About a Hog

Sally and Frank sit on the bench in front of Frank's grocery store. On any given day, an equal number of customers are likely to be outside the store as in it. Sally doesn't consider herself a customer though she does shop at Frank's store. She'll tell anyone who'll listen that she's there to commentate - to supply the local news that the papers won't dare to print. Today, Sally fans herself with the news that did manage to get printed, occasionally almost swatting Frank in the face with her folded-up copy of the Daily Beacon. Her face is moist from heat and tendrils of hair are escaping from her white chignon. Sally's a large woman and she doesn't leave much room on the bench for Frank. But he holds his own. Legs spread out, slightly hunched forward, he squints out into the forest across the road that divides the small Georgia town from a different world entirely.

Ann Marie knows she should be stocking shelves or some such thing but she sweeps the sidewalk so she can be outside and listen to them. The pitch of Sally's voice has alerted her to that there must be something interesting going on.

"I was all bubbly inside when I saw it!" Sally exclaims. "That hog was 800 pounds. The poor creature was under the ground for over a year and it was still enormous."

"Shoot," Frank says, "it was more than 800 lbs. You ever see a grape turn into a raisin? You lose a lot of weight when all the water goes."

"Well, how's a hog going to lose weight under the ground? Even so, 800 lbs is something," Sally acknowledges.

Ann Marie can tell that Frank is about ready to expound on the natural processes of decomposition, but she interrupts him.

"So why did it get dug up if it was buried?" she asks.

Frank swivels his head to look at her, squinting at Ann Marie because she's framed in sunlight. And maybe because he's trying to remember what he pays her to do.

"Cuz," he says deliberately, addressing Ann Marie as if she were slow, "no one believed the picture the boys took of it after they'd killed it. The newspapers didn't believe it. Those city folks said it looked like some paper mache thing. They said they'd never seen a hog that looked like that."

"Well, it did look awful gray and muddy. It didn't look like any kind of hog I'd ever seen," Sally says, fanning herself as she rocks her prodigious girth on the bench. The bench is not meant for rocking or for Sally's prodigious girth.

"But they buried it then? Maynard and Jim put it underground? Why'd they kill it anyway? I never heard of Hogzilla ever hurting anyone," Ann Marie exclaims. Two bright red spots appear high on her cheeks.

Sally and Frank look at Ann Marie as if she is touched.

"They killed it so it wouldn't get away. Somebody else would have shot it," Sally explains patiently.

Ann Marie is silent. A vertical furrow appears between her brows. She's a plain girl and her concentrated expression doesn't help her out any.

"What else would you do with an 800 pound hog?" Sally says, with some exasperation.

"Shoot, she'd make it a pet," Frank guffaws.

Ann Marie feels she should know better but continues anyway, "They didn't even try to get the meat? Seems kind of wasteful."

"Naw, you couldn't eat that meat," says Frank. "It'd be too tough. That hog could have been living in that forest for over a hundred years, outfoxing everyone till Maynard and Jim came. Then bam! Bye-bye. Hogzilla meets its match."

"That's what I mean," Ann Marie says. "It just seems kinda wasteful. Like they'd killed something that belonged there, in that forest."

"People belong in that forest as much as animals do," Frank says belligerently. He scratches his grizzled chin, then rubs his hands on the legs of his dusty overalls. He squints again as if trying to place whether Ann Marie is family in anyway.

"You're not going ecological are you, Ann Marie?" Sally laughs. "You gonna start wearing green for us?"

Frank and Sally titter.

Ann Marie sweeps some more, scattering leaves and dust into the gravel lot. A car passes down the road and doesn't stop or even slow down. She thinks about the life stirring in forests. She smiles to herself and blushes to see Frank and Sally watching her.

"So why'd they dig it up now, all of a sudden?" she continues stubbornly. She doesn't like people laughing at her. Usually, it makes her quiet. But not today for some reason.

"Maynard and Jim thought they could get the city folks to test it. For DNA and stuff. They'd strip the skin off and mount the bones, maybe charge some money for people to look at it. Start a museum." Frank says. He lights a cigarette. Sally wrinkles her nose and makes shooing gestures with her hand. It's an old habit of hers around Frank; Sally doesn't really mind the smoke.

"But didn't it smell?" Ann Marie asks.

Sally and Frank both turn to look at her as if she's some city kid come to do a summer internship at the store.

"Duh!" Sally says and looks at Frank. They both laugh.

"Well, of course it reeked, girl!" Frank says. "That creature'd been in the ground for over a year."

"So you were there when they dug it up?"

Frank nods his head with pride.

Ann Marie pictures the scene. Maynard and Jim and the others would have been wearing heavy scarves to cover their mouths and noses as they exhumed Hogzilla. They'd have started early in the morning but by the time the digging was done, it would have been almost noon, the sun punishing all their bold intentions. Finally, they'd have seen it, a curve of earth-colored flesh, the dirt falling away from it, soft as a sigh. They'd have poked at poor Hogzilla with shovels and rolled its disassembling flesh onto a gurney. That would have been Frank's idea. Then they'd have heaved it into a tarp full of ice and covered it, tried to tie the whole thing together with rope. It'd be around this time that they'd have realized they hadn't planned this thing out entirely. The tarp probably couldn't be completely sealed. No one would have pictured the sheer size of the thing. Not even Maynard and Jim, who should have remembered. They'd have had to deal with the awful smell of that dead hog for about five miles on rural route 8, the melting ice, the bits of Hogzilla sloughing off into the truck bed. Ann Marie imagines the looks of horror on the faces of unlucky motorists driving downwind.

"So when's the museum going to open?" Ann Marie says, suddenly cheered.

She thinks about making some exhibits to memorialize the creature. Putting up plaques to commemorate how hogs fit into the life of the forest. She thinks that maybe she could be sort of a hostess for the place, telling the gawking children and parents who come by how people and animals of the forest can coexist. Maybe she could even keep Maynard from putting up those pictures of bloodied human victims being chewed on by Hogzilla. Or she could at least explain about how uncertain people are in the world, and how it makes them need to turn hogs into legends. She sweeps more dust into the gravel and watches the dark green fringe of trees lining the other side of the road. She pictures herself walking into a forest that invites her and her alone to tell its tale.

####