A Day No Pigs Would Die Read Online Free Page B

either. You have to be twenty-one to vote. I’m only twelve.”
    “Reckon I’m soon looking at sixty.”
    “Then why can’t you vote? Is it because you’re a Shaker?”
    “No. It’s account of I can’t read or write. When a man cannot do those things, people think his head is weak. Even when he’s proved his back is strong.”
    “Who decides?”
    “Men who look at me and do not take me for what I be. Men who only see me make my mark, my X, when I can’t sign my name. They can’t see how I true a beam to build our barn, or see that the rows of corn in my field are straight as fences. They just see me walk the street in Learning in clothesmade me by my own woman. They do not care that my coat is sturdy and keeps me warm. They’ll not care that I owe no debt, and that I am beholding to no man.”
    “Is that why you can’t vote, Papa?”
    “Yes, boy. That’s the reason.”
    “Doesn’t it make you heartsick?”
    “No. I take what I am. We are Plain People, your mother and aunt, and your sisters, you and me. We live the Book of Shaker. We are not worldly people, and we suffer the less for not paining with worldly wants and wishes. I am not heartsick, because I am rich and they are poor.”
    “We’re
not rich, Papa. We’re …”
    “Yes we are, boy. We have one another to fend to, and this land to tend. And one day we’ll own it outright. We have Solomon here to wind up a capstan and help us haul our burdens. And look here, he’s almost done pulling that cratch where we want it pulled to. We have Daisy’s hot milk. We got rain to wash up with, to get the grime off us. We can look at sundown and see it all, so that it wets the eye and hastens the heart. We hear all the music that’s in the wind, so much music that it itches my foot to start tapping. Just like a fiddle.”
    “Maybe so, Papa. But it seems to me what we have most is dirt and work.”
    “True enough. But it be
our
dirt, Rob. This landwill be all ours, in just a few more year. As to the work, what matters is that we have the back to do it. Some days I get the notion that I can’t knife even one more of Clay Sander’s pigs. Yet I always do, ’cause it’s got to be done. It’s my mission.”
    “Papa, is that the mission they preach on at Meeting?”
    “It is. And every man must face his own mission. Mine is pigs. And I be thankful to be in the picture.”
    “What picture?”
    “The picture of Vermont, boy. Do you know what makes Vermont a good state?”
    “No.”
    “It’s simple as beans. Here in this state we know just two things. We can turn grass into milk and corn into hogs.”
    “I guess that’s as true as a taproot.”
    “Truer.”
    Walking his circle, Solomon snorted as if to say he blessed the whole business.
    “They sure is a passel of corn and meadow land in these parts,” I said. “If’n we turn all this and all that to milk and hogs, blessed if we’d ever keep up with it. Or just keep it in sight.”
    “Probably wouldn’t, be we all dreamers like you. Now old Solomon’s a dreamer, too. But yet he walkshis circle. And just look how he’s drug that corn cratch. Plenty far.”
    I couldn’t believe it. Just while Papa and me were talking, Solomon drug that old corn crib into place and moved it a ways that was twice as long as Papa was tall. And then Papa added some fresh-cut timbers to winter-tight the cratch for Pinky.
    “Papa?”
    “Yup.”
    “You using fresh wood?”
    “Yup.”
    “Don’t it got to season before you build with it?”
    “Indoors, yes. But you can wood up a wall to stand outdoors and fresh wood will season itself.”
    With a handturn, Papa sunk holes into the fresh planks at both ends, and into the old wood beyond. In each hole he used a mallet to pound in a trunnel peg of white oak that he had soaking in linseed oil. And the sty was done.
    Pinky slept in it her first night with us. So did I, because the way I figured it, she’d be lonesome in a new place and away from her big fat old