Falling Backwards: A Memoir (10 page)

Leonard and Dale’s grandparents had a whole bunch of pigs in pens and chickens running about without a care in the world on their farm. (They used to raise minks in the fifties and sixties during the big mink coat fad, I was told. I remember my gram having a mink stole complete with the head still on it. I loved to play with it. Thank God they don’t have those anymore.) Their chickens had huts but they weren’t put into them very often. It was every chicken for himself, I guess you could say.

Before we moved out there, I had seen pictures of pigs, but I had
never actually seen one up close and personal. It was shocking, to tell you the truth. These were
huge
pigs! They were the size of small ponies and they were filthy and fat and they wanted nothing more than to get out of their pens and eat us alive. They had huge teeth. You wouldn’t think a pig would have huge teeth, but these did! And they had long, coarse hair. The hair looked more like quills than hair. Pigs have little beady eyes that follow you around like one of those creepy paintings. No matter where you go, the pigs’ eyes are glued to you, following every move you make. We loved going down to the farm and climbing up onto the pens to throw old onions at them, or rotten eggs. There were dozens of eggs all over the place. The grandparents both liked nothing more than to sit and drink their generic beer and puff away on their hand-rolled cigarettes, so things were kind of going to pot around there. Thank God they weren’t smoking pot, because that would have been the end for the pigs and the chickens.

We spent hours pestering those pigs. They’d rush at the fence and smash into the side of it so hard that the ground would shake. We’d laugh hysterically and then lob a couple dozen more eggs at their heads. The funny part was that they ate everything we threw at them. They couldn’t swallow those onions fast enough. As soon as we pelted them with a giant rotten onion, one pig would rush over to pick it up, throw its head madly back and eat it in one fell swoop. The pigs made the weirdest sounds. They certainly didn’t go “oink, oink.” They sounded more like angry dinosaurs than anything else. They can squeal if they want to, too—it can be high-pitched and completely horrifying, like a baby being thrown down a well. (Not that I know what that sounds like.)

Duray and I were walking up our gravel road to catch the bus one morning when what did we see but a gigantic hairy pig rushing up the road behind us, squealing away like a wounded cheerleader. I guess one had finally managed to escape its old rickety pigpen and
come to seek its revenge on the wrongdoers, meaning me. We ran like we’d never run before and the pig ran too. Pigs are not slow. We narrowly escaped the jaws of death that morning by jumping up on a fence. I was very happy that pigs could not fly. My dad told us that once a pig got hold of you, there would be no letting go. They literally have a death grip and they’d rip your arm off before they’d let you go. My idea of pigs has never been the same.
Charlotte’s Web
has never held much water with me. You can forget
Babe
as well. Pigs are vicious killers with no regard for a child’s young life. I am lucky to be alive. Yes, I am dramatic.

In the fall, Mr. Baldwin, Dale’s dad, would always butcher a pig or two so they’d have meat for the winter. This was news to me because I thought meat came from the Woodward’s Food Floor at the Chinook Centre. Dale’s dad would pick two of the biggest, fattest pigs from the Scots’ farm and haul them up the road in his pickup truck. I always thought they looked so funny in the back of that old beat-up truck, like he was taking the pigs to a movie or something. They had no idea where they were headed, and it was just as well. All of the pigs looked fat to me because I knew that every single one of them had eaten at least seventy-six dozen eggs and a million or so onions. The pigs would ride into the Baldwins’ yard in the back of that truck, and then be led down a path for a few hundred yards, to a spot just behind a rundown old shed. There they would meet their porcine maker. Their throats were slit and then they were immediately strung up by their back legs on a big tree branch over an old claw-foot bathtub. They’d hang there for an hour or so until all the blood ran out into the tub. I remember looking up at them, hanging there, twisting around in a mad attempt to free themselves, blood spurting out of long, gaping wounds in their throats. It was horrible to see—the life drain out of them into that old white porcelain tub. It was like watching some weird Fellini film. Eventually the squirming and
twisting and gurgling stopped. Everything was incredibly quiet. The dead pigs swung from the tree like a grotesque pair of Christmas ornaments. Eyes open and watching you wherever you went.

We kids were lucky enough to have the task of scraping the coarse hair off the pigs after they had succumbed to their injuries. You couldn’t butcher the pig until you had scraped all the hair off it. (You learn something new every day in the country.)

We’d use a long, sharp knife that had a handle at both ends, and as you pulled it towards you, you’d scrape off the hair. It was disgusting. That hair was tough to remove. You’d have to go over and over it with the blade. It made a strange sound as it ran across the pale pink skin that stuck with you when you’d lay your head down at night. It was worse than fingernails on a chalkboard. I’ll never forget that sound, or the pigs hanging there upside down over a bathtub full of warm, crimson-red blood.

I think about those pigs a lot. I feel guilty that I didn’t save them from Dale’s dad. Some nights I’ll lie in bed and stare at the ceiling with my blankets pulled up underneath my chin, watching the pigs’ ghosts flit about the room. I am afraid to even have an arm outside of the covers. I hold my breath and stare at the shadows that seem to swoop down from the rafters to get me. It’s scary as hell. And it isn’t just pigs that float down from the ceiling, it’s the odd cow as well.

One year, Dale’s family was heading out on a two-week summer holiday and thought it would be a great idea for me to look after their one and only milk cow. I had never milked a cow in my life, but Dale and his dad were going to teach me and I was going to milk that cow every day so it didn’t go dry. I couldn’t help but think of the twenty bucks I would make and what I would buy with it.

I was an eager student. I carefully watched how Dale’s dad grabbed the teats and pulled on them in such a way that long streams
of milk magically squirted out of them into a big steel bucket. He made it look incredibly easy. Dale could do it as well.

“See,” he’d say to me. “See what I’m doing?” He’d sit there on the little wooden stool with his head tucked into the cow’s side and squeeze those teats evenly and with just enough pressure so the warm milk flowed out of there like it was the easiest thing in the world.

When it was my turn, no matter what I did, no matter how I squeezed and kneaded and pulled on that udder, not a single drop came out. Dale and his dad laughed at me for the first hour and then they were completely frustrated that I couldn’t figure it out. Finally, after the third or fourth day of lessons, I got it. Definitely a “ta-dah” moment! On one of my last futile tugs, a stream of milk trickled out of one of the teats and onto the ground. I didn’t hit the bucket, but I had at least gotten something to happen. The family would be able to go on their holiday after all and return home to a
not
dry milk cow. I can’t tell you how many times they told me that if I didn’t milk that cow every day it would go dry. Preventing that from happening was to be my sole purpose for living for those two weeks. Two really long and hot weeks.

Off they drove, out of their dirt driveway, headed for some crystal-clear lake, and there I stood, ready and determined to complete my task. I have to admit that the first day was not great. My mom came with me for moral support and I know she thought that the Baldwins were extremely brave and a little crazy to give me this job. We managed to corral the poor cow (which, I have to say, did not look all that healthy to me), get her into the pen and place the little wooden stool underneath her. As I sat there and looked up at her side I noticed her skin was kind of coming off, but what did I know about healthy cows? Maybe the skin was supposed to do that. I didn’t have a clue. All I knew was that I was going to milk that cow, and that was that. My mom stood beside me as I painstakingly milked away
until I thought I’d pretty much emptied her out: I got only about a Mason jar’s worth. Dale’s dad told me that half a bucket was fine if that was all I could get. Three quarters of a bucket would be great, but I should just do the best I could.

Every day I’d walk up the road to the Baldwins’ place, call that scruffy-looking cow over to the shed and sit on that little wooden stool and milk to my heart’s content. I never did manage to fill that bucket up—in fact, every day I seemed to be getting less and less milk from that cow, and every day that cow seemed to look weirder and weirder. Her hair was coming off in clumps and she seemed bloated. My mom had no idea what was wrong with her, and why would she? We didn’t know anything about cows. We both just stood there looking at this ragged thing, wondering what we were doing wrong.

I still had a week to go. I walked up there, rounded up the cow, who was now really reluctant to stand still for me, sat on my stool and began to milk her. She wavered around like she’d had a barrel of vodka for breakfast, making very deep, mournful sounds. I kept trying to steady her and squeeze that milk out. All I could manage was a few drops. I felt the cow’s weight suddenly shift from side to side and, before I knew what was happening, she tipped over. She literally kicked the bucket. I screamed and jumped back about ten feet. The Baldwins’ cow took one final breath and blew it out of her nose with such a force that the dirt blew up around her head. She made one last throaty moan, and that was it. Her eyes stayed open; they looked like wet pieces of coal.

She looked like she’d been crying.

I could not believe that the Baldwins’ one and only cow had just died, right there on the spot. I prayed that she had just fainted, but she was as dead as a doornail. I cried so hard that I could hardly find my way home. I wanted to run but I couldn’t catch my breath and my legs seemed to fold underneath me. The half mile seemed
more like a marathon. I don’t know what I said to my mother when I came crashing through the back door—it was all a snotty blur. I went to sleep that night seeing the sick old cow tipping over again and again.

It’s not like we had cellphones back then. There was no way we were going to be able to get hold of the Baldwins on their holiday. They would just have to hear the happy news when they got home. We ended up covering the cow with a tarp and left her where she fell. My dad said that there was no way in hell that we could bury her—it would take a month just to dig a hole big enough, and besides, what if she came to life again? Anything was possible …

Dale’s dad wasn’t mad at all. He said that the cow had been sick for awhile; I thought, I wish he had told me that. Dale’s little sister Caroline cried a lot over that cow. I guess it was her pet. I didn’t know how in the world a person could ever make up for something like killing a cow. Saying I was sorry didn’t quite seem to cut it. They never asked me to look after any of their animals again and I guess I don’t blame them.

The summers were flying by. The house was more or less finished and we had been living in it for over a year, but dad still worked on it constantly. I had settled into my new school and things seemed easy. Leonard and Dale and I had been roaming the hills and meadows for three years now and we knew every square inch of the land for miles. It’s funny how one summer can change everything, though. Suddenly the boys didn’t want to shoot or snare things anymore. They didn’t want to play with bows and arrows and they didn’t want to drive around on the go-cart. They were changing. Me? Not so much. They got so tall over the summer between grades six and seven. Their hormones had started to take over their young bodies. They were much more curious about my body. The funny part of it
is that they had seen me without a top from time to time. When we swam in the pond we’d often just go in our underwear. They’d seen me pee more times than you could imagine. But now everything was different.

Apparently there is a big difference between nine and twelve. They wanted to play spin the bottle and Truth or Dare. I didn’t know what to make of any of it. I hadn’t changed at all; I was still very naive and wanted to stay the way we were. There wasn’t very much “truth” involved in Truth or Dare; it was mostly “dare.” Their voices were deeper and their muscles were bigger and they were much more aggressive about everything. They were intent on talking me into playing doctor all the time, examining me and wanting me to examine them. Once in awhile I gave in and let them peek into my pants. They would try to bribe me with gum. Gum? What about cash? I couldn’t imagine what was so exciting to look at down there. I felt like I hardly knew them anymore.

Leonard was much worse than Dale when it came to the touchy-feely department. In fact, Dale was always a perfect gentleman. He was very gallant for a twelve-year-old. Leonard, on the other hand, was forever trying to persuade me to go into his parents’ dark and creepy basement so he could try to kiss me. His bedroom was conveniently down there and I remember it was always cold and uncomfortable. I had no idea what he was trying to do, I just knew it was making me embarrassed and sick to my stomach. I’d lie there and stare up at the faint bit of light coming through the curtained window and yearn to be outside playing. I wanted to be anywhere but there with him. He had one tooth that poked out of the side of his mouth slightly. When he tried to kiss me I could always feel it touching my lips, which were very tightly pursed, I might add. I wondered what had happened to my pal? Where had the old Leonard gone? Hormones had happened, that’s what.

I don’t know why I didn’t just push him off me and run home and tell my mother what he was up to. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t really have anybody to confide in. It certainly would not have been either of my brothers. Patrick was five years younger than I was and Duray was hardly ever home. Duray and I certainly never sat down and had long, intimate conversations.