Remember that period of time when the stray pig visited us almost every day? We’d moved out to the country after the attack. The German shepherd came into our yard and jumped on top of you, the last thing I remember was grabbing it by the scuff of the neck, heaving its eighty pound body across the yard. The dog was okay, you weren’t. You had a deep puncture near the corner of your eye and I took you to the emergency room. The tech who drew your blood said you had a third eye now. You kept pulling the stitches afterward, creating a permanent flap. The dog’s owner had just moved in across the street, and delayed repairing the giant gap in his rotting backyard fence, though his trade was carpentry. He showed up on our lawn, crying because he might lose the dog. I made him cry even more, until I was satisfied. I told you we had to move somewhere you could go back outside, your skin was getting pale. The day the moving trucks came I took boards and nails over to the decaying fence, sealing the creature off from everyone else. Our new place was tucked away from civilization, the closest house was a 30 minute drive, which made us wonder how the pig even ended up at our fence line, feasting on fallen acorns. We’d heard her grunting, her saggy teats threshing the overgrown ragweed. You took a liking to her, calling her Gertie. Gertie’s face had several thick folds of skin hiding her eyes. We started throwing our leftovers over the fence. Sometimes she’d come around at night and I’d feed her again while you slept. One day you begged to go to the other side, but I still wasn’t sure. I’d heard horror stories about feral hogs, however, she looked domesticated. Eventually, I warmed up to the idea of letting her through, so I opened our gate. Late afternoon came, still no sign of Gertie. That night there was a knock at the door, through the peephole I saw a state trooper’s silver badge flash under our porch lamp. He tipped his Resistol hat, the cruiser was still running, blue and red emergency lights were smudged by the fog. I tucked my Glock in the back of my pajama pants. He said he was embarrassed to ask, but wanted to know if any of us were missing a finger. I chuckled, asking if this was a case like The Fugitive with the missing one armed man. He stood on the tips of his boots, peering behind me into the house. They’d found Gertie. She’d given birth to a litter of piglets on the side of the road. A truck driver had pulled his rig over to change a blowout when he heard a crunching sound under the tires. I asked if this was an official investigation. The picture on the state trooper’s phone showed a pile of half-digested acorn mush, the stem of a purple cabbage we threw out, the egg shells we added for calcium, a scrap of chewed leather, and a slimy shoelace. Inside the trench of stomach juices was a thumb missing a nail, as if someone pulled it off with pliers, the white bone still caked in dark dried blood, cut clean as if from a skill saw. The officer said the impact of the wheel discharged the phalanges du jour from Gertie all over the asphalt. He gave me a number to call if I remembered anything. When I closed the door, you were standing behind me. I asked what you’d seen. Your cheeks were streaked by several clear channels trailing down your neck. “What happened to Gertie?” you asked. I latched my safety belt arms around you. You were shaking, “If only we’d let her in sooner, this wouldn’t have happened.” I led you back to bed and turned out the lights. “I saw everything—everything,” you said, pointing to your open flap. I went outside shining the flashlight along the goat-wire fence. I thought about how many boards, nails and dirt I’d need to fill all the holes left in the world. I thought about the severed thumb plunging inside your third eye. I walked about the property, coming to its edge where the oak, ash and cypress thickened into a wall so high it blotted out the stars, a place for me to pace, flattening the earth until it went bald.
Guy Cramer likes to write poems, stories and other nonsense. His words have appeared in Dipity Mag and Paragraph Planet. He works from home and spends his off time with three crazy kiddos and a rad tattooed wife. He lives deep in the east Texas pines where coyotes serenade him with haunting howls at night. He's on IG (but mainly for reels featuring chickens) @guy.cramer.
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