Those Across the River

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

DORA AND I arrived early at the town hall on the night Whitbrow met to discuss the Chase of Pigs and whether to continue it. Even though school was starting in another few days and the roads needed attention and the bank in the mill town would no longer loan Whitbrow money, the question of the pigs was the only issue on the docket. The meeting was to start shortly before dark, but the sun was still round and orange just above the houses when we got there.

The place was packed.

A wave of human warmth hit us when I opened the door to the beat-up old building, and it was clear we were going to have to spend the night standing. The whole room fluttered with the movement of makeshift fans. I spotted Pastor Lyndon standing on the far side of the room near his seated wife and daughter, looking unsure of what to do in a crowded room he was not in charge of.

God, the whole town had come.

It got worse.

By the time the meeting was officially begun, the doors had been stopped open so a growing crowd could listen in from the yard of the town hall. Some spread blankets. Those that brought chairs sat in these and smoked, and swatted at the mosquitoes that seemed intent on bleeding the whole town white.

“Lord-a-God,” one woman near me said, “took them a while to know we wasn’t in our homes, but they got our number now.”

“In defense of the Chase of Pigs,” Old Man Gordeau said as he opened the meeting in his capacity as mayor, “some would say we ought to keep it cause that’s the way we always done. But times is harder now than they have been since I was a young man, and I don’t rightly see the point in herdin good animals into the woods. Now, I didn’t like it when them government sons a bitches came and bought up our piglets in ’33 and killed em all. They cut babies out a sows and plugged the river up with dead ones. But I had to admit, that did raise the price of pork. The difference bein that they was doin it all over the country. We’re the only idiots doin it now, and nobody’s payin us a red cent.” Some in the room started to clap, but Gordeau waved them down. “Pastor Lyndon here is goin to tell us God wants it, an he knows better than me what God wants, at least s’far as scripture goes. But I don’t think God wants us to go hungry. And I don’t think God wants us to turn animals that don’t know how to fend for themselves out to die when they’s used to havin their corn give to them in a trough. That’s all. And, Reverend, I’ll start goin to church more.”

The people in the hot hall were glad to laugh. This town liked its mayor, and those who wanted the Chase stopped felt their cause swell; as he sat back down, applause still rippled through the room.

Next up was Lester Gordeau, but as he took the podium Old Man Gordeau shouted, “Sit down, boy! Before I give you the wire end of the brush!” and got another spasm of laughter.

Lester did not laugh. His Adam’s apple bobbed and he did not look up much as he spoke. He said, “I think we should keep the Chase because we always had it. It was ours as long as I can remember, and I don’t think no other place had it even once. I mean, Morgan’s always been a bigger town and they ain’t got it. I know it costs and times is hard, but I’ll keep givin what I can if others will. I mean, the mill town ain’t even got it.”

His father could not resist speaking out of turn again, and he said, “Know what they got in the mill town that we ain’t got? Pork chops!”

The hall boomed with laughter and Lester sat down abashed.

A small but distinct sound of surprise rose from the gathering when Martin Cranmer was called to the podium. He came in from my left, pushing his way in from the yard, mumbling what looked like “Excuse me” through his beard, and then he stood and looked at the people for a long time before he spoke.

He was wearing the same tight, pale yellow suit he wore to the Social. His hard hands gripped the sides of the podium so the knuckles were white, but his face was calm. I was sure he was drunk in that way that only career drinkers get; he seemed sober, but his eyes shone as if he had a secret and exclusive communion with the wellspring of all knowledge.

Martin said, “I know a lot of you don’t like me and that’s fine because I only like a few of you. I hunt things in the woods and I stuff them and I sell them. Some of you good Christians buy another product I sell in jars because I run it through twice for good measure, I charge the thump keg just right, and you know I don’t cut it with embalming fluid like MacLeish did before you ran him out of town. Some of you trade me the yeast or corn or sugar I need, but other than that I don’t need people. If you all disappeared tomorrow I would be as happy as the man in the moon.”

“Get to the point,” someone said from the back, not yelling, but loud enough to be heard.

“My point, without putting too fine a point on it, is that marching those pigs out into the woods is the most intelligent thing you people do. Every month I watch a couple of young men go by my house and to the river with the pigs. I watch the fellows take that little ferry off the rocks and load the animals on and pull them across the river and let them go. And sometimes, just sometimes, I hear squealing.”

Now they were listening.

“Have any of you ever seen a pig running around loose in those woods?”

Nobody spoke.

“Lester, you fish that river. Have you ever seen one of those pigs?”

Lester shook his head in a gesture that was barely visible.

“So my point is that something, or someone, or something who is someone is making a meal of those swine. And if you stop sending them, do you think it is possible that your pig-eater, or pigeaters, might decide to come to town for supper?”

“You’re eating those goddamn pigs!” Buster Simms shouted. The people laughed.

“You are wrong,” Martin said. “I do not eat the flesh of pigs, and neither do I eat carrion, although I have been known to put straw up its ass. I have become a Moslem. And if any of you holy heathens would like to hear the true gospel of the prophet Mohammed, I will be happy to testify while wearing the outfit that is traditional to the whirling dervish.”

“Your time’s up. Now git off the damn podium,” Estel Blake said.

Martin put his hands over his chest, performed a Moslem bow, and then left, squeezing past frowning townsfolk. He stumbled and nearly fell when he reached the door, then disappeared outside.

Paul, who was an aldermen as well as owner of the general store, read from the sign-up sheet and saw that he was next to speak. He pulled at where his tie pinched his neck and stood before the crowd, saying, “I’m with Gordeau senior. Seems to me we been wastin a lot a pig flesh. Two pigs a month don’t sound like much, less it’s your turn to give em up. I know our folks took the pigs out startin in olden days, but our folks also rode horses or mules and none of them had the electric lights, which a few of our businesses have, and our houses will soon. These are new times. Lot of you been payin me on credit til times get better. Well, times ain’t better. Some of you ain’t paid me in a year. Still, nobody owes me as much as one healthy breed sow would fetch at market. The Good Book says, ‘Render under Caesar.’ Seems to me a man ought to pay his worldly debts first. Thank you.”

And so it continued into the night. Miles Falmouth stood for continuing the tithe of pigs, and his words carried weight since he was the last one to lose livestock. He also went off on a tirade about how squatters had been coming into town now and again, and how they were likely the ones eating the pigs since they had no professions and could not be trusted. Ursie Noble stood up and said that she liked plaiting flowers for the pigs, and that since she did not have much that was fun to do, she would hate to give it up.

Around ten o’clock Pastor Lyndon gave a long and rousing sermon using the story of Isaac and Abraham as a centerpiece, repeating the refrain, “If the Lord God desires it, it shall be done!” until he got even some of those from the other side riled up. Old Man Gordeau actually raised his hand before speaking out of turn this time, and said, “Forgive me Pastor, but I read the Good Book cover to cover and I don’t remember no mention of leading pigs into the nettles with flowers around their neck.”

Pastor Lyndon said, “And neither did you read about the town of Whitbrow. Yet you did read about sacrifice. Do you believe, Brother Gordeau, that sacrifice was meant only for the children of Israel? The Lord has made manifest His desire for the Chase of Pigs through tradition. We were not present when the Lord made creation, nor were we of an age to question when our grandfathers saw fit to lead the first pigs away. Will we call them fools that nursed us and nursed our mothers? Will we now walk over their graves to put meat on our plate? We should thank the Lord for letting the choice between Him and Mammon stand so clearly before us.”

Anna Muncie, the teacher of the younger grades, had the unpleasant task of following Pastor Lyndon. She said, “I am just as right with Jesus as anyone here. Yet I think we are doing our children a disservice to raise them in the shadow of such an ignorant tradition as this. My late husband had been to Spain before we married, and he told me all about bullfights. That is also an ignorant tradition, although he allowed that he quite enjoyed them. Now, we have no control over what the Spanish do in Spain, but we have control over our own actions. I try to tell the kids about the marvels of the modern world and flight and medicine and all that, but then we stand around and let little girls decorate pigs we should be eating and shoo those pigs away for no good reason. Help me to help our kids not be savages. Thank you.”

Old Man Gordeau called Eudora Nichols as the final speaker of the evening, noting that the meeting would reconvene the next night for others who wished to have their say before the aldermen voted.

She captivated them.

I watched her do it.

If the men wanted to hate her for being a woman or a Yankee, her beauty soothed them and her reason made them listen. If the women resented her beauty, then the kindness in her voice made them forgive her for it. The kindness told them that she would never try to turn their husbands, that she would never look down her nose at them if they were plain, nor envy them if they, too, were cleverly made.

She did not use any new arguments; the idea that the money saved from the Chase would help to ease at least a few of Whitbrow’s troubles had been addressed before. She did offer one new proposal, though.

“Why not fashion pigs out of straw or branches and decorate them? Perhaps the labor would be sacrifice enough. Ursula and the others could still weave flowers through them. And they could be carried out to the same place. I don’t know. I’m not as religious as I perhaps should be. And I’m not from here, as you all know. But I care about what happens here, and I hope you’ll agree with me that the money from the collections might do better buying clothes or paying bank notes for those who are struggling instead of reimbursing farmers for wasted animals.”

She got considerable applause.

Gordeau called out, “I’m sorry I called you a carpetbagger!”

“Mr. Gordeau, when did you call me that?” she said.

“Not to your face, ma’am.”

When she was done and she walked away from the podium, some looked back at me where I was beaming at her from my spot against the wall. Some looked at Pastor Lyndon to see if he was looking unfavorably upon her, but he was not.

When Paul called the end of the meeting and those of us who were inside went out and mingled with those who were outside, we all got treated to one more spectacle.

Martin Cranmer was on his bicycle. He rode around the town square fast like a little boy, and he howled. He did not howl loud enough for anyone to fuss at him about the noise, but he howled low so that when he circled near the town hall everyone heard plainly what he was doing. The ones nearest the road watched him as if he were a stuntman or an acrobat doing a trick, so he did a trick. He put one foot on the seat and stood with the other foot held up high behind him, steering shakily and grinning at them through his beard.

“That man’s three sheets to the wind,” a woman said, and, as if he had been prompted, Martin hit a stone and fell, slowly and luxuriously, the way hard drinkers fall even in accidents involving machines.

Lester Gordeau’s younger brother Saul ran to help the taxidermist up and the sheriff came over, too, and talked quietly to him so that he nodded his head and pedaled off gently.

“He’s alright,” Sheriff Blake said. “Nothing hurt but his liver. Let’s all go home now.”

And that was what they did, each to his own home.

And I believe none slept well that night, and none remembered any good dream.

THE ALDERMEN HELD their vote the next night, deciding six against three that no more pigs should be herded into the woods. This was the same margin by which the advocates of the Chase had won two years before when the same issue had come up following the slaughter of piglets for the Hog Reduction Program. The decision was read and entered into the minutes at 8:15. Lawton Butler, whose pigs were next on the registry and due for surrender in the coming weeks, reportedly got up out of his seat and raised his hands to the ceiling as if he were about to be baptized.

Eudora went to this meeting without me.

I had begged off so I could work, but what really happened was that I sat in front of the typewriter and nursed three glasses of Drambuie.

Dora said not many came at all.

ALL THE DRAMA and the most compelling speakers had gone the night before; besides which, it had been widely believed that the ceremony would not survive a second vote, so few were surprised when the decision was entered.

What did surprise the community was the death of Paul Miller, alderman and owner of the general store.

It surprised Paul, too.

The pain hit him while he was standing on a stepladder to stack flour on a high shelf. It shocked him so that he stepped off the ladder wrong and cracked his head, dropping a sack of flour, which burst all over him and the floor. This happened early in the morning two days after the vote.

Dr. McElroy, an old-time black-bag doctor who kept his office in the back of his house, was the only one who was not surprised.

He filled us in at the general store.

Why was I hanging around there? Why wasn’t I at the typewriter? Because I had to go into those woods next, that’s why.

Where are your pants, my friend?

“I told him his heart was not bad insofar as I heard no murmurs or irregular beats, but that his restin heart rate was high, and he didn’t need an MD to tell him he was carryin too much. I told him he had a clean bill of health so long as he’d promise to lay off the fat meat, cut his portions and start takin walks. He only heard what he wanted to hear. Like most of us, I reckon. Maggie Whaley found him all white with flour on his floor, an she came runnin for me. I told her he was dead when he hit the floor and she couldn’t of done a thing; truth is, he was probably still tickin, but that’s the kind a thing you say. Either way, he was all done when I listened to that big chest of his. No more prime rib for you, old man. It’s a sorry damn shame is what it is.”

Paul Miller was buried in a very large box. His funeral was well attended despite the rains that came on the tail end of a hurricane that had given hell to the Florida Keys. People strained to hear the pastor’s words in the wind.

Some of those hunching under newspapers or shared coats owed him money. Of these, I’ll bet some wondered if the list of debtors would be found by his wife, and struggled with whether or not to tell her. I was sorry that his big, generous face would no longer loom behind the pickle jar, and that he would be crushing no more hands with his aggressive handshakes. Many of the others were sorry, too, that his listless, rail-thin brother would likely take over the store, at least until he found out how much work it was.

The rain was heavy and warm and made small lakes on the potted road that led back from the churchyard. What we all felt that day, even those of us who were new in town, was that something had changed in Whitbrow, something had given way, and what would follow would not be to our liking.