vituperation

“They don’t look like they approve,” Robyn said as we turned off the road and several goats down in the holler next to the driveway stopped what they were doing to stare at us.

I thought about rolling my window down and making a goat noise at them, but thought it probably wouldn’t make the best impression should Mr. Johnson be looking out the window. We crept past the goats–the driveway was large chunks of crushed rock–watching them watch us.

Mr. Johnson lives in the extreme northern part of the state, just a couple of miles from the Tennessee line. As such, he lives in gorgeous country full of rolling grassy hills and tiny tree-covered mountains. Despite the dreary day and general bare ugliness of winter, the beauty of the land shone through. If we ever moved from Smallville, I’d want it to be to some place more like Tennessee.

The call from Mr. Johnson came Thursday night while we were finishing up 30 Days of Night, perhaps the best vampire movie I’ve seen in years. It’s rare for a movie to creep me out, but this one did more than once. Plus, it’s got some excellent graphic violence, including one absolutely fantastic scene involving vampires and a very large trencher.

“I got them l’il ol’ pigs penned up,” Mr. Johnson had told me during the call.

So, an endless day of work and impossibly long drive later, we were pulling up to his house. A light rain fell, as it had for most of the day. As much as we need the rain because of last year’s drought, I’m surely getting tired of being muddy all the time.

The driveway led behind the house, so I went to the back door even though I felt like that was a little taboo. When I knocked, a yappy little dog inside announced my presence. Shortly, another door I hadn’t noticed about twenty feet down opened, and Mr. Johnson came out.

He was a large man, a couple of inches taller than me and maybe seventy-five pounds heavier. His florid face was open and pleasant, and snow white hair covered his head. A shock of matching white chest hair poked from the front of his flannel shirt, where the top button was undone.

We shook hands and exchanged pleasantries. He introduced himself as “Egg,” which made me feel like I’d passed some sort of test.

“I reckon I got them pigs penned up down yonder,” he said, pointing down into the farmland below. His house sits up on a hill, overlooking the rest of his property.

“Excellent,” I said, and marveled over how much he sounded like Karl Childers from Sling Blade.

“If you foller me, I’ll git’n my truck and we can go fetch ‘em.”

He led us back down the driveway and onto the road. Once again, the goats stopped eating to watch us go by. We followed him left and down to the bottom of the hill, then left again onto another rocky dirt road. I found myself hoping that my little compact wouldn’t get stuck, because that would be the epitome of city boy, even though I’d dressed in jeans, a denim shirt, and work boots to convey my country essence.

We drove slowly past an old mobile home with a pickup parked out in front, then an open area where two roosters and two hens foraged in the grass. Beyond the field was a house, and several small old sheds packed to the rafters with interesting rusted things. There was a large grain silo by the house, and Mr. Johnson parked beside it. I pulled up close behind, parked, and opened the car door.

Like Frankenstein’s monster, the smell outside had taken on a bizarre life of its own. It attacked me as I got out of the car, invading my nose, mouth, and lungs with a fierce intensity, sucking the breath out of me. There’s really only one word to describe it.

Shit.

Lots and lots of shit. Up close and personal shit. In your face shit. In an instant, I understood why people file lawsuits when pig farms open up nearby. The smell is horrific, because it smells more like people shit than animal shit. Unless you’re a coprophiliac, it’s a bad smell.

Mr. Johnson walked back and leaned down to introduce himself through the open door to Robyn, who stayed inside. Together, he and I went to the back of the car to get the cat carriers we’d brought.

“What kind of car is this?” he asked.

“It’s a Hyundai Accent.”

“Bet it gets some good gas mileage.”

“Yessir, it does. About 35 miles to the gallon on the highway.”

In our call the night before, I’d asked if the pigs would fit in a cat carrier, [over]explaining that I didn’t want to drive the truck if I didn’t have to because of the gas.

He led me over to a small pen, maybe five feet by eight, where six young pigs stood around looking vaguely alarmed. They ranged in size from tiny to roast-with-an-apple-in-its-mouth. The two little bitty ones were mighty cute.

One of the pigs farted, a long squeaky one punctuated at the end by a dribble of something a little more liquid.

“I figgered on sellin’ you these two,” he said, and pointed to the two largest pigs.

“Those’ll be fine, but do you think we’ll be able to get them in the carriers?”

He grinned. “Reckon we’re about to find out.”

One of the tiny pigs grunted, and squeezed out a grayish turd, an impossibly long thing that hit the ground and started piling up like ice cream from a machine before it broke off.

“You want me to open the front or the top?”

“Try the top. I can just set her down in it.”

He snatched up the pig in question, the largest one in the pen, by grabbing one of her back legs up by the ham. She shrieked like, well, a stuck pig, and started kicking. A plume of liquid shit shot out of her hind end like she was some kind of obscene party favor. She flailed and kicked and screamed. She screamed and flailed and kicked. She farted, then shit a little more.

Through it all, Mr. Johnson just stood there, holding her by her hind leg, a sort of amused expression on his face. After several seconds, the pig calmed down and just hung there. He lifted her high enough to clear the wall of the pen and lowered her head first into the carrier.

She did not seem to care for this.

She started bucking and squealing, and fighting like hell. I can’t say as I blame her, because those were some tight quarters for her. She gushed another streamer of liquid shit, all over the carrier and my hands, which were near that end trying to fold her back end into the carrier.

This was the point where I realized I’d have no problems killing a pig. With my bare hands, if need be.

No matter what we did, the pig wouldn’t fit in the carrier. Finally, Mr. Johnson gave up and put her back into the pen. We found another cage, but it was smaller than the cat carrier. I wished we’d brought a cage, even if it meant bringing the truck.

“I can take males if they’ve been castrated,” I said, trying to be helpful.

“Oh ayuh, I cut ‘em last week.” He scanned the pigs, looking for something suitable.

“I can also take some smaller ones,” I said. “I wasn’t planning to slaughter them until December anyway. They should have plenty of time to get big.”

I pointed at the tiniest of the pigs.

“Is that one the runt?” I asked. I’ve always heard not to get the runt.

“Naw, that one was born later. Sow had babies up there on the lot and they all froze before I could get to ‘em. That’s the only one that lived, and he just took up with these.”

He grabbed the tiny pig by a back leg and raised it up, then noticed something poking out of its belly roughly where I would expect the umbilical cord to have been attached. He muttered something that sounded like the word “extrude” was part of it and set the pig back down.

Finally, he settled on a couple: the second and third smallest. We got them packed away in the carriers without too much trouble, though the larger one was in there kind of tight. We let them sit for a couple of minutes to get more calm, making country talk, and then we put them in the back of the car. Given the amount of pig shit that covered the one carrier, I was thankful I’d had the forethought to put a tarp down for the carriers to sit on.

I went over and washed my hands in a mud puddle, then dried them on the towel I keep in the car. If there’s one thing I learned young — from a book, natch — it’s that you should always have a towel around.

As I paid Mr. Johnson, I asked if I could see some pigs that were slaughter-size, because I didn’t really know how big 250 pounds would be.

“I got some back here,” he said, and led me a ways on down the muddy road. As we walked, he kept the conversation lively by telling me fascinating anecdotes from his life. We came to a pen that held three or four good-sized pigs, maybe knee high and three feet long.

“Those are 250 pounds?” I asked, thinking I can manage that.

“Naw, those are only about 80 pounds.”

I began to wonder what I’d gotten myself into.

We went through a gate, past one of those sheds filled with stuff I’d like to dig through, and came to a waist high fence. A little ways off, I could see a few Volkswagen-sized things lolling about in the mud. They looked like rhinos, only a little bigger.

“Those are slaughtering weight,” Mr. Johnson said. “They’re between 250 and 300 pounds.”

Toto, I thought. I don’t think we’re in Kansas any more.

“Excellent,” I said, trying to hide my fear. I had visions of being trampled by angry pigs dancing in my head.

Back at the car, I thanked him again and we left.

A couple of months ago, Robyn and I took a trip up to Mennonite country in Tennessee. While there, we stopped at a convenience store to pee, and we both managed to step in a huge pile of fresh horse dung that looked like mud. We didn’t realize we’d done it until we were back in the car and had smeared it all over the floor mats. That drive home was the most horrible drive of my life.

Until yesterday.

I’m not even going to try to describe what it’s like to be in a compact car for 30 minutes with a couple of shit-coated pigs, because really, there’s no way I can convey. Let’s just say it was pretty bad and move on.

At home, I moved the pigs from the car to the bed of the truck and drove them over by the garden shed, where I spent about five minutes washing them. I felt bad for them, because I imagine it would be particularly scary to be trapped in a tiny box with a stranger spraying me with freezing water from a high-powered hose. Despite my efforts, the shit and mud were caked on and dried and a good bit didn’t come of.

I washed them until the water flowing out of the carriers was mostly clear, then took them out to their pen and released them into the shelter. They beelined to the back, where they promptly buried themselves in hay. They’re still there now, fifteen hours later. They’ve eaten nothing, they’ve had nothing to drink.

I know they’re there still because I went out this morning and crawled back to them. I even did a little ear scratching, which they seemed to like. I rubbed the snout of the little one and he tried to bite me, the bastard. Hopefully they’ll calm down a little today—it’s beautiful out—and I can get some pictures.

In Labyrinth, reference is made to a place called the Bog of Stench, a place that smells so bad if you get a drop of it on you, you’ll stink for the rest of your life.

Whoever wrote that movie must have been around pigs.

Last night, I showered once I was done. In the shower, I scrubbed my hands three times with soap and cloth, yet I could still smell the shit on them when I was dried off. I went to the kitchen and scrubbed two more times, this time using a scrub pad.

I could still smell the shit.

Robyn poured pure bleach over my hands and I scrubbed again…but could still faintly smell the shit.

This morning, I’m pleased to say, the smell was completely gone.

Until I managed to crawl through some shit when I was checking on them.

Fun facts from Mr. Johnson:

• He has anywhere from 80 to 120 pigs at any given time
• He also has cows, goats, chickens and pheasants
• Once, he had peacocks, but something killed all but one, and some teenagers stole that one
• The house by the pigs was his first house, and he uses it as a barn now
• His grain silo holds eleven tons of feed, and he also keeps a shed filled with feed
• Mexicans like to hog-tie pigs for transport
• He once had some Vietnamese people come from Huntsville and kill the pig, scald it, and scrub it, right there
• He sells a lot of pigs to feed lots for finishing out