F*ckface

by Leah Hampton

  She was the only student intern. For everyone else, the place was a job. So they gave Alison the worst duties: scraping muck and sludge, culling dead, filthy piglets from cages where they’d starved or been trampled.

  The noise. The smell. Alison was small, and the workers joked she was so skinny she would slip through the gratings in the floor if she wasn’t careful. The animals bit her. They screamed. Her skin cracked open in the heat. The hogs’ skin cracked open in the heat. Sows clamored and writhed, sometimes six to a cage. Nothing was clean. Even the ceiling was coated in grime.

  She had been glad, at first, when the place was destroyed.

  “It’s tough work,” said Samuel. “Wasn’t for her.” He patted his belly. “So she went back up the mountain a while, finished up her credits. Tested out of a bunch of classes, didn’t you?”

  Alison nodded again, moved her tongue around to loosen the thick spittle in her mouth.

  “Then they switched her to the dairy. Inspections, monitoring.” He chucked his chin toward her. “She knows all about milk and eggs now, don’t you, honey?”

  Is that right? said the people in line.

  “She’ll do all right for herself,” said Samuel. “She could work for Jimmy Dean. She could work for Dairy Maid.”

  The air in the church was dense with flesh. So many people, good country people, a line of them ambling past the body, the pulpit, to Miss Florence’s family, then out the church’s side door, to the parking lot, to home, to their hot suppers elsewhere.

  They moved like sows. Like animals. Alison had seen it. She had seen this same slow movement in milk cows on their way to be pumped, in heifers corralled for tagging and ewes heavy with mud-caked wool.

  Her grandfather was wrong. Alison had not switched to dairy studies, but to crop science. Her dairy internship was only temporary, a two-week stint to make up the required hours she lost over the summer. And it had not been the slaughterhouse that made her change majors.

  Her sows had burned.

  The morning of the fire, she had arrived for work at seven thirty. She wore thrift store clothes—all her own T-shirts had acquired an eye-watering, unwashable funk after just one shift in the barn, or been badly torn, so at the end of each day, she trashed whatever she was wearing. Soon her suitcase, which sat in her grandparents’ spare room, was empty. Her closet at home, full of white skirts and thick sweaters, felt far away, and she often wondered if she’d ever be clean enough to wear them again.

  She turned into the hog facility’s long gravel drive that morning and found the whole compound was strewn with fire engines. First responder trucks were parked haphazardly in the grass. The smell of charred filth seeped through the vents of her tiny car. She pulled over and parked by the maintenance trailer where workers went to collect their weekly paychecks. When she got out, the burned air stuck to her like some unseen tar. The roof of her mouth itched.

  Someone called to her, “Hey runt!”

  Alison sprinted up to a group of coworkers. They were walking toward the farrowing barns, the largest of which was gone. In its place was a black, smoking ruin. She asked what happened.

  “Fire,” they said. “Main barn caught fire last night.”

  How did it start?

  “Electrical is what they told me,” someone else said. “All them old wires caught light, then the timber framing, I guess. And the supply lofts. Would have been fast.”

  “It’s almost out,” said a woman who had laughed at Alison on her first day when she learned she was a college student. “They better let us help with the cleanup. I need my check.”

  It was hot. The morning sun was already a knife. Alison asked about the animals.

  “Cooked,” someone said, nodding at the barn. “They cooked in there.”

  “It’s a mess,” said the woman who had laughed at her. “I saw it happen one time when I worked for this big outfit down east. All that metal. Once a spark gets going, the whole thing’s an oven.”

  As they walked toward the massive black hull, Alison almost went back to her car and drove home. Not home to her grandparents, but back home to the mountains, all the way up the interstate, through that channel of hills, to her parents’ house, or better still to her dorm room on her hilly campus, to white skirts and thinner air. She wanted to quit, run away, but she still needed two hundred more internship hours to graduate.

  Alison asked if they would be laid off.

  A few people laughed. “There’s four other barns,” they told her. “Always plenty more hogs coming in, going out. Plenty of work, always.”

  Her supervisor approached the group and told them the fire was mostly extinguished and that they should come back that afternoon to start the cleanup effort. His face looked gray.

  Alison asked him, Is it bad?

  “Come back after lunch,” he said.

  In the afternoon, the workers walked to the main barn together. All that metal, so much heat. Flesh. Hogs are just flesh, and they had indeed cooked, alive in the fire, through the night. As they approached, the scent of smoke and carnage made a wall Alison could almost lean into.

  Someone handed her a dull pickax and walked into the barn. The great curved roof above them was warped and black, and parts of it had collapsed. The floor was lifeless chaos: ash, charred beams, mounds of black tissue, bloodied bone. Stillness. She closed her eyes and pictured the living barn, before the fire. A thousand pink ears twitching under those giant fans, the hogs’ grunts and screams, her own body alive among them. She gripped the pickax and backed away.

  It took six days to clean out the main barn. The workers shoveled and scraped, mostly without safety equipment. Rotating shifts gutted the place so a construction crew could later rebuild the timber framing, rewire everything. Alison did what she could, but after a few minutes’ effort, even with a respirator, she would retch and have to go outside. Her supervisor finally put her on hosing duty.

  “Just wash it down,” he said, pointing to the concrete drive behind the barn and some machinery scattered around. “Wash everything down.” There was a river nearby that could carry away almost anything.

  They found the sow on the second day. No one knew what to do about her.

  She was huge, alive, rustling under the grate. No one could figure out how she got there, how she’d survived the flames. Alison put down her hose and followed the crowd to investigate. She peered down into the underfloor, the only part of the main barn that hadn’t burned or been left in tatters. The underfloor was a crawl space below the grates, where all the piss and muck and death from above dropped down.

  The sow was huge. The biggest Alison had ever seen. Her back was badly burned and cut open. The deep wounds looked like gashes from a whip.

  They called the supervisor, who stared down at her and nodded.

  “It happens,” he said with a shrug. “She probably fell between some grates when she was a little piglet.”

  Alison asked how the sow could have lived.

  “There’s plenty to eat down there,” he said. “Just catch what falls. No one to bother you. We only muck it out every couple of months.” He cocked his head, sizing her up. “She’s mature,” he said, impressed. “Bet she’s been down there a year.”

  Her supervisor continued staring at the sow. They all did.

  “It’s a good place to hide.” He pointed vaguely east. “We’ll have to open that side fence, over by the drainage pipe. Try to coax her out.”

  The sow grunted, sloshed a hoof in the black muck. Alison knelt down. Its eyes, she noted, looked like a child’s. Round and aware.

  “I guess she heard it all,” he said. “Just stayed hid; found someplace wet and waited it out. She was smart.”

  It took six workers to extract the sow. After she was caught, the supervisor let them eat her.

  One of the older workers, someone who knew how, slaughtered her so they could have a barbecue. Alison did not watch the slaughter. She knew it would be swift if not merciful, and she was grateful f
or his expertise. After the sow was bled out, the older worker and two helpers gingerly loaded her carcass into the back of his truck, then drove her to a meat locker on the other end of the facility, where she would hang for a few days to tenderize.

  The barbecue was held to celebrate finishing the cleanup. They pit roasted the sow under a heavy black drum. The wafting smells brought every last worker out for the meal. All the supervisors came, plus the administrative assistants in the payroll trailer, and even a few of the first responders and firemen who had helped put out the blaze.

  They ate her off Styrofoam plates, down by the river on the seventh day.

  Alison ate only a cob of corn, nothing else. Gristle and marrow churned inside her. The next day she quit. She emailed her advisor, filled out the change-of-major forms online, and told her grandparents she wouldn’t be back until the fall.

  She carried it all summer, carried it still. The cleanup, the smells and screams, the whole experience of the hogs weighed on her, silenced her. Before this, she had had no idea.

  “I’m so sorry,” said Alison as she approached Miss Florence’s family.

  She moved down the funeral receiving line, where no one recognized her. Her grandfather kept a gentle hand in the middle of her back, piloting her toward the nieces of Miss Florence, who were huddled together against a white wall. People leaned over them, sighing, embracing, blocking their view. The nieces looked dazed and trapped.

  Ahead, beyond the murmuring bodies, people took their leave and passed, one or two at a time, to the side door of the church, which led out to the parking lot. The exit flapped open, pierced Alison with hot afternoon light, then closed again. Flapped open, pierced with light, then closed.

  “For your loss,” Alison said, nodding at one of the nieces. “I’m sorry.”

  She moved along, nodded again.

  “I didn’t know her,” she said. “Nice to meet you. I’m so sorry.”

  SAINT

  Your brother is going to die in twelve years. It is winter. Lake Huron has frozen, and the family is staying in a cabin near the shore. These cabins are cheap in winter; nobody even bothers to ice fish around here. It is so cold. You are eight. Your brother is eleven and demands that you accompany him on a walk by the lakeside.

  “We might see bears,” he says, “but don’t be scared.” Your brother is eleven. He knows where the bears are.

  Michigan winters are a Neverland to you. You remember The North as a fairy world, an icy magic wonder, far from the warmth of home. You realize, even then at eight years old, that this is slightly corny. You do not tell your brother how pretty you think everything is—the whiteness, the crystally twinkling of the sunlight on all the whiteness, the snow, the ice. It doesn’t matter that you didn’t tell him. He is going to die anyway.

  You walk on the ice lake, walk and walk, until the shore and cabin are gone, until you reach huge ice lumps, frozen waves. They are huge, higher than both of your heads. You are not sure you believe these are waves. Your brother walks around them, looking. His thick black coat is trimmed with an orange cord that travels up his arms, around his hood. He looks perfectly warm.

  “I wonder how that happened,” he says. “It doesn’t seem like that’s what it is.”

  You still don’t know if you really walked out that far on the lake. You still don’t know, all these years after your brother has died, if you remember it correctly. You just remember the huge, white lumps, the clean ice, the stillness. Are you right? There is no way to know. No one else can remember it.

  * * *

  Your brother is going to die in two months. He is such a lazy bastard. He lies in bed, has stolen the whole morning, stolen your favorite quilt. Stolen it. You are leaving in a few minutes, going abroad for the first time in your life, on an airplane and everything. You won’t see him again for at least another three months. You will never see him again. He is too goddamn lazy to get out from under your favorite quilt, the one with the white border, the one with all the triangles, and say goodbye. You are twenty.

  “Come hug me,” he says. “I love you.”

  You sigh and lie down next to him. He still smells the same as always, only spicier. He wears cologne now, and you breathe in traces of it. You have been glad to be in his home for a few days. You feel between things, lost. You are afraid to go someplace where you don’t speak the language, but you are even more frightened of not going. His house has been a real thing, a few days of stability, but now you’re leaving again. Your brother does not smell like he is going to die.

  The bed, laid with your favorite quilt with the triangles, feels so warm. The lumps of his body—shoulders, knees, feet—swirl and swell under the quilt, rolling and arcing like the Blue Ridge outside the window. Your grandmother made that quilt, her mind wandering to the Cumberland Gap, her mind wandering, wandering for her lost children, wandering as she sewed each little piece. So you have kept it, that quilt. You wish you could stay, but the feeling passes quickly. You hug him for a moment and get up to leave. Your feet flop on the hardwood floor. He rotates and adjusts his head on the pillow as you turn back. He speaks softly as you leave, his voice muffled:

  “Goodbye.”

  * * *

  It is Christmas. It is another Christmas. And another. Another, another. You give unwelcome, unwanted gifts, the offerings of a younger sibling, badly painted, handmade, or broken, to your brother, who is going to die, and who pretends to like them, to know what you meant by them. The gifts get a little better every year. It seems to snow every year. You seem to always have been sleeping in the bed next to his on Christmas Eve. You seem to always have been unable to remember anything else about Christmas. You think of that often now.

  * * *

  Your brother is going to die in five and a half years. You have just finished watching American Bandstand. It is a Saturday afternoon, and you are trying to hide your huge, fat thighs by sitting in a beanbag, sitting with a pillow over your fat, huge, ugly thighs. You are fifteen. Your thighs are approximately eighteen inches in circumference.

  Your brother, who is going to die, is playing records. You don’t know what the music is, and you won’t remember after he dies. His room is white. Painted, no longer his since he left home. The walls are freshly primed; the bedspread is white, the white, two-dollar pull-down blinds are pulled down. His hair is very, very dark brown. He stands in front of you, smiling, while you stay curled up in the beanbag on the floor. Your brother, who is going to die, smells like warm, clean linen. You can smell it from here, from the floor where your fat thighs are. Your brother, who will die, is dancing.

  “Was it like this?” he says, trying to copy a move you have just seen on Bandstand. “Am I doing it right?”

  You laugh. He holds out his hand and asks you to try it, too. You stand, and the two of you move easily, together, separately, together, swirling and grooving.

  * * *

  Your brother will be dead in one and a half years. It is Christmas. The whole family has come to visit your brother in the little town where his Big New Job is, his Big New House. The house sprawls and squats, a real bungalow, with wide porches and drystone walls in the yard outside, pillars, beadboard, a view of the Balsam Mountains. On the front porch there are so many wind chimes, left behind by the previous owner, that you cannot sleep at night.

  You share a bed with your brother for three nights. It snows on Christmas Eve. You lie in bed and talk about a few things. You are both grown up, but you accuse each other of stealing the covers. You giggle. There are so many people in this house, so many spoons in the ramshackle kitchen downstairs, so many things. It is so cold outside. It snows; the wind blows. You laugh and fight.

  You wish desperately, because he will be dead in a year and a half, that you had the courage to curl up into him like a nesting spoon. You can’t remember the last time you did this, and you have no excuse to do so. You feel silly, so you do not ask. You look out the window and watch the white flakes swirling. The wind chimes jan
gle. You do not curl up against your brother, even though, for no reason, that is all you want to do. You wonder if he knows this.

  You exchange good gifts this year. You can’t remember what they were now.

  * * *

  You are two. You do not remember this, but you have been told. Your brother is going to school. You stand teetering at the screen door of your childhood home, screaming. The screen door has to be closed to keep you in, but the windows, big doors, everything is open. It is late summer, and so warm. Fans buzz around you, a low hum that drowns out the rest of the world. Your brother is leaving you, going to school. You are screaming his name. Or, at least, a version of his name. Your toddler mouth howls, calls his name, or whatever you think his name is. The tears streak your face; your diaper hangs lopsided from your waist. You do not remember this.

  Your brother turns around and walks back to the house while you are screaming through the screen door. The school is only just across the road, but you do not know this. You only know he is leaving, and the white metal of the screen door is a barrier as you watch him go. You scream, even though he is coming back.

  He comes back and brings you with him to the edge of the road. He holds your hand and walks with you.

  “I’ll be home soon,” he tells you softly, “I won’t be far away. See?” He points across to the school you do not recognize or see. His brown hair is downy and soft; his cheeks are full. He is only a little boy.

  Someone, probably your mother, because she may be the one who told you this story, holds you back as your brother crosses the road. His legs are chubby, but he walks gracefully. He looks back and waves, then runs to the school on his chubby, graceful legs. You are tired from howling and crying, so you just watch him go, pouting. Your eyes are big, white saucers. He is leaving you.

  You cry for the next five hours until he comes home.