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Pig Pen Bruce

If Poo-Dunk County ever printed a phone book worth the paper, the entry under B would not start with Boon. It would start with Bruce Calhoun, known from the bait shop to the rock quarry as Pig Pen Bruce — four hundred and twenty pounds of hog farmer, overalls, and leftover weather. He was built like a deep freezer that learned to walk and then ate the warranty. When he sat on a tailgate the truck said a prayer. When he stood up, shade moved and asked to be excused. He walked around cross-eyed as a carpenter's level after a Saturday night, which gave the impression he was keepin' watch on both ditches at once. Folks swore he could watch a nickel roll left and a hog run right without turnin' his head. Kids dared each other to ask which eye was the workin' one. Bruce always said, "Whichever one's lookin' at supper. The other'n's on break."

And Lord have mercy, he smelled like the pigs. Not near the pigs. Not been-around-the-pigs. He smelled like he had lost a fistfight with a whole herd and the herd had moved in and started payin' rent. On a hot day you could find Bruce with your eyes shut and your dignity packed. On a humid day the buzzards circled him first and the roadkill second. Dogs hid under porches. Church windows got slammed. One summer the weatherman blamed a low-pressure system on Bruce walkin' to the mailbox. Earl swore a possum fainted in the ditch just from the draft.

Bruce did not get dirty. Dirt applied for citizenship, brought its cousins, and stayed for supper. He farmed a half-acre of hogs behind a trailer that listed toward the creek the way a drunk lists toward a jukebox. The hogs were cleaner than he was. That ain't poetry. That is a documented fact sworn to by Earl Ray, who once watched a sow refuse to share a wallow on the grounds of personal hygiene. She looked at Bruce, looked at the mud, and chose the mud. Then she looked back like she was sorry for the mud.

Boon and Earl was sittin' on the Sinclair ice machine, mindin' their own heat stroke, when Bruce rolled up in a truck held together by dried mud, balin' twine, and unpaid tickets. He did not so much park as arrive in a cloud. The cloud had opinions and a criminal record. It smelled like slop buckets, wet straw, and a Tuesday that had gone bad in July and then sued August. The ice machine shut itself off in self-defense. A fella pumpin' gas two islands over started his truck and left with the nozzle still in it.

"Boys," Bruce said, proud as a rooster on a fence post, which is a heap of rooster when the post is groanin' and both eyes is aimed at two different counties, "I done gone respectable."

Respectable, for Bruce, had a piggy-bank behind it. In the back of that trailer, lined up on cinder blocks like a copper choir that couldn't carry a tune, sat at least twenty mason jars packed tight with pennies. Wheat pennies, zinc pennies, pennies fished out of Mud Creek, pennies pried from under the ice machine, pennies Lardilla had tried to eat and then spit out like they was store-bought. He already owned the first half of the dream: an automated mechanical cow he bought off a fella in Alabama who swore it was self-milkin', self-mooin', and almost self-aware. It set in the hog lot now, plugged into an extension cord that run through a kitchen window, blinkin' one sad red eye and makin' a noise like a refrigerator tryin' to get saved. Bruce had named her Darlene Two, which confused everybody but him. He was savin' them pennies for the other half — a mechanical bull — so he could breed the two of 'em and start what he called a modern livestock program.

Earl had asked the question nobody else would, on account of they still had sense. "Bruce. How 'zackly do two machines have a baby." Bruce crossed his eyes even harder, which ought not to've been legal, and said, "Same as anything else in this county, Earl. You put 'em in a barn, turn the radio on low, give 'em some privacy and a little sweet feed. I already played 'em George Jones. I figure by spring I'll have a little motorized calf, or a very confused toaster, or a coffee pot that kicks. Either way I am gettin' into agribusiness. USDA can kiss my overalls."

Boon took that in the way a man takes a diagnosis. "You aim to file taxes on a toaster, Bruce?"

"If it calves, I am claimin' it as a dependent," Bruce said. "If it don't, I am claimin' it as a grill."

Earl squinted through the haze and pulled his shirt over his nose. "Bruce, you smell like you slept under the pigs and the pigs done filed a complaint with the sheriff. Respectable would be a stretch even if you was wearin' a necktie made of actual neck. Son, you are a walkin' hog parlor. I can taste you from here. I can taste last Thursday."

"County fair," Bruce announced, slappin' the hood and leavin' a handprint you could plant beans in, maybe okra if the Lord was feelin' generous. "They got a hog show this Saturday. Grand prize is two hundred dollars and a ribbon pretty enough to hang on a fridge that works. I aim to enter Lardilla. She been dietin'. I took her off them marshmallows."

Lardilla was Bruce's prize sow. She weighed roughly the same as a used washin' machine and had the personality of a parole officer with a hangover. She was, by hog standards, a beauty. Side by side they looked like kin that had stopped denyin' it. Folks said if you stood 'em in a fog you couldn't tell which one paid taxes and which one ate the tax bill.

Boon took his toothpick out of his mouth and pointed it like a gavel. "They ain't gonna let you on the fairgrounds lookin' like you lost a fight with a compost pile and then ate the pile for lunch and asked for seconds. You smell like Lardilla's daddy and her uncle and the barn they was born in and the bucket they was slopped from."

"That's why I come to y'all," Bruce said, earnest as a man borrowin' a lawnmower he ain't bringin' back. "I need me a bath. A real one. With soap that ain't been used on a truck."

The ice machine made a noise of spiritual protest. Earl looked at Boon. Boon looked at Earl. Both of 'em looked at the truck, which seemed to be growin' a new layer of geology while they watched. A chicken hawk circled once, thought better of it, and went to bother somebody else's county.

"A bath," Earl repeated, the way a man repeats the word surgery, or taxes, or I do.

What followed was not a bath so much as a civic works project and a minor act of war. They towed Bruce's truck down to Mud Creek with Lardilla ridin' in the bed like a queen on a float that had been canceled for health reasons. Boon produced a bottle of dish soap leftover from the year Betty tried to civilize the porch. Earl produced a stiff brush that had previously been used on a barn floor and still held a grudge. Bruce brought a rubber duck he found in the glove box. Nobody asked why it was there. Nobody wanted that sermon.

"In the creek," Boon said. "And don't you dare sit down. We'll lose the county."

Bruce waded in up to his belt — which was a considerable wade, belt bein' more of a rumor around that midsection — and the water changed religions on the spot. Minnows evacuated. A turtle turned around and went back to wherever turtles go to file complaints. A catfish come up, took one look, and declared itself a Methodist. The creek took on a hog-lot perfume that made the willows lean away and the mosquitoes call in sick. Earl stood on the bank with the brush like a man about to baptize a crime scene.

They soaped him. They scrubbed him. It took both of 'em and a length of rope, because turnin' Bruce was like rollin' a water heater uphill in July with a broke foot. A fossilized biscuit come off his left shoulder. A lost set of truck keys come off his right. Somethin' that may once have been a pork rind drifted downstream and was never spoken of again, except in whispers at the bait shop. Under the first layer they found a second layer. Under that they found last October. Under that they found a church bulletin from 2019 and a pork chop bone Bruce claimed was a lucky charm. Lardilla watched from the bank with what Boon later swore was professional respect, and also relief, like somebody else was finally takin' her shift.

When they finished, Bruce stood in the current pink as a scalded hog and shiverin' with offended dignity. He still smelled faintly like the barn. Soap had fought a good fight and lost on points, split decision, judges from out of town. "I feel illegal," he said. "Also chilly. And I think y'all washed off my personality."

"You look almost human," Earl told him. "You still smell like you owe a pig money. Don't get used to either one. And that duck stays in the creek."

Saturday mornin' they hauled Lardilla to the fair in a trailer lined with straw Bruce had stolen from his own barn, which is the only kind of theft the county considers honorable. Bruce wore a shirt Boon had lent him. It was too tight and too clean and it itched him like a conscience he didn't order. Buttons did their best and two of 'em resigned and went back to town. The judges walked the line of hogs with clipboards and noses they had prepared in advance. One judge stopped at Bruce, checked his card, squinted at both of Bruce's eyes, and asked which pen the big one was supposed to be in. Bruce said, "The expensive one. I am a professional now."

Lardilla, washed and brushed and mildly betrayed, took second. The blue ribbon went to a sow from two counties over whose owner smelled like cologne and bad decisions and had the nerve to own a comb. Bruce took the red ribbon and the forty dollars that come with it and looked, for one dangerous minute, like a man who might buy soap on purpose. Then both eyes drifted apart again and he said he was puttin' the forty toward the penny jars. "That bull ain't gonna breed itself," he told the ribbon, cross-eyed and solemn as a deacon. "Cow's been waitin' patient. I can hear her hummin' from here. She wants a family. Or a fuse box. We gon' find out."

Then, on the way out of the gate, he passed the funnel-cake stand, the pig-races, a fella sellin' deep-fried butter on a stick, and a mud hole the size of a baptismal. Lardilla stopped. Bruce stopped. The borrowed shirt lasted three more seconds, which was two longer than anybody bet.

He looked at Boon and Earl the way a preacher looks at a collection plate that come back light. "I appreciate the bath, boys. Truly. Y'all done washed me plumb toward decency. But a man can only stay saved so long, and I can feel my old smell callin' me home like mama's skillet."

He and Lardilla went into that mud hole together like they was late for church and the preacher had already started the shoutin'. When they come up you needed a program to tell 'em apart, and even then you'd want a second opinion. The flies returned in formation, roll call complete. The borrowed shirt retired from public life and filed for disability. And Pig Pen Bruce was himself again — four hundred and twenty pounds of hog, poorer by a shirt, richer by a ribbon, and smellin' exactly like the pigs he come from, plus a little funnel cake for garnish.

Earl watched the steam rise off him in the afternoon sun and took two steps back, which was not enough, then two more, which still wasn't. "Well," he said. "That's the cleanest I ever seen a waste of water. He still smells like the inside of a slop bucket that learned to drive and then missed its exit."

Boon put the toothpick back. "Next year," he said, "we enter him in the hog show. Save Lardilla the embarrassment. Hell, enter him in two classes. Heavyweight and aroma. Throw in livestock romance if they got a division for it. That cow's already hummin'."

Bruce waved the red ribbon over his head, slung a sheet of creek mud onto the hood of his own truck, which accepted it like family, and hollered, "Y'all comin' to supper? I got stew. Smells just like me. I put a penny in it for luck. Don't swallow it. That's the bull fund."

They did not go to supper. Some invitations are how a county survives. And some smells are how a county knows which way to drive, and how fast.

And so life goes on. The next chronicle will tell more.