Compensation

Compensation

I knowed they made a mistake when I met the pig. Yessir. Met a pig, I did. Introduced to him, I was, as a matter to fact. “Skipper, this little fella is Frankie.” Frankie. Cute little porker, but a pig is a pig, whether you names him Frankie or you names him Pig, which is what you outta be namin’ him.

But I didn’t say nuthin. I’m not much gone on talk, but not much I don’t see, less I don’t hear.

I ain’t had a pig myself in nigh on fifty year. Nar sheep, nar cow, nar chicken. All that gone by the wayside now. Ever since the government put in the road. In come the fancy stores and the fancy ideas and people started grumbling about the noise and the stink and the cows in the garden and got so it was more trouble than it was worth. The government give us the road and the baby bonus to spend in their fancy shops, but we paid for it. Yessir. That we did.

Not that the missus cared. She was glad enough to swarve off to the shop, all slickered up in her fancy shop lipstick, out spendin that baby bonus on store-bought grub and lip paint. Got so she wouldn’t go near the pigpen. “They’m your pigs, Harnum.” So I give em up, along with everything else, after a time.

Never even got the baby bonus. The missus claimed that one. Compensation, she called it. New word, back then, and she took to it like a pig takes to dirt. Common enough word now, compensation. The farmer gets compensation for the crops he don’t grow and the fisherman gets compensation for the fish he don’t catch. The lay-about gets compensation for the work he don’t do and the baccy smoker gets compensation for the good health he don’t have.

The good book says it right: The sins of the fathers are visited on the children. I ain’t never fished, never farmed. I ain’t never smoked and I ain’t never been short for a day’s work. But I looks at me cheque and I knows just who’s compensating who, and it ain’t the government. Though I s’pose there’s them that would say the pension cheque is compensation, too. Is a strange world we live in.

Come-from-aways, they was, them that owned the pig. Nice enough folk, just a young couple, but different from we sort.

The young feller, Jon, spelled without the ‘h’, was a military man, worked on the base in the city, a two-hour drive over the government road. One week on, one week off. Wanted to get away from the rush, he told me, get back to the earth.

The little woman was named Abigail. I could call her Abby. A right pretty bit of fluff. I took a shine to Abby right off. The baby’s name was Chastity. That shocked the missus, and I think it was right then and there she decided she’d be holdin’ no court with the new neighbours.

Had to give the young feller credit. He did more in that week off than most fellers did in a month. Big ideas, though. I wondered about him at first.

Wanted the natural life, Abby told me. So she bought her veggies and her berries at the government shop and chopped it all up and boiled it into pickles and jams and jellies. A lot of work, I thought, when she could have just bought the jams ready-made to begin with. The young feller liked that natural life too. Made his own wine. They sure did like the naturalness of that. The wine flowed next door like water over a fish’s tail.

But they weren’t no slouches, and they weren’t just talk. In the space of five or six years, they had their garden. Taters, turnips, carrots, cabbages, beets, peas. Fancy stuff, too. Tomatos under plastic. Cucumbers and pumpkin. Some feathery green stuff they called asparagus. Took Jon several years to get that one. Right proud he was. The missus sniffed. Asparagus! But she always took what Abby sent across the garden, asparagus and all. Strawberries, too, tubs and tubs of em. Stocked our basement freezer with Abby’s offerings, the missus did.

“Fertilizer,” Jon without the ‘h’ told me. “ All to do with the fertilizer.” The missus said I’d wear me tires down to the rim, truckin’ home seaweed and capelin for Abby to spread on her garden.

There was trees and flowers too. On this bald old rock, was almost a miracle what they done to that plot of land.

They was interesting neighbours. I liked to watch em. Even after eight years, you weren’t never quite sure what they’d be up to next.

Me and Abby got to know each other pretty good. What with the young feller gone every second week, she’d call on me for the odd repair job. Then she’d fix me up with a cup of tea, and set out them pretty jellies and jams. Abby was right proud of them jellies. She’d hold em up to the window and have me look at how clear they was, how they sparkled. I’d agree. My missus never had jam that sparkled so. Not, of course, that the missus ever checked, but I weren’t about to tell Abby that. Sure, Abby was even buying me them store-bought cookies the missus wouldn’t allow on account of me blood-sugar. Sometimes, Abby would send me home with a bottle of jam. “Tart,” the old woman would say, and I don’t think she was referencin’ the jam. I used to say the missus would’ve made a fine pig, and I don’t mean that in no disrespect, but she’d sniff out only what you put right in front of her nose. She was a little more discernin’ when it come to Abby.

Abby home-schooled little Chastity. We didn’t rightly know what home-schoolin’ was first off, but when we understood, the missus got her nose up in the air again. “Our schools not good enough for her kind?” I let it all wash over me. Our own grandson was just a year behind Chastity. It were downright painful to watch little Jakie bend over the kitchen table, sweatin’ bullets over them crooked ABCs he drawed out. Chastity was already readin’ little stories. A right pretty baby she was, and she growed into a proper little lady. She called me Mister. Mister Harnum. I told her Skipper was alright. That’s the way of it around here. But Abby said no. Skipper weren’t proper. Jon weren’t quite so concerned with proper, he called me Skipper all the time. I called him Jon, Jon without the ‘h’.

Abby liked to write, too. “Write what?” I asked. “Stories,” she said. I asked her could I read one. She said she didn’t much like having people read her work before she was published. I asked her what she’d published. She couldn’t rightly say, but she give me one of her stories anyway. I took it home. All about Mother Earth and her breasts succoring man and man succoring Mother Earth. Awful lot of succoring. I didn’t much understand it and when I took it back and Abby asked me if I’d liked it, I told her it was nice. I didn’t ask for no more.

Got so I thought there weren’t no more surprises comin from down across the garden.

Then come Frankie. Gonna raise a pig and butcher him come fall. And what did I think of that, Skipper?

Like I said, I didn’t say nuthin. There was plenty that did. The neighbours got all up in arms and Council told Abby and Jon that Frankie had to go. Abby wrote a letter to Mr. Mayor and she let me read it. Real pretty it was, fancy words strung together like poetry: municipal bylaw this, municipal bylaw that, constitutional right, environmentally friendly. I asked Abby for a copy and I carried it home and stuck it to the cupboard. The missus said it was shameful, but she wasted no time in pointing it out to company. The Mayor let ‘em keep the pig.

Old Bessie Reid up the road come every day to visit Frankie. She’d sniff around, worsn’ the pig, get what she come for, and spend the next three days makin her rounds and tellin her tales. “Disgustin’ it is, namin’ a pig like a youngster. And that little girl not in school. Swillin’ around in that pen like she was one of a litter.” Would take Bessie the full three days to pass on what she seen and what she didn’t, and next thing you know she’d be back for another social: a cup of tea and an investigation. I asked her once why she visited, if the pig bothered her that much. “It’s me constitutional right, Harnum,” her snout high in the air.

Frankie were kind of cute when he was little, with them beady black eyes and that big old button nose. Chastity took him to her bed the first night. Next day, there was a mattress in the garden. Day after that, I helped Jon load the bunk in my truck and we hauled it to the dump. You can smell a pig for a long time. Don’t smell much like bacon.

Frankie weren’t little for long. Chastity played in that pen with him for weeks, but it got so Frankie was that huge, Abby was afeared he’d drop on the youngster and squat her. That put a stop to the pigpen frolics.

Jon brought loads and loads of scraps from the mess on the base. Frankie got to be something of a celebrity; all the neighbours dropped off their leftovers, chatted a little with the big old hog, sipped on Abby’s tea and chowed down her homemade bread and sparkly jelly. Weren’t much better than the pig, a lot of ‘em. Even the missus was savin’ her scraps. “Might as well send it down to that blasted pig,” she’d tell me.

Man, that hog could eat. Me and Jon kept feedin him one day, seein if he’d ever get enough. No way. Bucket after bucket of food he ploughed through. We didn’t stop until Abby got mad at us, tellin us we was cruel; we was gonna kill him with kindness. We weren’t never doin’ it for kindness, more for sport, though we didn’t tell Abby that. When old Frankie stopped eatin he just sorta flopped where he stood. Didn’t hurt him none, though. He was back up and snufflin for more before we polished off a third bottle of that natural wine.

I didn’t bother wastin’ me breath warnin them not to get attached to Frankie. They already done that when they give the pig a name. Leastways, Jon had sense enough to know he couldn’t do in the hog himself. I offered. I had no particular attachment to the pig and I’d finished off plenty in my day. Jon was grateful. Told me I’d be well compensated for my role. I looked forward to that. Been a long time since I’d had fresh pork.

When the big day come I put old Frankie down with my 222 Winchester. We was all quite solemn and respectable, and later we waked the old boy with a drop of natural wine. Abby had taken Chastity out socializing so the little one wouldn’t be witness to the slaughter. Don’t think Abby much wanted to be there, neither. Jon trucked Frankie off to a local feller we knew who packaged him into roasts, chops, ham, bacon, and sausages.

It were a couple weeks before we brought him back home. I was invited to the first feast. The missus wouldn’t come. Barbarous, she called it, like eatin a neighbour’s dog.

Frankie smelled a far sight better on the plate than in the pen, and I was fair droolin when we finished grace. ‘Amen’ had hardly reached the Almighty’s ears before up she went. Chastity started in with the screechin and bawlin and Abby weren’t too far behind. Them plates come off the table a far sight faster than they went on. Into the garbage went everything, even the taters and turnip.

We packed old Frankie into gunnysacks and drove him to the dump, his final resting place. Jon even covered him with a little dirt so the wildlife couldn’t get at him. We returned to Abby, and for the last time we waked old Frankie with story and song. Abby had more of that natural wine than me and Jon put together.

It was late when I left the neighbour’s, but a while before I got home. I snuck in real quiet like so as not to wake the Missus, but the Missus don’t miss much. “What’s that you dragged to the basement in them gunnysacks?”

“Compensation,” I told her, “compensation.”