Mariellen Gilpin (WCTS Nov 2013)
No pigs in sight. The early morning sun turned the haze over the prairie bottomland a silvery blue. It was going to be a hot day. I banged the corncrib door again, but still the pigs didn’t come for breakfast. I didn’t have time for this—I needed to change into a dress and heels for my office job.
I studied the far end of the pasture, where the haze played tricks on my eyes; it looked like black soil instead of green pasture. I needed to walk closer to be sure. Halfway down the path, I could see where the pigs had been rooting the soft soil of the bottomland. I knew they had lost the metal nose rings that discouraged turning over the soil, and had discovered delicious fresh roots and grubs were available for the rooting. To keep the whole pasture from being eroded, these pigs needed to be rung—that day if at all possible. It had to be done. I hated ringing pigs; the whole family did. I steeled myself, already not-feeling the evening of horror ahead.
Daddy was already in the garden when I finished my chores. He was picking green beans, sitting on an old kitchen chair and hitching it forward as he picked. The two rows of beans extended the length of the garden. Sitting on the chair meant his face brushed the rough bean leaves as he picked. I hated to think how the leaves must feel against his face, still tender from radiation. He had gained a little weight after the surgery and radiation, but now it was clear he was losing again. The cancer had spread. We all knew it, and none of us said anything. Daddy was a gambler. The family taught me to orphan myself from him, even though we ate at the same table and I washed his workpants every Saturday. I hungered for a daddy so much that God became Daddy in my young mind. But the family remembered Christmases my father didn’t come home until he had lost every penny he had at the poker table. He had no medical insurance. He had fed his addiction rather than taking care of his future, or mine: I had dropped out of college, losing both scholarship and work-study grant, because getting my office job, and caring for the livestock, would help pay his medical bills. I was silently, politely angry.
But I also noticed when my mother and I came dragging home from our jobs, dinner was ready. It might be pancakes and canned greens, and making dinner probably was the only time he’d been out of his chair that day, but I was grateful we could come home and sit down to dinner. He’d also spent time each day planning interesting things to talk about over supper; I came home to intelligent conversation after a day listening to office gossip. And here he was, picking beans. He’d planted the beans, too, and would help snap them, a couple dishpans full at a time. We would freeze them to eat next winter.
Daddy was picking beans he wouldn’t be around to help eat. “The pigs are rooting up the pasture,” I told him. He stopped picking. Nobody could—or did—afford anesthesia for ringing pigs.
“What do you think we should do?” he asked. It was Daddy’s way to instruct—asking questions, not giving orders. He respected me. The pigs were half-grown and probably weighed 75 pounds apiece. There were forty pigs. I said, “Bob could do it, but I don’t like the way Bob treats livestock.” Bob neighbored with us, but he beat and kicked his livestock. There was a limit to what I was willing to steel myself to do. I hated to ask my brother Chris. Chris had a new law office and a wife and two babies, a third on the way. I tried to spare him when I could. But this was the 1950s, and ringing pigs was men’s work. The pigs would pay Daddy’s doctor, and Chris would help if I asked. “I can call Chris,” I said to Daddy, “and ask him to come after work to hold the pigs.
If I manage the gates into the ringing pen, do you think you could handle the ringing?”
Daddy nodded. “How will you get the pigs into the barn?” he asked. I would use pig psychology, because herding pigs made them anxious and hard to manage. They knew something was up. But pigs would do anything for corn. “I’ll wait until five o’clock, and then go bang the corn-crib door and throw their corn inside the barn. I haven’t put out corn this morning because they’re busy rooting, but they’ll probably be ready for corn by then. When they’re all in the barn eating, I’ll shut them in. We’ll have to work fast, though, because it’s going to be hot, and there’s no water in the barn.” We also worked fast so the pigs spent less time worrying—a worried pig didn’t eat and didn’t gain.
We couldn’t sell skinny pigs. Daddy nodded. I went to call Chris and dress for the office. As I drove to work, I planned a story or two to tell. I was learning to control how much office drivel I had to smile through by bringing up something more interesting to talk about. Over lunch I would tell about my latest efforts to learn to bake bread. Cooking is neutral territory for a group of women, especially if you tell a story on yourself. They usually brightened as soon as I started a story; they sometimes talked about their mothers’ and grandmothers’ cooking.
We’d begun bringing something we’d made to share. We shared recipes. I no longer had a daily diet of bickering. I was applying Daddy’s secret: if you don’t want to bicker, plan ahead. After work I hurried into barn clothes. Mommy had supper underway.
“What should I do to help?” she asked. Mommy had fainting spells; her heart was not good. She didn’t need the heat and dust in the barn, and she wasn’t needed anyway—the only woman’s work available was managing the gates, and I could do both gates alone.
But Mommy needed to help, too, so I said, “Brew lots of fresh iced tea now, so it can get good and cold while we work. We’ll need a cold drink when we’re done.” She nodded, and I left for the hog barn.
When I banged the corncrib door, the pigs’ ears pricked up in the bottomland. They trotted up the path while I threw the corn inside the barn. They didn’t grunt companionably the way they usually did; maybe they were keeping the rooted-up pasture a secret. Pigs were smart; I wondered if they were capable of plotting together.
We didn’t just raise our pigs, we liked and enjoyed them. But you had to be careful around pigs, too. When the last pig was in the barn, I closed the rough wooden gate. Chris arrived a few minutes later, along with Daddy, who had the box of copper rings and the pliers-like gadget he would use to set the rings. The ringing pen was a short hallway between two walls of stout wooden fence, just big enough for two men and a pig. At one end of the ringing pen was a small gate opening outward into the pasture. At the other end was a high wooden gate, opening into where the pigs were now finishing the corn.
Chris positioned himself inside the big inner gate. Daddy stood in the middle of the ringing pen and loaded his pliers with the first copper ring; when he closed the handles, the ring would pierce the pig’s nostrils.
Standing in an adjacent pen, protected from the pigs, I reached through the fence and unhooked the big gate. From now on, the men would focus entirely on the pigs.
Chris escorted a wary pig into the ringing pen and shut the gate; I fastened it. He straddled the pig and grabbed its forelegs. Quickly he pulled the pig’s front quarters off the pavement and held the pig firmly with both hands, his knees pressed against the pig’s sides. Daddy squatted in front of the pig, seized its snout with one hand and clamped the pliers together in the pig’s nostrils. The pig squealed. I broke out in a cold sweat in spite of the heat.
I swallowed my empathy; there were 39 more pigs to ring. I released the hook on the outer gate, Chris let go the pig, and Daddy stepped back so it could dash for freedom. Daddy reloaded his pliers. I hooked the outer gate and went to the inner gate. When Daddy was ready, I opened the gate. Chris separated another pig from the now-frightened herd and ushered it into the hallway.
He pulled the gate shut and I latched it. Daddy rang the pig, then another, and another. A cloud of dust hung in the hallway and shone yellow in the rays of the setting sun. The dust settled on our sweat-covered bodies, forming a gray crust.
One pig grunted a warning, his neck bristles standing on end. Chris grabbed him and held him steady, Daddy rang him, and the pig squealed. Daddy told me not to open the gate—the pliers had misfired, and Daddy needed to put in another ring. Chris took fresh hold on the pig, and Daddy placed the ring correctly. The pig squealed again.
We continued to work. Finally the last pig was chased into the ringing pen. The pig lay down flat, grunting his fear-cry. “This pig has read about passive resistance,” I thought, “He couldn’t get any closer to the pavement than he is already.” Chris straddled the pig and pulled up on his forelegs. The pig squealed loudly, even though the ring was nowhere near his nose yet.
Chris was unable to lift him. Chris steeled himself, took fresh hold on the pig’s front legs, and pulled upwards determinedly. Slowly the pig, squealing all the while, came into position for ringing.
Daddy had rung 39 pigs already. He breathed noisily, the air whistling in his head where the sinuses had been removed. He squatted in front of the pig, grabbed the pliers in both hands, and rang the pig. Every bit of strength he had left was in that last effort. I looked at his fleshless hands. “There’s nothing there,” I thought. “Nothing but bone and what’s left of a lifetime of muscle.” The pig squealed, Daddy stepped back, and I unlatched the gate to let the last pig escape.
The barn was silent now, empty of pigs. The sunlit dusty air showed me my father in a different way. He sat on the filthy pavement in the ringing pen. Probably he had shortened his already-limited time on earth, and certainly spent himself for the family. Together, we gasped great gulps of dusty air.
Chris had held onto forty frightened, writhing, half-grown pigs while we traumatized them mercilessly. Chris caught his breath first. Hands on hips and head bowed, he drew enough breath to speak. He said, “I couldn’t figure why that last pig was so heavy, or why he was squealing so much.
When I finally got him up, I saw I’d been standing on his ears.”
“Lordy, Chris,” Daddy said, breathing heavily. “This is no time to be telling funny stories.” Humor is where you need it. We gasped for air and laughed.
Iced tea was waiting for us—good and cold. Supper was in the oven, but we were too tired and hot to eat. We sat on the porch and gulped iced tea. We said nothing. “Ringing pigs is nasty business,” Mommy said, “but it has to be done.” I looked sidewise at Daddy.
“Dying is nasty business,” I thought. “It’s something else that has to be done. Daddy is still a young man—he ought to have twenty more good years. But he doesn’t, and I don’t have those years with him, either. I’ll never know who he really was.” What would it take to finish his dying—one month? Three? I didn’t know. But I didn’t like the process. It was going to get worse, too. Death I could deal with. In death we were in the presence of God. Dying was a nasty business. I grieved—for the first time—the father I’d never known.
Mariellen Gilpin is a member of Urbana-Champaign meeting, Illinois, and an editor of WCTS. She says, “Dissociation is gift and millstone. It’s necessary to function in horrific situations, and also an efficient way to store a lifetime of unprocessed pain in body, mind, and spirit. Both my brother and I grieve that we never knew our father.”
What Canst Thou Say? 