Buy Skinny, Sell Fat

FICTION Buy Skinny, Sell Fat Ralph Price HECK DROVE UP to the junkyard on Pope's Nose Hill looking for a used rear end. His was going out. He felt it on the curves. The junk man pulled one from a faded aqua fifty-five. Greasy Red wanted forty bucks—too much—but threw in the set of livestock racks that were moldering on the junker. They were almost a fit for his Dodge short bed, and they looked good, too, except that there was no tail gate. He found a piece ofhalf-inchplywood for the gate, and placed the plywood facing inward. The plywood was a road sign stolen from the county road and bridge crew, and bore the warning, DANGER UP AHEAD. Then Heck put the Hi-Lift jack, the jumper cables, two quarts of Dollar Store oil, and a pint of coffee on the crowded seat beside him, and he drove over to Richmond to get into the pig business. There was a big sale there because of the rain the night before. Too wet to work in the fields—Let's go sell the one-eyed boar—Get us a bottle. E. R. Yakes was there at the sale, and he took Heck over to number seven to see a skinny black sow Yakes's brother-in-law had brought in. She was skinny, yes—but not sick. Yakes knew that for a fact. Heck bought the sow and her five pigs for sixty-five dollars and hauled them home without changing a tire. He took his Colt .32 revolver out of the glove box and shot a pig for dinner. The others went into a recently-repaired slab and metal hog pen, where they settled in with much sniffing and shuffling of straw. The pigs grew like the grass. They gained weight faster than seemed possible. Heck found them each morning a new size, and each day worth more than the day before. But the sow was a worrier. She fretted. Some days she'd hardly get out of bed. She had a dark side, that was sure, and often she'd escape. Then Heck would have to track her down in some farmer's back yard, pin her up in the hen house or the coal shed, load her backwards into the truck, and haul her brooding home, back to her squealing young. He'd soon had enough of that, and so off she went to the sausage man. The sausage man lived in a dark alley lined in weeds and runt sunflowers and covered with flattened cans. He offered to buy the sow, fatten her up. It would be a shame, the butcher said, to kill the 49 sow so small. Heck asked him what he would give. Sixty-five dollars, he said. No, Heck told him. He'd rather have the meat. The four pigs grew into lovely fat hogs with white hair and pink bellies. They ate everything but grapefruit and jimson weed, quarreled over the egg shells, and never got enough. About that time the price of pork went through the roof. Nobody saw it coming, but coming it came, and then everybody said they weren't surprised. Heck cashed in for the quick profits. As he said to C. T, he was in it, by God, for the money. Well, the money rolled in, and each time he sold, he bought. Soon he had pigs and hogs of all sizes and colors. He spent many cold mornings hauling corn to the mill to be ground and mixed with bean meal. He sat on a wooden bench at the mill while his corn was being ground, and he read magazines with titles like Pork Producer Monthly or Stockman's Digest. July and hot as inside the cow. Bugs flew out of control, heavy as stones. Birds awake at midnight. Lightning. Wild Roses. Heck's favorite sow was due. Her tits were hard as oranges, and there was milk when you squeezed the nipples. She'd thrown together a cockeyed nest a little before dark, then torn it up again. She didn't eat, but took a little water. The lightning...