Horrible Harvest

The boat come to the shallows. Gators scurried. Tate stepped into the soft river bottom and pulled us along at the bow. I set the oars in the boat.

Douglas staggered forward. “Get, boy.”

Tate stood and towered over Daddy’s shadow, but he didn’t dare look him in the eye. Not outta fear of what Douglas would do to him, but outta fear of what it would drive him do to Douglas.

“I said get. Go on. I got no stomach for the sight nor smell of you.”

Tate give me a nod before he headed for the knoll.

“Daddy wants us to gather.”

I stepped careful-like along the bottom boards of the boat. The keel give a rock one way to the next. The world beneath me was unsteady until I stepped onto the shore. “What’re we gathering about?”

I followed Douglas to the left and we made our way around the old willow. “Don’t know. Didn’t ask. Daddy says we gather. We gather.”

We come up on an animal trail and followed it to the pig pen. Daddy stood with his forearms resting on the top rail. He was kicking at the ground, fidgety as all get out. Charles was just past him, rambling about, bored out of his ever-loving mind. 

Douglas took his place as his shadow next to Daddy, and I fell into Charles’s circle of boredom.

“Darkie finish his sounding?”

“Near enough.”

“He say what he was up to?

I just give a shrug. “Sounding, sir.”

“That’s it. He didn’t say no more.”

“No, sir. Talked about his time at sea mostly.”

The pigs give out a grunt like they knew I was lying.

Daddy pushed away from the fencing. “Gift my ass. Gift ain’t never had me so unnerved before. I can tell you that much.” He turned to us, the butt of a revolver sticking beyond the waist of his britches. “But we got us an opportunity, boys, and we’re gonna take hold of it and make hell out of it.”

I caught holt of his fidgeting before asking, “This about them guns?”

“This is about what them guns is going get us.” He let loose a smile that’d set the clergy to finding prayer. “They gonna get a rich man in debt to us, and he’s gonna pay us back in gold and silver, whatever goddamn thing counts as money these days.”

One pig squealed and then another.

“I ain’t never told you about my time in the Mexicany War, have I?”

Come a grunt from the big boar.

“That’s how I come to ride with Major Galt. He weren’t the fat pig that he is today.”

A squeal.

“Man taught me a lot, he did. Mechanic work. Hunting. Tanning. Cooking. Taught me how to live off what I could find lying about anywhere we’d let the horses rest and trail cool.”

A squeal and a grunt.

“The thing he made most plain to me was that people ain’t got no more value than these pigs. They hold less value, you wanna know the truth on it, ‘cause you slaughter a man you give him to the worms to eat. You slaughter a pig you fill your own belly.”

A soft snort.

“Now, that ain’t to say that rough times in the dry heat of the desert didn’t turn us to filling our bellies with worm food, but those were desperate times that were repeated in moments most rare.”

Another squeal come. The loudest one yet.

Me and Charles stopped our fidgeting and pacing.

“What you getting at, Daddy?”

“I’m getting at the useless nature of people. Everyone that ain’t you is them. Ain’t one of them worth a damn. They’s lower than pigs as far as you’re concerned.”

A host of grunts.

Daddy pulled the pistol from his britches and handed it to Douglas.

My brother by half give it a look like it was a cup of water handed to him deep in the desert.

“You see that little drift of piglets?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Shoot the runt.”

Douglas set his foot on the bottom rail of the fence and started to hitch is other over the top when Daddy stopped him.

“What’re you doing?”

“Ima fetch the runt.”

“From here. Shoot it from where you’re standing.”

“Can’t hardly get a clean shot from here.”

“I don’t give a damn about a clean shot. Shoot it. Wound it. Shoot it again and again until it’s deader than Jesus on the cross.”

“Sir?”

“Boy, this ain’t about culling the runt. This is about killing. Get the feel for it. You can kill a pig. Make it suffer. Make it scramble about for its life. You can kill what’s lower than pigs.”

I could hear Douglas’s mouth turn dry. He spotted the runt. Took aim. Cocked the hammer. Held a breath and pulled the trigger.

Shrieks on high.

“Again.”

Douglas done as told. There was a shake to him that weren’t there before. His eyes looked to be under glass. He give a pause before he pulled the trigger again.

Shrieks.

“Charles.”

Charles stood like a stone.

“Your turn, boy. Take holt the pistol.”

He shook loose the anchor in his mind and stepped to Douglas. They give one another a look. Can’t say what it meant exactly, but it come close to looking as if our brother by half was apologizing to Charles.

The runt was near done in, but the little thing was squealing out what was left of its beating heart.

Charles couldn’t hold it in. The tears come. This task wasn’t in his favor. He didn’t have mind nor stomach for it. The revolver outsized him as it was, but it looked heavy as a tree trunk in his one hand, so he took aim with both, struggling to keep the barrel in line. I was counting on him to faint dead away any second.

“Goddamn it. Hold your nerve, boy. Take a listen to that bleating sumbitch. That little piglet is lying to you. It wants you to think it’s worth something in this world. It ain’t. It’s got bad blood. Passed on to the next, ain’t nothing but more runts to come. Take aim. End the bad blood. Now.”

Charles pulled the hammer back and let a whimper out before he pulled the trigger. Mud flew up two-foot short of the squirming piglet.  

A rage hit me like never before. I stomped forward, give Daddy a bit of push as I stepped around him and ripped the gun from Charles’s hands. I squeezed my way between the bottom and middle rail and marched through the sludge ‘til I hovered over the poor little runt. I placed the barrel direct on his tiny skull and pulled the trigger.

Its suffering was done. Mine was stuck to me like a plump tick.

Daddy give his Devil grin. “Tomorrow night, boys. We’s gonna end more bad blood. The worms. They gonna get fat and happy on us. Rich man. He’s gonna pay for it all.”