A Pig Thief’s Son
A mediation in the vein of William Gay
I still hear
The crunch of the gravel
In her ragged breathing.
Lying in bed,
Next to my wife.
Thinking about
Bert Gentry
Limping away,
After he’d finished telling us
He shot daddy.
And started everything.
I’m fifty-seven years old,
Three healthy kids,
Two nickels
A dirt floor shack.
And a flat spot on my brain
From decades o’thinkin.
Funny,
The things that stick in your mind
Without askin’…
Times were diff’rnt then,
As they say.
A Three Pine County coal miner,
Depression ‘36,
Daddy was not a man dealing in gold.
He was buying groceries with his skin,
And we could see through the thin spots.
But,
It weren’t Bert’s fault
He shot ‘em,
Neither.
Much as I didn’t feel
That way right af’er.
I know,
If I’s a bit bigger,
And not seven an a half,
I oughta killed that man
Justified
A’fore the story got
Out of what really happened…
O’course,
No one wanna hear
They daddy were a thief.
Just like daddy’s
Don’t want daughters
Marrying a pig thief son.
Don’t matter who’s sayin’ it.
Mightn’a shot the messenger
If a gun were handy.
That’s how things go
back here
In this holler.
The farther down
we dig,
The more darkness
come out.
And it don’t matter
much
what the truth
on that is…
Not really.
Cause we all know
What to believe
To survive.
Darkness, coal dust.
It don’t wipe off
A miner’s bone white skin
When he gets home.
Daddy got caught
Stealin’ a pig
From our neighbor,
Bert Gentry.
The truth,
So’s me, mah and the other six could eat.
That’s real
Desperate
I guess.
I ’member watchin’ him
Most nights
A’fore it happened
Out our one window
On a stump
Outside by hisself,
With his jug.
Starin’ at nothing.
Tryin’ to feel it too.
Sometimes,
I think he was workin’
Up the courage
To trade
That last piece o’dignity
For us.
And an escape
Dyin’ for meaning.
He died an
Unemployed miner–
Dirty pig thief.
Then dirty dead pig thief—
And his son.
Because
You steal food from a man’s family.
There’s no rules…
Until after.
That’s how it works back here at least.
So we didn’t do nothin’
After Bert brought my daddy back
Dead,
Wrapped in a flour sack bedsheet,
Wearing a buckshot necklace.
Mr. Gentry tried to be
A good man.
He gave us that pig.
The one daddy laid down his life’fer.
His last pig.
He laid it
Right next to daddy
In our driveway.
“It was an accident…
I didn’t know
It were him.
What was he doin’?”
Charity.
Guilty?
I never figured.
He said it was
So’s we could have his family over for supper
Sometime later on.
When daddy’d been rested a bit.
Times were diff’ernt then,
As they say.
But not really.
Not when you sleep
next to his daughter
every night.
In the darkness.
I hear that breathing
And I try not to think
About sacrifice
And its reward.
Or the people who benefit.
It’s not my fault.
That’s not what daddy tells me.