The Bones of Plenty (43 page)

Mrs. Egger stretched the casing tightly over the spout of the meat press and held it there. Mr. Egger turned the crank again and Lucy watched while the meat forced out the tough tube of the casing into its original shape. “You got enough sausage here for the next five years,” Mr. Egger told her.

Rachel got the dining room table cleared and wiped clean just as the men tramped up on the porch, walking heavily because of the weight they carried. They thumped the slabs of meat on the table and went back down for another load. The cold air that came in with them made Rachel feel how cramped and hot and loud the house was. Her mind had been in one room of the hospital in Bismarck all day. He was making a good recovery, they said. He was doing every bit as well as could be expected.

“By golly, Clarence,” said Ralph Sundquist, “what a man you’d be with two arms!”

“Don’t lighten the load,” Clarence proclaimed. “Strengthen the back!”

And shut the mouth, Rachel nearly said. George was always wondering how Clarence put up with Elsie, but
she
wondered how even Elsie could put up with Clarence.

“That’s what I’ve always did, too,” Clarence was saying. “Any other man could never of run this here meat press all afternoon like this without changing off his hands a hundred times, but when a man hasn’t got but one arm he just learns how to make it keep going.

“I come from a line of hardy men,” he went on. “My old man got an arrow prit-near through the muscle of his upper right arm when he run into some renegades. He went and yanked it out backwards, barbs and all, and throwed it right back, left-handed.”

“Pshaw—your old man’s Indian stories. Why I bet he never left Illinois till there wasn’t nothing but cigar-store Indians left loose in this country!”

“He
showed
me the
scar!”

“Maybe he stopped a bullet with it when he was running away from the revenuers.”

“You could see where the edges of the barbs was pulled out, I tell you. He was a tough old bird—but he wasn’t as tough as
his
daddy, I’ll tell you
that,
too.”

“Fiddlesticks! Your granddaddy was the
real
booze-maker and you know it! He’d of made a
fortune
if he’d been alive the last fifteen years!
I
remember him!”

They hurried through the rest of the cutting and then they cleared off the table for supper. They could not, of course, eat any of the meat yet; it was still too warm. But they had all worked up great appetites for the beef Rachel had canned the year before, the string beans put up from this year’s garden, the potatoes that had turned out fairly well despite the bugs and drought, and the two pumpkin pies she had baked.

By the time they got to the pie, heaped with sweet whipped cream, they were relaxed and triumphant. One more bit of harvest was safely put away, preserved from all future accidents. Surrounded by the bounty of the huge pig they did not feel poor. Tomorrow or the next day, depending on their feelings about how long it took for the meat to cool properly, they would all eat premium pork. George always saw to it that his meat was carefully raised and perfectly fattened. The small room was filled with a cheerful joking optimism that dimmed their anxieties the way the warm air full of sausage spices steamed the windows to hide the frosty darkness outside.

George leaned back in his chair when the meal was over, and passed the little china cup of toothpicks around to the other men. He felt expansive and proud for several reasons. In the first place, the others had been forced to admit, when they started cutting up the meat and seeing how solid it was, that his estimate of the hog’s weight had been conservative if anything. Usually such a big hog would be comparatively light: his volume would be composed of such a big percentage of lard that his density would be less than that of a smaller pig. This hog had plenty of lard on him, of course, but the bacon was lean enough, and the chops and the hams were top grade.

In the second place, things in general had gone well. He had worried about the size of the barrel, but it had been just big enough to do a decent job; the water had pleased Clarence without a lot of dilly-dallying around; Ralph Sundquist had managed not to cut himself for a change—it had been, all in all, a satisfying day. But still he was not so completely satisfied that he couldn’t appreciate it when Clarence said, “By golly, George, you sure called it. If that pig didn’t go five hundred, I never saw one that did.” Now Rachel would believe him, he thought—now that somebody else had said it—especially a ladies’ man like Clarence.

“I never
saw
such a heavy pig,” Ralph put in. “Anyhow I never
butchered
such a heavy pig. I guess I
saw
heavier ones—at the fair.”

Ralph always made a person want to go him one better. Sometimes he seemed put on earth just to be shown up and bested.

George laughed.
“This
one was a
baby,
compared to one my dad butchered once,” he said. “That hog weighed eight hundred and seventy-five pounds. My dad had to scavenge around till he found a hundred-gallon barrel to scald him in and we had to hoist him up with the hay-stacker in order to bleed him. When we got him all rendered out we had two hundred and sixty pounds of lard!
Think
of it! Two hundred and sixty pounds of lard! Why, that’s enough for five hundred pie crusts! It took
two strong
men to carry that pig’s head. Imagine that! How did the
pig
carry it? Two big men just to carry his head!”

“Did you have an elephant gun to shoot that one with?” Ralph asked.

“Naw! Finished him with one shot—same as I did today. He never said a word. If you aim right, it don’t matter how big they are. They’ve all got that one spot.”

The helpers filed out the door, carrying their pork in big bundles of white paper. The Custers stood in the doorway while the freezing air blew in around them, waving and calling goodby.

The voices came back to them out of the darkness: A good five hundred pounds all right … so glad about your father, Rachel … I want a taste of that new kind of ham … delicious pie … hope the sausage is all right … let me know how your soap turns out.

Soap. Lucy had been thinking of how her father had said
that one spot
Now she thought of how they would render out the kettle of fat tomorrow. Her father would build a bonfire outside and when the cooking was done she would eat so many of the delicious rich cracklings that she would not want any supper at all.

Then everybody was gone and Lucy was sent to bed. George got out the kit he had ordered from Montgomery Ward. It had a stainless steel syringe for injecting the salt and sugar deep into the ham before it was smoked so the ham would cure evenly.

“My, oh my,” he said gaily. “Even with the extension, I don’t know if this needle is going to be long enough. What hams!”

Rose was waiting when they wheeled him back. Murdoch was not with them. A strange doctor came, but he did not speak to her until he had supervised the six nurses lifting Will’s body back into his bed. They behaved as though they knew the entire incision would split open if they bent his straight form so much as half an inch. When they drew the blankets up from the foot of the bed over his legs, slowly over his stomach, over his chest, Rose suddenly knew that they were going to bring the blankets on up over his head and that the strange doctor was going to turn to her and tell her that it was all over. That was why Murdoch wasn’t there—that jolly man.

But then the blankets stopped at Will’s chin and the strange doctor said softly to her, “He came through it very well, Mrs. Shepard. He’s got the heart of a man twenty years his junior. Remarkable physique for a man his age—especially considering what he’s been putting up with for God knows how long.… Well, Doctor Murdoch did a beautiful job. Beautiful. I sometimes ask myself why he doesn’t move on to Minneapolis or Chicago—or even Rochester. Well, he’s got another operation now—he’ll be down to see you as soon as he can make it. Don’t you worry now.”

The strange doctor was following the wagon out the door before she came to herself enough to realize that he hadn’t told her a blessed thing. She hurried after him. “Wait! What ailed him? Is he all right now? Is he cured?” But she didn’t say even the first word. The doctor was already an inseparable and unapproachable member of the rustling pilgrimage in the hall. She could still catch the smell of the wagon, and she understood how the portentous stench of its rumpled sheets must waft through each open door, and how the people in the rooms who had had their rides, or were waiting for their rides, were looking out (even while they tried not to breathe that essence of the helpless sleep) to watch the white, masked neuter beings sweep past in their purposeful rush like the avenging Hosts flitting through the Egyptian streets behind the Lord of the Passover and sniffing for the lambs’ blood on the lintels.

She understood that there was nothing at all she could do but go back and sit beside him, curtained in with the effluvium from his lungs while she listened to them labor for less tainted air.

He made no move except to breathe. Sweat began to shine on his ivory face. What if he should get a case of ether-pneumonia on top of everything else? She began to feel very hot herself, though whether it was because the ward was too hot or because she felt so nauseated from the ether, she could not tell. Nor did she have any idea of how long she waited for Murdoch to come.

He did come, finally, wearing the same tweed trousers and green tie and stethoscope that he had worn the day before. He looked fresh and hearty—not at all like the other haggard envoys descending from that mysterious bloody sanctum above her. She looked at his face and at Will’s, and the difference between the faces so stopped her throat with terror and rage that she could not speak.

“I’ll bet you haven’t even been out to lunch yet,” he chided her. “You’ve just been sitting here doing nothing more useful than thinking about how bad he looks, haven’t you? How do you
expect
him to look after he’s been carved around in for more than two hours? How do you
expect
him to look with a ten-inch cut across his belly? He’s lost a lot of blood, but he’ll get it back. Now don’t worry about him! He’s got a wonderful physique for a man of his age. Go on out and get yourself something to eat before we have to give
you
an anesthetic too!”

The next morning Will showed a bit of color under the gray bristles that had grown out since his last shave. His body still produced whiskers even if he could not eat or drink and even if his mind was shuttered under sedation. When the time came for her to catch the train, she touched her lips to the bristles and left. They had agreed that they mustn’t leave Stuart alone too long.

On the train she tried to read a newspaper. The J. R. Williams cartoon was entitled, “Why Mothers Get Gray.” She passed over that. She tried not to wonder about whether or not Stuart would be at the depot. She would wait till she got there and either saw him or didn’t see him.

The Communist riots and counter-revolutions in Cuba were getting rather monotonous. She skipped them too. The story that caught her eye was one about Herbert Hoover and his wife. They had just made a visit to the Century of Progress World’s Fair in Chicago and then stopped to see how things were going on one of their farms in Missouri. She could hear the fit George would be having over that.

“What possible excuse,” he would be asking, “what possible
legitimate reason
can that man have for owning farms and competing with the rest of us that
have
to make a living off a farm or starve to death! The Great Humanitarian!” George had a way of talking that made people who knew him able to
hear
him talking even when he was miles away.

But the thing about the story she couldn’t get out of her mind was the Fair. Will had wanted to go to the Fair. All summer long the cars had been coming from the Fair along Highway Number 10. And Will would come back from town telling how he’d seen another car in front of Gebhardt’s loaded with souvenirs and with stickers all over the windows.