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Show path back to that first loss. I feel I am closest to my father with the well-spent quarter and the Westerns he saw weekly. Especially when I hold such narratives of balance and justice against the story of the pig. When my father was very young, he was given a pet pig to raise, perhaps to teach responsibility or animal husbandry. In my imaginings, the pig is Wilbur, though in fact I am sure his pig was far from sweet and pink and clean. I have lived near pigs, and they are enormous, rooting animals, who cry like humans caught in pain when all they want is food. But this pig, my father's pig, must have been adorable. It won my father's boyhood heart. My father does not say this, but I imagine the pig followed him on his chores like a dog. Milking cows, driving the combine, moving hay, my father brought the pig who attended these events, always watching, waiting for a bit of bread or bite of carrot that my father kept in his overalls pocket. At night, my father curled up with the pig in the hay loft under the Nebraska sky, stars as thick as snow, the Milky Way like a road leading to a different life. One day, though, his father came to him and said it was time to slaughter the pig. The pig was meant for the market, its path chosen long before birth. And it was up to my father to kill the pig, as it was my father who had cared for it. There were no questions, just, yes sir. On that same day? A day later? Perhaps on Saturday when his mother did the wash and had boiling water standing and ready for use. There he was, that day or later, but only ten, barely big enough to lift the ball peen hammer let alone bring it 20 |