A Day No Pigs Would Die Read Online Free

there crib would make a good house for your pig. ’Cept it’s a mite too close to the cow barn.”
    “Close? It’s touching it, butt on.”
    “Lucky, it’s on skids. We can drag her.”
    “Papa, we can’t drag that. We only got one ox.”
    “Solomon can do it, if we help.”
    “We’re going to yoke us up next to Solomon?”
    “No, Solomon don’t need muscle help. What we’regoing to give him, boy, is some extra thinking. We’re going to let Solomon use a capstan—just a great big crank.”
    “Like you use at Aunt Matty’s to wind up the well water?”
    “Like that. Go get Solomon, and mind his hoofs.”
    I was bringing Solomon over to the barn, leading him with just my hand on his horn, and taking two steps to his one. Then I went round to the tackroom to get his yoke and stays. The yoke was solid hickory and it weighed near as much as me. I had to lug it round back in two trips, going back the second time for the oxbow and cotter. Papa showed up with two long poles, a chain, and a digger.
    With the posthole digger (which looked to me like a big corkscrew) he twisted a hole into the ground, down the meadow a ways from the corn cratch. Using a pebble on a horsehair string, he dropped it deep in the hole and let it hung to see if the hole was plumb to the earth. Then deep into the hole he sunk one of the stout poles. So stout it was nigh to be a log. Papa said the post was about “three hands around.” This was the capstan’s axle.
    Next came the tongue and this log would be the crank handle. Papa fit the handle pole into a hole (just up from ground flush) in the axle.
    “That do it, Papa?”
    “That do her. Solomon ready?”
    “I need help, Papa. I can’t put the yoke up on his shoulders by myself. How much it weigh?”
    “Oh, maybe six stone.”
    “That’s as much as I weigh.”
    “Almost.”
    Solomon was yoked and coupled to the capstan crank. We were ready.
    “So,” said Papa, “you don’t guess one ox can pull that there crib?”
    “No,” I said. “It’s too blundersome. Not even Mr. Tanner’s bay Belgian team could move it, if you want my study of it.”
    Papa clucked to Solomon and he leaned into yoke. The crank began to turn. Around and around Solomon walked in a circle, and the chain drawed up real snug. When it was tight, it snapped up off the ground, but old Solomon never stopped walking. After just once around, Papa made a trench for the chain so Solomon wouldn’t have to step over it with every circle. The big ox needed no prodding. He walked the circle on his own, and the crib inched toward the axle post.
    “Look, Papa. Solomon does it alone.”
    “He does for sure. Solomon told me he don’t want no pig having sleeping quarters near his. He says he abides in Shaker Law.”
    “Papa, do you believe all the Shaker Law?”
    “Most. I’m glad it’s all writ down in the Book of Shaker.”
    “How do you know it’s all writ down, Papa? You can’t read.”
    Papa looked at me before he spoke.
    “No, I cannot read. But our Law has been read to me. And because I could not read, I knew to listen with a full heart. It might be the last and only time I’d learn its meaning.”
    “I don’t cotton to all those Shaker Laws. Especially one.”
    “Which one?”
    “The one that says we can’t go to the baseball game on Sunday. Jacob Henry and his father always go. Why can’t we?”
    “Rob, the Book of Shaker forbids frills on any day. And that goes double on Sunday.”
    “But we wouldn’t be
playing
baseball. Just watching. And I want to see the Greemobys play.”
    “What’s a Greemoby?”
    “It’s short for Green Mountain Boy. It got something to do with somebody called Ethan Allen. I guess he was once the captain. Or the shortstop.”
    “I don’t understand one breath of it,” said Papa.
    “I do. Our school library has this book
on
the history of baseball. There was a lot in it about Abner Doubleday, but it sure was skimpy on Ethan Allen,”
    “I wouldn’t know