Hogs
by J.A. Tyler

His mind had fallen away in great heaping chunks. Nature in the form of a sickle, slice slicing. Glaciers melting into sun-spoiled fruit, flies pillaging, worms in and out and through. Unable to control himself or the world. Rocking in a chair and sipping on his pipe. Bringing food up and into his mouth, chewing in mostly gums. Pissing in the weeds behind the house and feeding the hogs from their soggy bucket. Singing to them, like the chirping of mindless birds, hands folding and unfolding in waves.

In reflections he didn’t understand his own face. Couldn’t find himself within it. Sagging skin like war on his cheeks. Lips of bent and rusting wire. A mouth shaping words that wouldn’t happen. Hooked in his mouth, holding tight to three standalone teeth. Breathing copper and sulfur from the bellows of his stomach, like the end of things. Smiling because his face was hinged only that way, drooping low and sadly creaking.

They called to him grandpa daft grandpa daft grandpa daft, rattling their way across the back porch. A girl and a boy and a girl swinging from the limbs of ripe trees and calling again and again grandpa daft grandpa daft grandpa daft. Play cards with us grandpa daft. Play your harmonica for us grandpa daft. Show us how the earth turns grandpa daft. He was quiet and smiled, stunned silent in an unpinned jaw and hollow eyes.

Their father would hand him the small finger loop of glass, offering the moon in a bottle. And grandpa daft would drink back slow and heavy, unheeded, like it was water. The father offered and grandpa daft drank back, slick and clean. Never stumbling and never tasting the kettle undercurrents. Their father offered and grandpa daft drank long and lean like the flanks of a running horse. Like the stretch of a horizon. Chugging down with his pipe still poking from the corner of those bluing lips. Tipping back in his chair.

The boy watched the girls, clambering up and down his now withering branches of arms. Pecking at his head and brow as if they were baby birds pegging down seedlings from his grassless skin. The boy watched as the girls punched his thighs, unable to break the stride from hog pen and then back again, to his chair and the porch. Shouting the while grandpa daft grandpa daft grandpa daft. Come and get us, chase us, show us how you make water in july grandpa daft grandpa daft grandpa daft.

And their mother would chastise them all, the boy for doing nothing and the girls for punching and poking at her own father. You leave grandpa alone she would say, swatting a lone bee from the porch eave, smoothing stray sweating hairs back onto her head. What has he ever done to you this man she would ask them and they would all stare down at their bare feet, toes wiggling shamefully on the scattered dirty boards. Yes mama they would mumble under breath slight as wind, watching grandpa daft rocking in the chair and looking vacant and like swimming and not hearing anything.

Sometimes they saw from the porch father’s arm around grandpa daft’s shoulders as his hands went folding and unfolding in rainbows of feed. The hogs trampling back and forth in grunts and squealing hiccups, grandpa daft nodding his head with the movement of their father’s lips. And boy girl girl twisting white clothing in water and scrubbing white clothing with the senseless fat of soap and running white clothing over the silver mountains of a washboard. Sitting on the porch working, watching their father work, watching their grandfather work.

Don’t get between a sow and her new ones was what they heard their father saying that night of the day it happened. Like every night where something he says clatters down the canals of their ears and they feel ashamed for having thought anything else or in between. That’s what we know and now you know it he told them that night when their mother was hiding tears behind her head and in the tensing of her shoulders. He knew it their father told them and winked at the boy and smiled small at the girls. He knew to be careful their father said, waiting in silence, hurrying to a morning that would blot out the stains of grandpa daft calling blood and becky becky becky.

Because at the kitchen table, round and etched in the scrapes and weight of pots and pans and dishes they had sat, the father and the boy and the girls and grandpa daft. And their mother had tucked her dress underneath her as she sat and led a prayer like the rustling of papery wings above begging flames. Like every night ending with an unbroken amen. Like every night chasing down spoons and forks and knives ragged and chiming against plates. Gobbled down and hushed and sometimes only a clearing of throats or the swallow of rock water from clear glasses.

Because midway between potatoes and steak, grandpa daft had started in calling becky becky becky with question marks like bleeding. Like blood he sang becky. He moaned and gurgled becky. He woke from a dream where becky stood. He walked on a shore called becky where his toes sank in sand and the waves rolled over him in turn making points. Asking to empty bloodless faces becky becky becky. Their mother wasn’t becky. The girls and the boy and the father weren’t becky. Because becky was the marsh soft and molding part of his brain, running aground as his three teeth worked through the tendons of steak and a gray pebble in the starch.

Because when the hogs started their violent sounds the girls ran from the room where they were doing each other’s hair in braids like twisted bread. And on the porch the noise tripled and the smear on each hog’s face was reddish brown and raw looking and screaming. The boy there at the well, buckets in hands, locked in place, a mute attached to his lungs. And their father leaning one hand on the wall of the barn, another on his hip pocket, a stalk of grass shooting from his teeth and lips. And their mother behind them all, bracing herself in the doorway, her knuckles white as snow in early winter, when it falls in a covering like pieces of the sky. 

J. A. Tyler has recent work in elimae, Lamination Colony, Night Train, Thieves Jargon, & Word Riot. His chapbook, The Girl in the Black Sweater, is available now from Trainwreck Press & a debut novella is forthcoming from Ghost Road Press in 2009. He is also the founding editor of Mud Luscious, a reviewer for Rural Messengers Press, a member of the Pindeldyboz editorial team, & an editorial intern with Dzanc Books. Read more at www.aboutjatyler.com or www.aboutjatyler.blogspot.com.

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