Harrogate stood over his victim with a heaving chest and cursed it. He pitched the pipe away and hefted the pig by its hindlegs and got it over his shoulder, its bloody head flopping, the brains bulging soft and wet from one side of its broken skull. He labored up to the edge of the road and laid the pig in the dusty bushes and rested. Before starting across the road he checked to see that no one was about. Strange urchin dragging a dead pig. A trail of blood. Twigs, small stones clung to the clot of brains. He dragged it up the path and under the viaduct and laid it out on the cool earth and sat looking at it.
He honed his shoplifted pocketknife on a small stone and knelt down by the dead pig and took it by one leg and held it so for a minute and then let the leg go. He squatted on his heels and flipped the knife into the dirt two or three times, his forehead wrinkled. Finally he raised the pig’s leg and stuck the blade into the pig’s stomach. Then he had another thought and seized one ear and wrested the head up and hacked open the throat. Blood poured out and ran over the dirt.
Now he sliced the pig open and hauled forth the guts, great armloads of them, he’d never seen so many. What to do with them. He lugged them down the path and flung them into the bushes and came back. As he had no way of scalding the pig he had decided upon skinning it.
When the owner of the pig arrived he found a scrawny and bloodcovered white boychild standing on what was left of his property sawing at it with a knife and hauling on the skin and cursing. The dirty half flayed pig looked like something recovered from a shallow grave.
He was a black of a contemplative nature and he was just slightly drunk and he stood leaning there against the abutment of the viaduct and took a sip from a halfpint bottle and slipped it back into his hip pocket and wiped his mouth and watched this spectacle of frenzied mayhem with a troubled gaze.
Ahhg, said Harrogate when he glimpsed him leaning there.
The owner nodded his head. Mmm-hmm, he said.
Hidy.
He turned his head and spat and regarded Harrogate with one eye slightly veiled. You aint seed a stray shoat abouts have ye?
A what?
Little old hog. A young, young hog.
Harrogate tittered nervously. Hog? he said in a high voice.
Hog.
Well. I got this one here. He pointed at it with the knife. The black craned his head to peer. Oh, he said. I thought that was somebody.
Somebody?
Yes. You say that’s a hog?
Yes, said Harrogate. It’s a hog.
You wouldnt care for me to look at it would ye?
No. No no. He gestured at it. Go ahead.
The black man came forward and bent and studied the pig’s ruined head. He took hold of the tip of the ear and turned it slightly. This hog’s dead, he said.
Yessir.
I swear if it dont look almost exactly like one I had up at my place.
It was just sort of runnin around.
What was your plans for this here hog if you dont care for my askin?
Well. I’d sort of figured on eatin it.
Unh hunh.
Did you mean to say it was yourn?
If I’m not mistook.
Well foot fire, if it’s yourn why then just go on and take it.
The owner was looking about the little camp for the first time. You live here? he said.
Yessir.
I see lights over here of the night.
I generally keep a lantern goin.
I guess it’s cold in under here. In the winter.
Well, I aint been here in the winter yet.
I see.
You say you live up on the hill yonder?
Yes. You can see my place from just out here.
Boy I like it down here dont you? I mean you’re close to town and all. And they dont nobody bother ye.
The owner looked at Harrogate and he looked at the pig. Boy, he said, what do you reckon I’m goin to do with that there mess?
I dont know, said Harrogate in a quick nervous voice.
Well you better think of somethin.
I’d take it if you didnt want it.
Take it?
Yessir.
Is you prepared to compensate me for that there hog?
Do what?
Pay me.
Pay ye.
Now you got it right.
Harrogate was still standing astraddle the deceased animal and now he unstood himself from over it and wiped his bloody hands down the side of his trouserlegs and looked up at the owner. How much? he said.
Ten dollar.
Ten dollar?
It’d of brung ever cent of it.
I aint got no ten dollars.
Then I reckon you’ll have to work it out.
Work it out?
Work. It’s how most folks gets they livin. Them what aint prowlin other folks’ hogpens.
What if I dont?
I’ll law ye.
Oh.
You can start in the mornin.
What you want me to do with this?
The owner had already started out through the weeds. He turned and looked back at Harrogate and at the hog. You can do whatever you want with it, he said. It’s yourn.
How do I find you up yonder?
You ast for Rufus Wiley. You’ll find me.
How much a hour do I get? To work it out at? Harrogate was fairly shouting across the space between them there under the viaduct although Rufus was not yet thirty feet away.