A Fantastic Holiday Season: The Gift of Stories (19 page)

“That’s the fastest dead pig I ever saw,” I said as Hank approached. Now I could see the blood dripping from his hand.

“Meanest, too,” Hank said. “Fucker bit me.”

Wilbur climbed back onto his feet again with a growl nearly as disturbing as his empty, pink eyes.

“Well,” I said, “I’m glad he’s back.”

“It’s a Thanksgiving miracle,” he said as he dropped the rope over the pig’s neck. It spun on him with a yowl, snapping at his ankles and Hank danced back, yanking the rope tight. “Heel, Wilbur, heel.”

My phone vibrated in my pocket again. I was pretty sure it had to be Bobby. By now, Mama would’ve been at him about his change of plans.

I took the call from my narrow porch, watching the light flakes add to what would make for a slippery, cold Thanksgiving. “Hey bro,” I said as I watched Hank drag the angry pig back into his pen.

I thought about digging the pie scraps out of the dumpster, giving the pig some kind of welcome back treat. But the way those teeth kept snapping at Hank, I reckoned Wilbur was fed up with fruits and vegetables and more in the mood for meat.

Tomorrow, I thought, I could bring him some turkey.

Thanksgiving, I thought, for the pig.

“So tell me about you and Dana,” I said with a smile into the phone. “How long you two been going out?”

Then I slipped back into the warmth of my trailer to figure out my oven and bake some pies while my little brother sputtered and spun on the other end of the line.

The flashing lights in the middle of the night were a great reminder to hang the curtains and blinds sooner rather than later.

I rolled out of bed and went to the window.

There was an ambulance and two county sheriff’s sedans and their red and blue lights played out over the freshly fallen snow lent some Christmas magic to Thanksgiving Eve. Two deputies stood talking with Hank’s wife. Even from a distance, I could tell she was crying and she had a field dressing on her cheek.

Ah shit.
Hank had seemed harmless enough but I was smart enough to know about books and covers.

The paramedics wheeled him out now and I barely recognized him. His skin tone was wrong—deathly pale—and his eyes were wide and empty. His mouth foamed as he snapped and snarled, twisting and pulling at the restraints. One of the paramedics nursed a bloody hand, the latex glove torn and dangling like red, loose skin.

I cracked the window, not wanting to become one of the nosy neighbors that gathered on their porches or in the snow.

Mrs. Summers voice carried easily. “No,” she said, “I thought he was dead.” She sobbed again. “I called 911, started CPR and then he bit me.”

“Fucker bit me, too,” the paramedic said over his shoulder as he helped load Hank into the ambulance.

My last sight of the trailer park manager, his eyes were rolled back in his head as he strained against the straps and howled his rage, showing his teeth, veins bulging in his neck and forehead.

The ambulance left first and once it did, people started slipping back into their trailers as the deputies finished getting her statement.

“Did you husband take anything, Mrs. Summers? Any kind of substance or medication?”

She shook her head.

“Anything unusual happen today?”

“I don’t think so. I was at work.”

The pig, I thought. I should tell them about the pig.

I turned away from the window to find my sneakers and then turned back at the sound of snarling. Wilbur tore out from under my trailer at full speed, plowing up the snow like a dirty yellow torpedo, to crash into one of the deputies and sink his teeth into the man’s ankle.

“Ow,” the deputy said.

I remember thinking that it certainly still seemed to be Thanksgiving for the pig. And on the heels of that thought, I wondered just what was happening here in the Shady Grove Mobile Home Park and whether or not Great Granny’s Grateful Pie was culpable in the matter.

It was not a night for sleeping.

After the deputies tried put down the pig—multiple shots fired, more sleep-faced residents gathering on porches– they left and I settled back into bed and drowsed. But at some point, I heard shouts and maybe thirty minutes later—slow for Arlington County—the red lights were back.

This time, I slipped on my clothes and headed out to meet my neighbors the old fashioned way, gathered around a police car in the trailer park.

“No,” one of the neighbors said. “Stu said she bit Maggie Rae and then ran off into the woods.”

I stayed near, picking up what I could both of the night’s events and the gossip it may have played into. Hank was doing meth with the neighbor woman while his wife Susie held down work at Ray’s Grocery. The affair had gone obviously wrong and now people were biting each other.

“What about the pig?” I asked.

“Pig ran away,” someone said. And after that, it was like I wasn’t there. Eventually, the cold got to me and I slipped back inside. The snow was falling harder now and we had a good six inches on the ground with no end in sight.

I paused outside my bedroom door, looking first to the waiting bed and then to the kitchen and the mountain of food waiting for me there.

Sighing, I turned to the kitchen. I cranked up some Counting Crows and went to work. Potatoes to peel and boil, a turkey to stuff and cook. And later, my family—and all their plus ones—would descend upon me after a snowstorm and a mostly sleepless night. A prospect that promised to be a bigger pain in the ass than last year’s AK-47 round.

I decided to be grateful that Thanksgiving only came once a year and wondered if next year’s might not be better spent on a holiday in Spain.

At some point in the wee hours, I heard more shouting. But it must not have been too important. No more red lights to call the neighbors out for gossip in the snow.

I turned the music up and sang louder.

“Oh dear Lord,” Mama said as she came through the door with the roll trays draped in towels. “You gotta get Auggie to build you a proper deck, Kay Ann. Nearly broke my neck.”

I took the trays from her. “I’d have swept the stairs if I’d known you were coming early.”

Pastor Frank, also bearing trays, came in behind her. I tried not to notice the large black Bible underneath his arm. He was a gangly red-head with a face that made me nervous. “We wanted to get a jump on the snow,” he said with his easy Oklahoma drawl.

I took Mama’s tray to the counter. “How were the roads?”

“Terrible,” she said. “Cars off everywhere. I swear, a little snow and the whole county’s a wreck. There were sirens all night. Hardly slept at all.” Mama blushed. “But where are my manners?” She smiled. “Franklin, this is my eldest, Kay Ann. Kay Ann, this is Pastor Frank.”

He extended a hand. I shook it. “We met up at the church, Mama.”

His hands were soft but his grip was firm. “It’s nice to meet you again, Miss Cooper.”

I wanted to frown but smiled instead. “Just Kay Ann.”

Mama was already fussing in the kitchen, checking the potatoes and looking in on the turkey. “What time are Jessie Lynn and Johnny Alvin showing up?”

“I expect it’ll be a few hours,” I said. Then, I offered up my first genuine smile of the morning. “Young love and all.”

Mama blushed again. “Well, I don’t know—”

Pastor Frank blushed, too. “Where’s your broom. I’ll get the snow off the porch.”

I fetched him the broom and went back to the kitchen. Mama was making a fresh pot of coffee. She’d make it weak and complain that it tasted funny being ground up right there on the spot instead of coming out of a can all ready to brew.

“He’s such a sweet boy,” she said after the door closed behind him.

I eyed the leather book placed squarely in the center of the dining room table. “I’m sure he is, Mama.”

“He’s a fine preacher, too.”

Sometimes, repeating myself worked best with her. It conserved energy for those long, mostly-one-sided conversations. “I’m sure he is, Mama.”

“As a matter of fact,” she said, “he’s prepared something special to share with us today. About counting our blessings.”

I was counting the hours until dinner was over. “Speaking of blessings, isn’t it sweet that this year both Jessie Lynn
and
Bobby have found someone special? That’s something to be grateful for.”

Mama scowled and looked to the door. I could read her eyes. She wanted to correct me and leaving an uncorrected bit of mistruth, for that woman, was like leaving an unfinished plate at the Chinese buffet. But she didn’t dare let on that all three of them had plotted me a mate this Thanksgiving. I thought about letting her off the hook, telling her I’d figured out their scheme on Tuesday, but the fun I could have with this—and the teaching moment it afforded—kept me quiet.

And Mama did what Mama does and changed the subject and started washing dishes. “So how do you like your neighbors?”

I shrugged. “They seem a bit rowdy.”

“Well,” she said. “It’s snowing and it’s Thanksgiving. That’ll do it. Had the whole town up in arms last night worse than a full moon.”

We kept making small talk until I heard a knock at the door. It was Pastor Frank.

“You don’t have to knock,” I said.

His eyes were wide and his face red and he stared at me.

I raised my eyebrows at him. “What is it? And where’s my broom.”

He looked over his shoulder. “You have some troubled neighbors, Kay Ann. They need the Lord.”

I let him in and closed the door behind him. That’s when I noticed his sweater was ripped. “What happened?”

“I broke the broom and went to borrow a snow shovel I saw out in another yard. But when I knocked on the door, your neighbor jumped me.” He took a breath. “And he didn’t look good either. Like he’d been on a three-day drunk.”

But now I had my suspicions and I raised my eyebrow at him. “Did he bite you?”

Pastor Frank shook his head. “No. But he sure tried.”

Mama was there now. “We should pray for that family right this minute, Pastor Frank.” She smiled. “Let’s all hold hands.”

Another knock at the door made it easy for me to brush their reaching hands away. “Who is it?”

My sister’s voice was shrill. “It’s me.”

I opened the door and stepped aside to let her in. Her face was pale as she pushed the green bean casserole into my hands. “Jesus,” she said. “What’s up with your neighbors?”

Johnny Alvin followed her in and closed the door. I’d not seen him since high school and he was taller, broader. His thick mustache and curly hair made him look like the love child of a seventies porn star and a Greek god. He saw everyone and looked profoundly uncomfortable, especially when he looked at me.

“Hey Johnny,” I said.

“Hey Kay.”

“Kay Ann,” I said. Then I looked at my sister. “What about the neighbors?”

She shook her head. “Looks like they’re fighting.”

It was sinking in now like cold concrete in my stomach. “Lock the door, Johnny.”

He did and I passed the casserole to Mama before going to the window. It did not look right out there. The snow was falling still and some of the trailer doors stood wide open despite the cold. There were no children out making snowmen or throwing snowballs at each other. In the distance I could see figures running, stumbling and falling, in the snow. And I saw others running after.

“Maybe we should call the police,” Johnny offered.

“They were out several times last night,” I said. But my phone was out and in my hand as I said it. I went to the back door and checked its lock as I dialed.

The line rang forever before a recording kicked in and shortly after the recording, I had the dispatcher but I wasn’t sure exactly what to say. Some part of me still wanted to believe that this was a string of unrelated and unfortunate coincidences that piled up like the snow. But that part was losing its foothold with everything pointing to the pig and the pie. “We have some kind of trouble out here at Shady Grove,” I told the woman.

The woman sighed and she might’ve been kin given the exasperated nature of it. “We have some kind of trouble everywhere in the county. Can you be more specific?”

I tried to be but it sounded crazier and crazier as I tried to explain it.

“Can you see if they are fighting now?”

“They ran off toward the woods,” I said.

She asked me a few more questions and promised to dispatch a unit as soon as possible. “And,” she said in closing, “because emergency services are operating at maximum capacity, the Arlington County Sheriff’s Department is recommending that residents minimize demand by remaining indoors, staying off the roads and staying warm.”

And avoid feral neighbors and pigs
, I wanted to add. But instead I wished her a happy Thanksgiving and put my phone away and looked back to my family and their plus ones. “They’ll send someone when they can,” I told them. “It may be a while.”

“What should we do?” I’m not sure it’s a question I ever heard Mama ask before.

“Sit tight, I reckon.” I looked at the clock. “But someone should check on Bobby.”

Mama went for her purse and slipped into my bedroom with her phone.

Pastor Frank picked at his ripped sweater. “Well, I’m fixing to sit down and pray.” He must’ve understood my stare because his face went red again. “Quietly,” he whispered.

Jessie Lynn always took most after Mama and she moved into the kitchen for her own brand of crisis management. “What do you need done, Sis?”

“Everything,” I told her.

Johnny Alvin moved to the couch and sat, lifting the remote. “I’ll check the news.”

I shook my head. “No cable.”

He shrugged, put down the remote and settled back into the sofa with his hands folded behind his head.

“They’re on their way,” Mama said as she came out of the bedroom. “But they said it sure is a mess out there. Snow’s gotten worse and there’s some kind of bug going around. Along with a bunch of holiday hooliganism.”

No. It’s more than that.
A thought struck me and I looked over at my sister. “Hey, you gathered up the berries for Great Granny’s pie last summer, right?”

She nodded. “I did. I froze them just like Mama did the year before. Why? How did it turn out?” Jessie Lynn looked at the other pies displayed on the counter.