Suttree(55)

Gene.

Yeah.

What the hell do you reckon is going to happen when somebody touches that pole?

Harrogate had not even risen to secure the bird. He sat there squatting in the lawnchair with his arms wrapped around his knees, smoked odor of his ragged clothes, looking up at the pole and then at Suttree. Well, he said. I’d say it would knock em on their ass.

It would kill them.

Harrogate looked mildly speculative. You reckon it would? he said.

Another day pigs. A whole covey of red shoats loose from some hillside hogpen that crossed a clearing in the blackened vines and went on downcreek toward the river. Harrogate watched them and then suddenly sat very erect, looking around.

If them niggers catches you eatin one of their hogs they will have your ass, he said.

But they got to catch me.

He rose and started down the hill toward the road and toward the creekside jungle where the pigs had gone. As he went he studied the pens scattered among the trees on the hillside above him, eclectic shelters hammered up out of snuff signs and boards and odds of fencing all hung in plumbless suspension down the bald and raingutted slope. He could see no one hunting hogs. When he struck the path along the creek he could see the tracks of the pigs here and there in the patches of black mire like the delicately pointed prints of small deer. Coming past a collection of old waterheaters he started them and they flushed into the wall of ivy with high raspy snorts. He picked one out and dove after it. It went through a mass of vines and over a mound of broken fruitjars and disappeared with an agonized squall. Harrogate fetched up in a small clearing. He had tilted himself into a locust tree and was bleeding in several places. He could hear the pigs diminishing in the distance.

When they came out on the riverbank at the point they paused to test the air. They started downstream at about the time that Harrogate emerged from the brush and they checked and swung back along the creek, their noses dishing and their eyes white. They defiled down a gully to the water and bunched and jerked their noses at it and came back. Harrogate was closing on them like a gangly tiptoe spider. They veered with new alarm and snuffled and went on down the point.

Looky here at these pigs daddy.

A man rose up from the tall grass where he’d been sitting and put his hand on top of his hat and turned around. The pigs flared like quail. They passed Harrogate some to the left and some to the right all screaming and he looked about and threw himself finally in the general direction of the pigs and landed full length with a grunt.

When he came upon them next they were feeding in a bower of honeysuckle, turning up the black earth and devouring worms and grubs and roots with subdued hoggish joy. Harrogate watched them through the vines, admiring them for plumpness, salivating slightly. He had resolved upon a rush, the pigs being too wary for stealth. He came headlong through the honeysuckle, his eye on one pig and one pig only. They squealed and went rocketing away through the underbrush, his the fleetest of the pack. In no time they were gone. He stood leaning against a tree, his hand on his chest, panting. He turned around. There was a sustained muffled screeching coming from behind him. He retraced his steps and crossed the chopped ground of the clearing. Following the sound he came upon a pig with its head in a bucket. As he approached it went running. It crashed into a tree and fell back and lay there squealing. He ran to it and seized it by a hindleg. It kicked and peeled back a long flap of hide from his forearm. He dropped it again and tried to push the skin back over the wound. Goddamn, he said. The pig went on through the bushes.

He could hear it caroming about, the bucket banging and the pig screeching. He plunged after it. It ran head on into the creek and floundered there in the filthy water with gurgling screams. Harrogate launched out birdlike and fell upon the shoat with an enormous splash.

He came bedraggled and wet and filthy up through the woods dragging the pig by the hindlegs. Casting about for something to knock it in the head with. He finally selected a stick and laid the pig down, pinning the rear feet to the ground with one hand. He began to beat the back of the pig’s head what of it showed above the bucket rim, knocking the bail off, denting in the bucket, raising bloody weals along the pig’s neck and the pig shrieking until finally the stick broke and he flung it away. The pig gave a great jerk and he fell upon it to hold it down. Shit amighty, he said.

He came up with the pig holding it about the waist, the bucket against the side of his face and blood running all down the front of him, hugging it while it kicked and shat. Coming up the creek walking spraddlelegged and half staggering until finally he must stop to rest. He and the pig sitting in a copse of kudzu quietly getting their strength back like a pair of spent degenerates. Every time the pig squirmed Harrogate would call down into the bucket for it to quit. His arms were getting tired and the one that had been peeled was hurting. He struggled up again with the pig and got as far as the garden of waterheaters when his eye fell on a piece of pipe lying naked and unattached upon the ground. He picked it up and hefted it, the pig sagging in his arm, its forefeet sticking out. He laid the pig down, kneeling on it until he could get both hindfeet in a good grip, and then he raised the pipe and swung with all his strength. Blood spewed from under the edge of the bucket. The pig screamed and gave a mighty surge and began to run sideways in a circle, dragging through the black leaves and rubbish. Harrogate swung again. The bucket went skittering off and the pig’s fearcrazed eye looked up at him. A whitish matter was seeping from its head and one ear hung down half off. He brought the pipe down again over its skull, starting the eye from its socket. The pig had not stopped screaming. Die goddamn you, panted Harrogate, swinging the pipe. The pig humped and stiffened. He bashed it again, spattering brains over the ground. It stretched out, trembled and quit.