shakes his head, looking down at the end of his cigarette as he taps it out at the ashtray. Daddy Jack chuckles briefly. One time a local retarded boy came over and sat at the table, smiling and nodding all through dinner—after he left Daddy Jack said, “Well I’ll be goddamned if that boy ain’t the biggest halfwit I ever saw in my life!” And Momma Simpson had yelled, “For Christ’s sake Jack, the boy’s RETARDED!”
Now Daddy Jack is talking to Bud about farm matters and such, his low, deep voice remonstrating about the feeding of hogs. The combined smoke of their cigarettes chokes me as I eat the porridge. The floor is covered with newspapers stained with mud and pigshit.
Momma Simpson is sucking porridge from her spoon, her lips pursed with a pained expression. She has dreamed of better things, to be sure, a life of ease and decorum, but feared she was incapable of attaining them. Thus she married Daddy Jack, banishing both doubt and dream.
Now Bud and Jack are heatedly discussing the mending of an axle on the grain wagon. “Now goddamnit Bud I tol’ you to take that into town yesserday!”
“Ah, I’ll take the fuckin’ thing in tomorrow,” scoffs Bud, his eyes squinting and his lips curling into a sneer.
“Now where’s that lazy sonofabitch Harley?” Daddy Jack inquires, looking about. When he gets angry his eyes narrow into tiny slits and the corners of his mouth turn down, looking like he’s about to cry.
“Now Jack you leave that boy ALONE!” says Momma Simpson. “Stop givin’ him a hard time!”—Harley being Daddy Jack’s younger son, Momma Simpson’s darling.
“I’m not givin him a hard time…”
“You ride that boy’s ass every day of the week,” insists Momma Simpson, her voice muffled low and droning, coming from deep in her throat, all coated round and blanketed with fat like a bell ringing in a sock.
“Shit,” Daddy Jack says. “HARLEY!”
Out comes Harley, dreary and bleary, his hair sticking up like dry straw, his mouth agape, his fat bare belly sticking out. Saliva drips from his lower lip. “Goddamn…” he mumbles, all weary
“I was gonna throw a glass a water on ya!” Daddy Jack says.
Harley shakes his head like a horse. “Piss,” he murmurs.
Momma Simpson looks at Harley with loving eyes. “You gonna have some porridge?” she asks.
“I was gonna grab ya by the toe an’ pull ya flat on your ass outta that bed,” Daddy Jack says, chuckling.
Harley slams down in his chair and looks about with glazed uncomprehending eyes.
“You want some porridge?” Momma Simpson asks.
“No goddamn time!” Daddy Jack snaps. “We gotta get those chores done!”
Bud and Daddy Jack pull themselves up from the table. “C’mon Harley!”
“I’ll be out in a minute,” Harley groans, his face buried in his hands.
“You come out now!” Daddy Jack shouts.
Bud adds, “You got outta doin’ chores yesterday!”
“Fuck,” moans Harley.
“Jack he just got UP!” Momma Simpson implores.
“Shit!” exclaims Daddy Jack, but he and Bud bend and pull their big black barn boots on by the door, caked with clumps of mud and shit. My brother and I follow them down the steps and out the back door.
“I’ll give that kid a tin ear one a’ these days,” mutters Daddy Jack as he hits the screen door open and it goes vibrating, jangling, springing back and forth on its hinges slamming against the wall and away and we step out to the cold sun rising over the cornfields in the grey, misty sky, the cold dew shining, the cold world sleeping, the cold warmth creeping over every breathing leaf. We walk through the tall grass of the yard past discarded automobile parts, farm equipment, a long unused plough, a big charred oil barrel they use to burn their garbage in. The grass is rustling and twinkling with the dew, the sun shining into the curls and corners of Daddy Jack’s leathery face.
“Best goddamned time a’ the day,” he says, squinting. He throws back his head and horks a big green blob that splatters onto an old, rusty hubcap on the ground, dribbling down and shining in the sun. The earth is frozen and smeared with snot, everything is speckled with dew. Even dreary pieces of lumber and cardboard garbage shine, and the swift breeze bites us all the more for the wiry warmth of the sun behind us. Make no mistake about it, the harsh elements sting the things of this world into awakening.
The clouds tremble in the sky above and we look over to the side and see Lady the Dog hopping her way through the wet grass. My brother and I, we run to greet her—and with a quick move she recoils from our touch and pads disinterestedly away.
“Hey! Don’t bother Lady,” Daddy Jack shouts. “Lady don’t wanna play no more.”
“What? How come?” we ask.
“Lady gettin’ old. She’s an old dog.” Lady walks away. Her eyes flash back, blinking, irritated—her grizzled black dog lips in a frazzled frown.
“So?” we ask.
“So! Old dogs don’t like to play. Try and she’s likely to bite ya. Old dogs just like to be off by themselves. They don’t like to piss around.”
“Why?”
“’Cause they wanna be alone; they’re tired and sick, they’re sick of it all.” As if hearing us, Lady hobbles over and creeps underneath a truck in the green dewy grass—puts her head down on her paws, her eyebrows twitching. “Yup—ol’ dogs, they just like to be off by themself—they get mean, cranky. Ya leave ’em alone—they don’t like to chase rabbits and they don’t like kids. They just wanna go off, off by themself, then one day… they go off and they don’t come back no more and that’s it.”
“Where do they go?” we ask.
“They go off and die is where they go. They know they’re gonna die, so they go off so they can die all alone.”
“Why?”
“’Cause that’s just the way they wanna do it; they go off because they wanna die all by themself.”
“Why?”
“Jesus Christ, how ’n hell do I know? That’s just the way they do it!”
“But Lady useta like to play with us,” we say.
“That was before when she was young and nice—now she’s more ’n likely to bite ya. Don’t ask me why, that’s just the way it is—old dogs get mean,” says Daddy Jack.
We look back at Lady sitting finicky like an old woman, holding her spindly bones together, not understanding how she has been transformed, remembering the old Lady, quick to run and eager to please—lost, but where?
We advance to the barn, Daddy Jack unbolts the door and switches on the lights. There in the dust and the sweet smells of grain and straw and the heavy brown odour of shit so strong it makes you sneeze, wedged into their pens row upon row in the suddenly illuminated precincts the round-backed, swelling bellied, pink, hairy hogs nuzzle and complain.
A cacophony of squeals and wails erupt and arise from the multitude of pigdom, long drawn-out issuances of irritation do they oink and blare, heads down low and scruffling the ground, phalanxes of big fat rumps almost like human asses wobbling from side to side as they stomp their hooves, their curly, whirly, squiggle-tails bobbing, their beady eyes blinking with forbearance, their slobbering and dripping, drooling mouths with little surprising shoots of sharp whiskers here and there about their snouts; they squeak and squeal at the sudden light.
“C’mon Bud!” Daddy Jack barks. “Git the shovels!”
With haste the father and son wearily hoist the shovels