Synaptic

Writing Objective: Write an essay in the tradition of Montainge, Orwell, and Dillard

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Sarah and I crouched inside the old wash house, pretending that our sole purpose was patting the kittens that wandered across the cracked cement. I deliberately hid in a corner that couldn’t be seen from the farmhouse and stroked the mottled kitten called Ugly. The house’s door screeched open and the dull clunk of Mom’s boots across the porch caused us to hold our breaths. Several seconds passed. Sarah leaned from her crouched position to peer around the door.

“Sh!” I commanded at her soundless movements. She froze once more and we both strained our ears, praying we wouldn’t hear anything more than the wind. The chore of vaccinating and carrying the one hundred piglets had to be done, but I preferred delaying the despised task as long as possible.

“Gi-irls!”

I heaved my pudgy, eleven-year-old body upright and shoved my little sister onto the dirty cement while obediently following Mother’s call. Sarah got up and trudged down the long, grassy hill behind me.

The crimson paint on the old hog houses had baked and stretched beneath the brutal Iowa sun for decades, and now it was slowly withering away, leaving the exposed wood to fight its own battle against the elements. The two fading buildings stood shoulder to shoulder, both roughly forty feet by fifteen, identical in appearance and purpose. The murmur of softly grunting hogs and the distinct odor of manure hung in the spring air.

My sister and I lingered outside of the nearest hog house, which currently contained only the empty steel crates that we would toss the pigs into after their shots. The wind snapped at our exposed cheeks and snatched strands of Sarah’s hair from beneath the hood of her sweatshirt. Neither of us muttered a word. We weren’t especially eager to begin.

We heard the roar of Dad approaching in “The Bomb” long before we actually saw the ’76 Olds pull into the drive. I gave Sarah another playful shove.

“C’mon!” I ordered, and we plodded through the mud and manure towards the building containing die pigs. Blinking against the glaring sun, we stepped around the watering trough and then awkwardly hopped over a hog carcass. I glanced down at it. I wasn’t sure how long it had been there. The legs were jutting out at a sixty-degree angle and the eyes were crusted over. Flies clung to the coarse hide. Some sharp-toothed animal had gnawed into the yellow and bloated belly, and now the hog’s guts trailed onto the cement. Swollen and gray, its tongue was hanging sideways out of its jaw. I opened the door of the second building and the overwhelming stench of hog excrement forced me back several steps before 1 could proceed into the dank building. My eyes adjusted to the darkness and took in the twelve aligned crates, each containing a monstrous sow and her piglets.

“There you are,” Mom barked and shoved a wriggling piglet into my hands. It grunted and put up a mild fight to scramble back into the pen with its siblings and mother, but I fiercely gripped its ear with my small, chubby hand, just as Dad had shown me. 1 returned to the less offensive air of the outdoors and clutched the small pig with its black, marble eyes and rough skin while Dad jammed needles into its neck and clipped its teeth to prevent it from biting other pigs. Then Dad cut off the curly-Q tail. I didn’t know if there was a reason for that, but I knew better than to bug Dad about such trivial things.

Plodding back through the muck, I carried the pig over to the empty building, tossed it into a crate, and then returned to get another pig and went through the whole routine again. By the fifth trip, I didn’t even notice the decaying hog carcass.

I grabbed yet another piglet Mom pitched at me and hauled it out to Dad.

“Too small,” he growled. He just stood there, looking at me.

“So…Do I put him back?”

“Naw. Bang him in the head,” Dad commanded. “There’s a cement post over there. Swing the runt by its hind legs and smack its head against the post.” He imitated the motion. “It’s just like swinging a baseball bat.”

Dad never joked. He was completely serious. I looked down at the small creature kicking its legs in attempt to free itself from my grasp. As I saw the deformed backbone pushing up its rough hide, my mind flew through millions of reasons to justify my killing it. “Runts” were unhealthy, prone to disease, and usually killed by the other big hogs who harass them. Dad had informed me of that many times. And it wasn’t as if I’d never seen a runt killed before. I just wasn’t sure if I wanted to do it.

Many people have the misconception that farmers are more “in tune” with nature. Farming is all about the attempt to dominate nature. We try to force plants to grow according to our desires. We use animals as a source of food and money. We curse when “nature” interferes with our plans by hailing on our perfectly planted fields or causing animals to die.

I grew up on an isolated farm where the nearest house was a mile and a half away. My childhood days were spent roaming fields and playing with animals. But this did not increase my “oneness” with nature or create any environmentalist affectations in me. I still prefer to climb the tree instead of hug it.

My bottle-fed calf, Comet, was my best friend when I was seven, but I knew her inevitable fate and didn’t cry when it took place. (To this day, Dad still calls hamburgers “Cometburgers.”) Fields will always be cleared and animals will always be slaughtered. My experiences have shown me that it is just a fact of life on the farm.

Dad was staring at me. I extended my arms to hand him the piglet.

“You do it,” he scowled. I could tell by his voice that he was ashamed of having such a wussy daughter. I knew I should do it. A good farm girl would. But I didn’t really want to.

The bulky figure of my thirteen-year-old brother emerged from the building with a squirming pig in hand, lie gripped it confidently while Dad performed the necessary procedures on it.

“Switch!” I grinned as soon as his pig’s curly tail fell to the ground. I threw the runt into his arms, grabbed his pig. and hurried off, not pausing until I had tossed die healthy animal into one of the empty crates in the other building. An enormous wave of relief washed over me. I smiled and marched back toward the hog house containing the pigs to continue the task at hand. I heard the thud of the piglet’s head cracking against the cement as I crossed back over the rotting hog carcass.