“Some kid out shooting squirrels might’ve taken pot shots at it,” Ernie said. “Look at his skin here, feel here, underneath, you can feel a twenty-two bullet. Right there.” Ernie lifted the lantern.
“I’ll be damned,” said the neighbor, feeling the hog’s chest. “Is that another one in his leg?”
“Doesn’t look like he’s been fed in a while, though,” Ernie said. “We’d better get some corn in him.”
“Hey, one of his nuts is swelled up,” the boy said. “That’s one dang big nut.”
“It’s infected,” Jill said. The pig was standing still for the men’s handling, not biting, not fussing. “We’ll get him on antibiotics.”
“That’s a big old nut, all right,” the neighbor said. “Bigger’n a baseball.”
“Bigger’n a softball,” the boy said.
“Can we cut the tusks off?” Jill asked
“Not sure how you go about cutting tusks off a full grown fellow like him. There’d be a lot of blood.” The neighbor was close enough that Jill smelled his beer breath, stronger than the pig scent. She smelled the boy too, his sharp sweat. She reached for her husband’s hand, but brushed her knuckles against the hot lantern glass instead and recoiled. She had asked the Jentzen kid about sisters. What about aunts? A grandmother? She should have demanded an answer: Why had there been no other women at that farm? And, more importantly, why had the one woman stayed?
Jill stepped back, away from the men, inhaled the clean, damp air, and released her shoulders. She had built the new hog pen to the neighbor’s specifications: posts driven down four feet, woven wire buried underground to prevent digging, sides six feet high, a double thickness of two-by-fours, nailed and then screwed. One corner had a shelter from weather, and another corner had a squeeze pen, where she could trap and medicate animals. She had the medicines and ointments to nurse this weak monster back to strength in time for the gilts to become fertile at about 220 days. With six breeding females, each birthing ten piglets per litter, two litters a year, and with these men to help her, this plan was once again looking very promising. This boar had turned out to be exactly what she needed, a creature even bullets could not stop.
Acknowledgments
Heidi Bell, Carla Vissers, Andy Mozina, and Lisa Lenzo are the best friends a writer could have, and these stories sing their praises. Christopher Magson’s good humor and good husbandry have made the book possible, and Jaimy Gordon has wised it up. Thank you, Melissa Fraterrigo, Rachael Perry, and Donna Sparkman for going carefully through the collection. Various stories (and my writing life) are better because of Susan Ramsey, Jamie Blake, Gina Betcher, Glenn Deutsch, Shawn Wagner, Elizabeth Kerlikowske, David Dodd Lee, Tom Campbell, George Campbell, Loring Janes, Jaci Dillon, John Weaver, and Don York, and of course Susanna. The events and characters depicted in these pages are fictional, but my hometown of Comstock, Michigan, where many of these stories could have taken place, is very real.
Gratefully acknowledged are the magazines in which these stories originally appeared: “The Trespasser” appeared in Witness; “The Yard Man,” “The Inventor, 1972,” and “Fuel for the Millennium” appeared in The Southern Review, and “The Inventor, 1972” won the 2009 Eudora Welty Prize for Fiction; “World of Gas” appeared in The Heartlands Today; “The Solutions to Brian’s Problem” appeared in Diagram; “Family Reunion” appeared in Mid-American Review and was originally read aloud and broadcast on a WBEZ Program, Stories on Stage; “Winter Life” and
“Falling” appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review; “Bringing Belle Home” appeared in ACM; “King Cole’s American Salvage” appeared in Plaiedes; “The Burn” appeared in Controlled Burn; “Storm Warning” appeared in Orchid: A Literary Review; “Boar Taint” appeared in The Kenyon Review.
Document Outline
Contents
THE TRESPASSER
THE YARD MAN
WORLD OF GAS
THE INVENTOR, 1972
THE SOLUTIONS TO BRIAN’S PROBLEM
THE BURN
FAMILY REUNION
WINTER LIFE
BRINGING BELLE HOME
FALLING
KING COLE’S AMERICAN SALVAGE
STORM WARNING
FUEL FOR THE MILLENNIUM
BOAR TAINT
Acknowledgments
Table of Contents
Contents
THE TRESPASSER
THE YARD MAN
WORLD OF GAS
THE INVENTOR, 1972
THE SOLUTIONS TO BRIAN’S PROBLEM
THE BURN
FAMILY REUNION
WINTER LIFE
BRINGING BELLE HOME
FALLING
KING COLE’S AMERICAN SALVAGE
STORM WARNING
FUEL FOR THE MILLENNIUM
BOAR TAINT
Acknowledgments
American Salvage Page 18