fat groaned. “Do you never tire of drinking tea?”

  Leonard gurgled again and struggled to right himself, but Fat placed his foot upon Leonard and held him there.

  “Well, I tire of hearing your kettle go off, that’s for sure,” Fat said.

  Fat placed the knife’s tip at Leonard’s abdomen. He clearly enjoyed toying with his second captive.

  Leonard was at a loss.

  With his feet wriggling in the air like some infant’s, his terror grew so great that he couldn’t swallow. Spit began to collect in the corners of his mouth.

  He was not a normal spider, so why had he tried to be? His plan could only ever have ended badly. He should have known he would bungle a rescue attempt. He was a failure at spiderhood; he should have admitted as m
uch. Furthermore, the spider in the corner had not roused. Leonard began to doubt whether the poor creature had any life left in him at all.

  Leonard knew he would die today; he would die this moment.

  And would that be so bad? He had nothing to lose. No one would mourn him. And that was sadder than actually dying. Leonard wanted to be missed.

  I’m not ready to die, he decided. I need to find someone to love.

  And once he figured that out, he got sort of brave.

  Shaking, he pushed aside the knife.

  “No,” he said.

  “What?” said Fat, staring at the knife in surprise.

  “No,” said Leonard. He thrust his feet upward in an attempt to right himself—not a graceful movement but an effective one. He stood facing the fairy.

  “No?” said Fat.

  “That’s what I said.”

  “No what?” said Fat.

  “Just no,” said Leonard.

  “You can’t say, ‘just no,’” said Fat. “I have a knife.” He held the weapon up again.

  Leonard sensed Fat’s annoyance, his confusion, and homed in on them. He knew what he needed to do. He might have been a lousy spider, but he was an above average poet.

  Fairy, you winged patutem, spangly voo,

  Thy shredded heart, like vaporish splantshine

  Does unto earth like the beast of the moo

  The ungreen plate of your bonderoo dine

  A cud and a cud and a cud and a cud.

  Fat spat on the floor. “Are you trying to recite poetry? You’re terrible! And there’s no such word as splantshine.” He pursed his lips. “Though you do have a knack for rhyme.”

  Leonard continued:

  Fast like the wind on a sperry pink flate

  Your dank blackened mubgaw stinks like the fud

  You hate the stars, you hate the sun, you hate—

  But hate—it won’t win—for love came here first

  To the splight ball of blue, spinning in space

  This giant tiny thinker dink of thirst