Winter's Bone

17

ROCKS HELD long by the hillside slipped loose in the melt and scattered downhill to flatten one corner of a hog-pen fence, and fifty hogs roused in the night and shoved through the sudden gap onto the road. The hogs were big and curious and rooted over to the bridge and stood there, blocking traffic. The Twin Forks River rushed along cold and black but streaked yellow, danced upon brightly by headlights. Three or four vehicles had been forced to stop on either side of the bridge. A farmer and his wife with flashlights and sticks and one dog were trying to turn the hogs around and herd them back through the gap in the fence.

Gail said, “Remember when we were little? When Catfish Milton kept hogs, and they told us to go feed ’em corn once, but we didn’t understand how hogs with no hands could ever manage to eat corn straight from the cob, so you’n me hunkered our dumb asses down’n rubbed the kernels off of all them cobs? Remember that?”

“Yup.”

“We thought we were showin’ good sense. My fingers hurt a month, it seemed like.”

“They laughed at us a long time for that day.”

The truck was first in line on the south side of the bridge. The hogs were big grunting humps milling about the bridge and road shoulder. A couple of drivers had gotten out to help the farmer and his wife, but the hogs smelled something fresh in the night and were not easily turned around. Ned began to cry and Gail said, “Him needs some suck, don’t him? Him’s hungry for milk and Momma’s late givin’ him his nipple.”

“You goin’ to nurse him right here?”

“Why not? I don’t seem to make milk like I should oughta, but what milk I make him gets, and him’s hungry now.”

Gail unbuttoned her blouse and pulled the front wide. She undid her bra and let it dangle to her belly. She raised Ned from the basket and his little pink mouth clamped onto a nipple. Ree leaned forward to look closely at the baby’s lips sucking and the heavy bare breasts, and said, “Man, them peaches got big!”

“They ain’t goin’ to stay that way.”

“I feel like a fuckin’ carpenter’s dream, lookin’ at them things!”

“They’ll poof down again before too long.”

“You should get you a picture while they last.”

“I guess I probly should. They can flatten out pretty bad once they poof back down.”

Ree watched Gail hold Ned as closely as anyone could ever be held, feed him supper from a part of her own body, and saw in them a living picture illustrating one kind of future. The looming expected kind of future and not one she wanted. Ned’s baby mouth sucked and sucked on that nipple like he was fixing to drain Gail to the dregs. She said, “I reckon I’ll go’n help kick them hogs off the road. We’ll be settin’ here all night, the way it’s goin’.”

“Don’t let ’em eat you.”

“I doubt I taste all that sweet.”

The hogs were boiling about the bridge, grunting to the far end, then being chased back with sticks. They shrieked when whacked and raced briefly in any direction, slamming one another, slamming the rails, knocking various people to ground. Ree edged across the bridge and began to shoo the hogs, sooey, sooey! toward the gap in the fence. So many headlights shining from both sides of the bridge made it difficult to see clearly. Squealing hump shadows rushed about between the beams. Ree stood near the black rail and when she felt humps bumping her legs or passing near she gave them the boot and more loud shooing. Once the bridge had been cleared a couple of leader hogs finally waddled down from the road and through the gap and others followed.

The farmer watched the hogs going back into the pen, swabbed sweat from his face with a sleeve, sighed, then said, “For cripes sake! There’s two run out on the bridge again.”

Ree said, “I’ll get up there behind ’em and aim ’em this way for you.”

“It’d sure be a help if you could, missy.”

The fleeing hogs were halted by the small circle of folks standing at the north end of the bridge. Their hooves skidded on the road surface. They came to a complete stop and stood there looking into the many blinding headlight beams. The people were smoking and laughing, joking about the great bounty of free hams and sides of bacon that had been running around available in the night without anybody grabbing so much as a hock to haul home. The hogs moved slowly to the bridge rail and walked toward a spot where no people stood. Ree saw their plan and loped ahead of them, turned about and kicked limply at their snouts. “Sooey! Sooey thataway!”

It was the sound of the motor that caused her to look over her shoulder. She’d spent so many long days and longer nights of her life listening for that motor, had so many bursts of relief upon finally hearing that certain memorized rattle and squeak of Dad’s Capri coming down the rut road to the house, that her body and spirit responded automatically to the sound. Wings beat in her tummy and her eyes squinted searching into the various lights. There were now seven or eight vehicles on the north side and she wended through the thicket of beams, hands held to shade her eyes, toward the imprinted rattle and squeak of the family car. She waved her arms overhead, gesturing into the maze of headlights. The hogs followed her off the bridge and she paid them no mind, but began to move quickly along the line of vehicles, waving her hands all the while. She positioned herself to be easily recognized, stood tall facing north, and saw the Capri at the rear of the line as it backed up, turned about in a hurry, and sped away uphill along the road toward Bawbee.

Ree stared briefly after the twin red taillights as they climbed the hill, the red easily visible against the night and general white of the landscape. She breathed hesitant shallow breaths watching the red dots climb, then raced back across the bridge, combat boots drumming hard on the old iron, and yanked the truck door. Gail was bent over the bench seat fussing with a diaper from the blue bag while she tried to change Ned. She had yet to button her blouse or clean his behind and he lay in yellow poop while her breasts swayed above his face. She looked up when the door flew open so violently, and said, “What?”

“Dad! Dad’s Capri was over across the bridge! He took off toward Bawbee—see them taillights?”

“You sure it was him?”

“It’s our car.”

“Ree, we’re still sort of a little bit stoned—you sure you saw him?”

“I ain’t so stoned I don’t know our own goddam car when I see it! And that’s what I just fuckin’ saw—let’s get after him.”

Gail leaned over and began to tuck herself away, button her blouse.

“Well, you’ve got to finish changin’ Ned’s diaper, then. You do that’n I’ll chase. Or else you’ll have to wait a minute while I do.”

Ree sniffed the scent of baby shit in the air, looked at the yellow smear, the helpless drooling face, then reached beneath Ned and pulled him and his fouled diaper onto her lap.

“I got him.”

Gail put the truck into gear and lunged forward across the bridge. She drove slowly past the line of waiting vehicles with the people standing about and two hogs yet running around, then stomped the gas pedal flat and chased her own headlights up the thin winding road. She got the speed up to where the high-set old truck felt loose and tilty on the turns. If you lost the road there was no shoulder and it was a smashing drop into lonesome wooded gullies. She kept her foot heavy on the gas and crossed into the far lane on tough curves.

She said, “I’ve lost them taillights.”

“Get around this bend’n maybe we’ll see him ahead down in the bottoms.” Ree was trying to wipe Ned’s butt with a blank section of the dirty diaper while jolting about in darkness inside a speeding truck that leaned toward tilt on the curves. She aimed her swiping fingers at the baby soil but her hands bounced about and she felt her knuckles sink in muck and slide across smooth skin. She wiped her fingers on the diaper, raised Ned a bit, and swabbed his baby butt until it looked close enough to clean in the shadows. “I don’t see taillights nowhere now.”

The truck said warning stuff on the turns in a grating metal language. The tall shifter shook about angrily and the black knob ducked away from Gail’s hand until she let up on the gas pedal. “Man, I can’t go this fast!” The truck coughed and heaved as it lost speed. “That’s too fast for this ol’ thing to go safe.” The road was black to the eye and always turning, one long dark loop dropping sharply toward the bottoms. The truck passed between glum forests of plucked trees and clots of shivering pine. “It won’t do no good for nobody if we slide off this goddam ridge.”

“Ugh—where’s a clean one?”

“Clean one what?”

“Diaper.”

“It fell to the floor, there, by your feet.”

“I don’t trust myself to stick in pins rollin’ around like this.”

“He sprung for some store-bought kind. They don’t call for pins.”

Black ice lay slick where the road bottomed, and the truck slid a surprise twist sideways and completed most of a circle before rubber found dry asphalt again and Gail yanked the squealing tires straight. She yelped and slowed fearfully to a shambling pace, then suddenly stopped altogether and sat trembling, overlooking a steep bank of scrub and a frozen cow pond. Her pale hands remained choked around the steering wheel. Beyond the pond there were shorn open acres of stumps and snow and deep drifts built against stacks of felled trees. She bowed her head to the wheel. She said, “Sweet Pea,this ain’t what we got stoned to do.”

During the brief spin Ree had clutched Ned bare-assed and squirming to her chest. She’d held him fast with both hands while whirled about to slam her shoulder against the door and smack her cheek against the window glass. Now she cradled his head to her chest with one hand and spread the diaper on her lap with the other and felt an odd blush rise on her face. She started to laugh with relief and said, “Well, you never do know for sure what you’re gettin’ stoned to do. That’s a big part of why you do it.” She calmly began to wrap and fold the diaper snug around Ned’s voiding spouts and he smiled a winning toothless smile. “I think he looks a way lot more like you than him, know it?”

“Me, too.”

“Especially if his hair comes in red.”

“Floyd’s momma prays against that happenin’ every day.”

At lower speeds the truck grumbled and lurched awkwardly at times. In the bottoms beside the river lay the best growing dirt in the region. The houses near these unshapely stretching fields were burly and flush, with young trucks in the driveways and paid-off tractors in the barns. Chopped cornstalks poked above the snow, and useless old tassels and shucks had blown into the wire fencerows and stuck to the barbs.

Coyotes began calling down the moon.

Ree held Ned tugged to her side and said, “Let’s get on home. This is no good. I mean, why would he be runnin’ if he saw me wavin’?”