Sloughing Off the Rot (23 page)

El Camino de la Muerte led John on a twisted path through the desert. Red stone and sand gradually gave way to more verdant lands. The Badlands faded into the past. Natural arches disappeared and lush foothills, covered in ancient trees and vegetation, replaced them. Beyond the foothills, hiding behind fog and clouds, steep mountains jutted from the ground and poked at the sky’s belly. And the path meandered in the direction of the vague mountain forms. The trail of clouds above grew fuller, heavier, and ready to burst. A watery murmur drew attention to the stream that paralleled the red brick road. Symmetric rows of date palms lined the stream.

“Dates are nice,” said Joad. “I like dates.” He stepped off of the red brick road. Alf followed. Joad stood on the tips of his toes and plucked ripe dates from a tree, occasionally pricking his hand on the tree’s thorns but not caring about the pain or the blood that trickled down his wrist. In the shade of the tree, the giant and the donkey sat and gorged themselves on a load of the sweet fruit.

John and Santiago kept walking the trail as Joad and Alf the Sacred Burro feasted on the fruit of the palms. Far off of the trail they saw small huts with sod roofs grouped together. But the inhabitants of the small villages either did not see the men passing or intentionally avoided them. Dirt-rat colonies no longer proliferated at the edges of the red brick road. New animals, stripe-dogs and beggar-monkeys, sat placidly off of the road, their eyes following John and looking as if they were judging him as he passed. Giant fluff-hens scampered across El Camino de la Muerte and pecked at the ground. The green and red birds with their oversized, pointy beaks, settled in open nests and did not flee from the men.

And Santiago screamed, “Yahhhhhhhhhhhhh!” He darted from the path and charged a fluff-hen’s nest, waving his arms and flapping his tongue, leaping spastically, as if possessed by idiot demons. The fowl fluffed to twice its size and charged Santiago, pecking and clawing at him, trying to keep him from her nest. Feathers and curses and blood flew from a raging dust cloud as Santiago clutched at the bristled bird. The razor-talons of the fluff-hen sliced through the air and found the skin easy to gash. Santiago’s hands found a firm grip on her neck and squeezed until the fluff-hen’s claws ceased trying to rip his flesh. And the bird grew limp in his hands. Santiago tossed the fluffed up ball of feathers to the side and looked down at the oozing gashes on his arms and abdomen. He drew his fingers across a flow of his blood and then brought the stained fingers to his cheeks, painting red swipes, like war paint, across his face.

“What the hell was that about?” called John from the road. “Was that really necessary?”

Hands on knees and drawing in deep breaths, Santiago laughed his manic laugh. “I thought she’d skedaddle and leave her eggs for us for dinner. Didn’t think she’d want to feel the sting of the scorpion or the bite of the wolf. I didn’t know those things would put up a fight. Can you dig it?”

Joad and Alf the Sacred Burro, done with their date feast, appeared at John’s side. “Those are fluff-hens,” said Joad in his low-key, muffled tone. “They will fight to the death to keep predators away from their eggs. Mostly they are left alone because of their ferocity. But their eggs are nice. I like their eggs.”

Three green eggs, speckled with red dots, sat motherless in their nest. Santiago plucked the large eggs from the nest and carried them to the road. “Dinner,” he said to his friends, placing the eggs in Alf the Sacred Burro’s saddlebags.

Sitting on the other side of the road, a stink-pig watched on with interest. Neither John nor Joad nor Santiago noticed the tusked boar with the coarse, bristling Mohawk stripe of hair running the length of his spine. But the boar noticed them. From a distance he followed the men as they walked on down the road. The stink-pig did not set foot on the red brick road, nor did he want to. But as he dogged John, other stink-pigs joined in – boars, sows, gilts, shoats and piglets – and trailed the group of men. Still, John, Joad, and Santiago failed to notice the sounder of stink-pigs following down wind from them. The number of the beasts gave the group a collective bravery and the stink-pigs approached closer, their grunts finally attracting the attention of the men.

When the swine sensed that the men were not interested in them, they approached the humans and walked ahead of, alongside, and behind them, just off of the red brick road. In the midst of the stink-pigs, their presence was undeniable. The animals fumed with a rancid, musky mixture of piss, ammonia, and sulfur. Despite their fearsome appearance – the muscular upper bodies, stubble-covered lips sneering over dagger-like tusks, the always-bristling strip of hair down their backs – the stink-pigs made no aggressive behaviors toward the men. Instead, the hogs moved along at the same rate as John, their long, tufted tails flicking in the same manner as a happy dog’s.

“Do you think we need to worry about these pigs?” said John to both Joad and Santiago.

“I think we need to huff and puff and blow their house in,” said Santiago. “We need to nibble the meat off their big bones. We need to dine on green eggs and swine.” He gazed at a large stink-boar as if he had not eaten in twenty days and twenty nights. The boar edged to the outside of the drove of stink-pigs, putting other potential victims between himself and Santiago.

“I think there is not so much difference between these stink-pigs and us,” said Joad. “There is no difference between a pig and a man. They are both intelligent living beings. We are following the path. The stink-pigs follow the path. For us to make a distinction between ourselves and those pigs is merely a human conception for our own advantage.”

Santiago twisted his face through the range of expressions and ended up with an arched unibrow and an incredulous smirk. “Now who you jiving with that cosmic debris? You saying we ain’t no better than those stinking beasts? You saying we ain’t in danger of the pigs? You saying we shouldn’t eat them? You saying you don’t like stink-pig ribs?”

“No,” said Joad, flashing a smile like a mouth full of river stones. “I like ribs. Ribs are good.”

“Then what are you saying?” asked John. “Because I’m not so sure I get it either.”

“I’m not really saying anything,” said Joad. “Just talking to hear myself, I guess. Sometimes the rumble of my voice calms my head. Do I think that we are in danger from these animals? No. Alf doesn’t seem spooked by them. And look, they wag their tails like they’re happy. I sense no danger.”

“Well, they reek like festering meat shits,” griped Santiago. “We need to ditch them or get upwind of their stank.” He ran toward the side of the road, waving his arms, jumping from foot to foot and howling like a coyote. But the stink-pigs paid him no mind. They neither shrank from his madness nor returned the strange display of aggression. They merely moved along with the flow of the path, keeping in stride with John.

“Can’t we do anything to scare these things off?” asked Santiago, recognizing the futility of his tactic. He looked to John. “Can’t you bring down fire and thunder to scatter them to the corners of this land?”

“I don’t think I can,” said John. “It doesn’t really work like that.”

“Well, how does it work, brother?” said Santiago. “Because this stench is getting the best of me and I don’t think I can endure it much longer.”

And it was true. The stink-pig fumes burned the men’s eyes, raped their noses, and scorched their throats. A hot, itchy burn dragged itself across their skin. No matter whether they tried to cover their faces or fan the fumes away, the stink-pig atmosphere assaulted them.

“I don’t know how it works. I only know when it will and won’t work,” said John. “And, I just know that there isn’t anything I can do to get rid of them. For some reason, it seems like they should be here.”

“I think I know what to do,” said Joad. He stepped to the side of the road and knelt down. The soft whistle from his lips beckoned a young stink-bitch to his outstretched hand. The pig approached without hesitation and took a ripe date out of his palm. “Hey there, girl,” Joad said, patting at the stink-pig, ruffling the strip of coarse hair on its head. Alf the Sacred Burro stepped several feet back and dropped a pile of donkey mud to try to cover the stink-pig stench.

The stink-bitch looked into the eyes of the stooping giant. Its sneering lips turned to a sweet smile and its thin tail wagged enthusiastically from side to side. The stink-bitch rested back on her haunches and let Joad scratch between her ears. Soft grunts of pleasure escaped the pig’s snout in response to Joad’s gentle touch. His other enormous hand reached out and scratched the stink-pig behind the ear. And the pig looked into his eyes and realized only too late that Joad was not in love with her. And Joad locked his massive hands around the pig’s neck, cutting off the flow of blood and oxygen to her brain. She managed a sharp squeal before losing consciousness, alerting the rest of the stink-pigs to the peril of coming too close to the men. And the sounder of swine backed away, their wary eyes locked on the giant.

And Joad felt remorse. He did not want to hurt the stink-pig. He lifted the pig and estimated its weight at somewhere around three talents. He noted that the stink-bitch was clearly an adult and probably a recent mother judging by her swollen nipples. But he knew it was the only way to scare the other stinking pigs far enough away that their stench would not sicken the men. It would have been a shame to pass up perfectly good pork, so Joad hefted the weighty stink-pig, wrapped it around his neck and over his shoulders, and carried it to a kapok tree beside the road.

With the sun fading out for the day, Joad hung the stink-pig by its back feet from the kapok tree. He tied her front legs together to prevent her from struggling. The pig swayed in the breeze and Joad whispered to it, “I’m sorry I have to do this to you, pig. But it is necessary. And I won’t let you go to waste.”

The sounder of stink-pigs all watched from a distance. Snorts and squeals traveled on the wind and stung Joad with their accusations. The cries of some of the stink-piglets sounded disturbingly like the weeping of freshly orphaned children.

Joad circled his victim, justifying his actions to the stink-pig. Meanwhile, Santiago jumped around just outside of Joad’s reach and chanted, “Kill the pig. Cut her throat. Kill the pig. Bash her in.” And he stuck his fists against his sides and flapped his arms like wings, prancing about with his legs bent and bowed, chanting all the while, “Kill the pig. Cut her throat. Kill the pig. Bash her in.”

Joad shouted at Santiago, “Stop it. Show some respect for life and death. After all, we are not savages.” And his arm shot out, the fleshy palm of his hand finding the side of Santiago’s head, knocking the madman to the ground.

“Oh sure, get mad at me,” spat Santiago, laughing his nervous titter. Ass on the ground and hands propped behind him, he laughed at the giant and said, “Yeah, I’m the problem. Like I’m doing something to hurt piggy. We mustn’t let anything happen to piggy, must we? Look here, brother, I ain’t the one that choked out that stink-bitch and set her to swinging in a tree. That was you. Now let’s get her ready for dinner.” And he started chanting and dancing, now out of Joad’s long reach. “Kill the pig. Cut her throat. Spill her blood. Kill the pig. Cut her throat. Spill her blood.” But he stopped and backed quickly away as Joad moved toward him with surprising agility and speed. And though mad, Santiago knew well enough to stop and let Joad take care of the stink-pig in his own way.

John and Santiago sat on the road and watched Joad tend to the suspended stink-bitch. Santiago said, “That boy ain’t right. Look at ‘im, babbling his gobblety glibbety gangly goop to that stink-bitch like she can understand him. Ahhhhh!” he shouted. “Go ahead and kill the pig. Cut her throat. Spill her blood.” And he shut up just a quickly as Joad turned and stared him down.

Ignoring his audience of men and pigs, Joad sat on the ground, looking up, and spoke to the pig. He stood and circled her, patting her on the back and rubbing her head. With one hand locked onto the strip of hair running along the stink-pig’s neck, Joad drew a dagger from a sheath that hung on his leather and bronze kilt. The knife slashed a clean part of the stink-bitch’s throat skin. With a mere wee wiggle and one tiny squeeee, the stink-bitch gave up and spilled death onto the soil beneath the tree. Once drained of her blood, Joad commenced butchering the stink-pig.

And that night they did dine on green eggs and swine. A lone dire wolf howled a low, sad howl, as if mourning the loss of the stink-bitch. Though the meal was delicious, and though they enjoyed it greatly, John and Santiago said nothing as they ate. Joad’s solemn demeanor demanded respect and the men gave Joad his due. When the fire died down to embers and the two moons rose in the sky, the men pissed a protective circle around their camp and lay themselves out on the ground. The wistful song of the dire wolf yowling at the two moons played like a lullaby that sang the men and Alf the Sacred Burro and the congregation of stink-pigs to sleep.