Let Them In

Ribbereye

The pigs were upset when he went out in the evening. He could tell from the sound of them before he even opened the door to the barn, as they were squealing and grunting and trotting back and forth across the enclosure, their cloven hooves pat-patting on the packed dirt. The old sow gave an angry squeal as he pushed his way through the door of the peeling red barn.

It took his eyes a moment to adjust in the dim light. The grain dust and excrement smelled not unpleasant to his nose, the acridity lost to years of inhaling it. The pigs were gathered toward the back of their pen, looking at something unseen in the center of their congregation. Once or twice a pig would duck in close to whatever it was that lay on the ground, snapping and snuffling, but whatever had attracted their attention was hidden by their bodies.

Others pawed at the patched up section of the wall where a sheet of plywood blocked a hole in the old gate. The board, however, had been twisted away, leaving a decent gap between the plywood and the wood of the barn. He was amazed no pigs had already gotten out into the yard.

He filled the water trough from the spigot, keeping an eye on the gathering of hogs. It was unusual for them to do this. His first thought was that it might be a squirrel which had gotten in, and they were in the process of eating it. They would do that – hunt down squirrels and mice and other small animals and eat them. They were omnivores, after all, and more like humans than humans liked to admit. Maybe that was why he liked them. They all had personalities, too, and he often didn't even need the splotchy white patterns in their bristly black hair to tell them apart. Lily and Pansy both had white belts around their middles, for instance, but Pansy was outgoing and friendly, while Lily was skittish. Oak, who had a splotch on his left hindquarters, was standoffish but never resisted food, and the spotted Maple was always tormenting the younger boars.

And then of course there was Cookie. All black but for a white star on her forehead and over three hundred pounds, the old sow was the meanest hog he had ever had. At nine years old, she would still take on Maple the boar without hesitation, even though he was larger. She remained the only one of his animals who had ever seriously injured him. He had been trying to remove a piglet from her (this was already five years ago) in order to wean it, and as he had ushered it from her side as she ate, Cookie had given a squeal like a demon and bowled him over.

He had fallen on his rear in the pen, and Cookie had thrown her weight onto his leg, as if she had known the exact right spot to snap his shin in two. He had only just dragged himself out of the pen, and since then he was much warier about stepping into it. That day he had been scared for his life.

Sometime in the past month Cookie had contracted a conjunctival infection, giving her a single red eye that glared out of her face. He thought it made her look even more of a demon. She was part of the gathering of hogs, and seemed to be blocking some of the rest from whatever was in the center. That eye flashed up at him from the mob in a vicious glare.

Finally, some pigs peeled away when he poured slop in the trough – just enough for him to see the cause of the excitement. A sow – Rose, by the looks of it – lay on her side, dead as a doornail.

He didn't like stepping into the pen, but he was going to have to. Taking a maple stick from the wall, he made his way into the enclosure and latched the gate behind him. The pigs mostly moved aside as he passed through - all except for Cookie, who stood her ground and gave him a bloody gaze. Rose was one of her offspring.

A grisly sight greeted him as he circled the body. The throat of the sow was a bloody pit. Strings of skin, sinew and veins spilled onto the ground, and the lower jaw had been snapped partly off, as if to make room for something. The eyes, too, were absent from the face. The rest of the pig, however, was untouched.