Shy (17 page)

“You’re kidding. You don’t like chickens.” It wasn’t a question. It was a statement.

“Nope.” That was a statement too. Mine. And I meant it.

Frank stopped walking, turned to face me, and gripped my shoulders. “Well, then I hate to tell you this, Tom, but yeah he has a few—”

“Oh, I guess that’s okay.”

“—hundred. He has a few hundred. Nine hundred to be precise. Give or take a few chicken dinners.”

I blinked. Nine hundred chickens. Oh God. I guess I was going to need that paper bag after all.

Then Frank managed to knock the chickens right out of my head by saying, “You are so cute. I’m going to get us fed and showered, send Jeff home so we can do a few hours’ work around the farm, get the chores caught up and all, and then I’ll check in on Pop, see how he’s doing, and then, by God, I’m going to get you into my old bedroom and rip your clothes off and monopolize your dick until it explodes. How does that sound?” There was a glimmer in Frank’s green eyes that was really, really sexy.

I cleared my throat, trying to ignore the stirring of my dick inside my trousers. “That reminds me. I have a few questions about Jeff Moody too.”

“Screw Jeff Moody,” Frank said.

“Did you?” I asked. “Screw him?”

And Frank shrugged. “Maybe in another lifetime. Now I’ve got you.”

I grinned. That was exactly what I wanted to hear. Moody be damned. Chickens too. I had a man who loved me. And he had green eyes.

I was just getting all gooshy inside and Tom Junior was creeping down my pant leg in anticipation of things to come when Frank up and broke the spell again.

“But first, ta-da!” he grandly announced like a sideshow barker. “I’d like you to meet Samson!”

We were just rounding the corner of the barn. I could hear Moody somewhere inside grumbling at a cow, telling it through what sounded like clenched teeth to please be so kind as to get off his fucking foot.

I started to giggle at that, but then I saw what Frank was pointing at and my jaw fell open. I wasn’t sure, but I thought maybe a couple of fillings fell out.

I swear I had never seen anything like it before in my life.

F
RANK
had his arms folded across his chest and he was staring at the same thing I was staring at. The only difference was he was looking proud as punch while I was looking thunderstruck and horrified. Frank dropped his head to my shoulder and we sort of leaned into each other. His arm snaked around my waist all lovey-dovey, or it would have been if I hadn’t been shocked all the way down to my toes by what the hell was standing there in front of us looking back.

“Pretty impressive, huh?” Frank grinned.

Impressive
wasn’t the word I was groping for. I think the word was
Holy crap!

Samson was a pig. A giant pig. “Samson’s a pig,” I said. “A giant pig.” I knew I was stating the obvious, but I sure didn’t know what else to say.

Frank chuckled. “Well, to be precise, Samson is a boar. See those tusks?”

I did indeed. Four big-ass fangs sticking out of the creature’s mouth pointing off in four different directions like daggers. They must have been six inches long. Just looking at those tusks made my nuts crawl up into my body and cower in fear. Samson was one ugly hog. And he looked mean to boot.

Frank went right on talking as if he was leading a tour group through the frigging White House. “Samson is a Yorkshire hog mix. He weighs, as near as we can figure, about one thousand four hundred pounds. He stands four feet high and is just shy of eight feet long from snout to tail. Take a good long look, Tom. You’ll never see another one like him.”

Good,
I thought.
I never want to.

Samson stared back at me with his little piggy eyes, and they truly were the only things about him that were little. A rope of drool dangled off one of his tusks like a watch chain. He blessed us with a snort. I think it was pig talk for, “What the fuck are
you
staring at?”

He was in a muddy pen that was big enough to park six or seven cruise ships in. There was a watering trough at one end that looked like a coffin and smack in the middle of the enclosure was the rusted out cab of a ’52 Chevy pickup sitting up on its front wheels with the back of its cabin sitting in the mud. The truck’s bed was missing. The rubber front tires were missing too. It was sitting on its rims. Maybe Samson had chewed the tires off in some sort of maniacal feeding frenzy. God knows he
looked
crazy enough to have maniacal feeding frenzies. Every five minutes maybe. All the other fences on the farm were made of wood, but the one around Samson’s pen was constructed of round iron bars that looked strong enough to hold a pissed-off rhino.

To my untrained eye, Samson didn’t look too happy. But then, maybe he never did. Some people don’t. I don’t know about pigs.

“Does he bite?” I asked.

This time Frank’s chuckle turned into a full-fledged laugh. “He doesn’t only bite, Tom. He
eats
.
He’ll eat anything, and that would include
us
if we get too close. He’s got a nasty temperament for a hog. Usually they’re kinda sweet, but not Samson. Pop says Samson’s overgrown hormones must have fucked up his sense of restraint, because he ain’t got one. Sense of restraint, I mean.”

“Like a tractor without a governor.”

Frank chucked me on the arm. “Very good. You were paying attention. I’ll make a farmer out of you yet.”

Fat chance.

I shook my head. “It must cost a fortune to feed this monster. Why does your dad keep him around?”

“State Fair. Pop wanted to take him up to Indy and show him off. There’s always somebody willing to pay good money for any kind of livestock that doesn’t fit the mold. Freaks and all. Two-headed calves, that sort of thing. Samson would make a real good sideshow attraction, if you could manage to keep him from eating the audience. I don’t guess Pop will get the chance to show him off now.”

We shared a glance, both knowing it was true. Joe’s days of showing anything off were pretty much over. Frank sighed, then turned his attention back to the pig from hell.

I guess Samson was one of those pigs who doesn’t like being talked about. He gave a nasty roar and charged the fence like a freight train trying to plow through a depot. Mud and pig snot flew everywhere as he came barreling toward us, head down, tusks slashing left and right. Thank God the fence was made of iron. It stopped him cold, but just barely. I could hear the fence rattle and twang and hum for about ten seconds after Samson crashed his head into it like a battering ram.

Frank stepped cautiously back when Samson began his attack while I took a more definitive approach and leaped straight up into the air like Apollo 11. I figure if a thing is worth doing, it’s worth doing right. When I leap in fear, I
soar
. Pride be damned.

Frank employed a bit of tact by not mentioning my leap of terror. Or the fact I had screamed like a little girl. After I came back down, he kissed me on the lips as if glad to see me safely back on Earth after my long flight. “Ready for breakfast?” he asked with a determined show of good cheer and desperately trying not to laugh.

I wiped the sweat off my forehead and gingerly patted the seat of my pants to clandestinely check whether or not I had soiled myself, what with the unintended inertia of my unscheduled blastoff and all. Reassured that I had not, I said, “Sure, Frank. Let’s go eat.”

It was with a great deal of satisfaction that I turned my back on Samson, who was still shaking his head and grumbling and flinging pig slobber everywhere. The fucker.

I hoped we were having bacon for breakfast. Lots and lots of bacon.

Chapter 10

J
OE
was so weak we had to stuff pillows between him and the arms of the chair to keep him sitting upright at the breakfast table. With each of us taking an arm, it took both Frank and me to get him to the kitchen from his bed. We had exchanged worried and knowing glances behind Joe’s head along the way. We would have to get a wheelchair, and soon. And probably a bunch of other stuff too. A walker, maybe. A bath chair. A bed tray. God knew what else.

“Guess maybe I’ve turned into more trouble than I’m worth,” Joe said, obviously mortified by his helplessness. His face was the color of volcanic ash, and he was still listing a bit to the left, but no matter what we did we couldn’t seem to straighten him up completely. His hands were trembling as they lay atop the kitchen table. Just the effort of getting to the kitchen had caused a sheen of sweat to glisten across his forehead.

Frank stopped piddling around with the pillows long enough to give his dad a kiss on the cheek. There was a lot of hurt going on behind Frank’s eyes, but he didn’t let it be heard in his voice.

“Don’t be silly, Pop. You’re having a bad day is all. You’ll get your strength back real quick. Wait and see if you don’t. First thing you have to do is eat.”

“I’m not really hungry, son.”

“That’s okay,” Frank said. “You’ll eat anyway.”

Joe cast a sheepish glance in my direction as I scraped eggs and sausage and fried potatoes onto plates and plopped them on the table. “One of my sons is mean and worthless, Tom. The other one is sweet and dumb. Frank’s the sweet one.”

I nodded, my mind elsewhere. Since everything was cooked in bacon grease and slathered with butter, I figured our cholesterol levels should be spiking around noon and our arteries completely clogged by sunset. That’s probably when the strokes would hit. A lot of people seemed to die of stroke at sunset. Biorhythms and all that.

If I hadn’t been so tied up worrying about the fat content in our breakfasts and the state of our arteries, I could have talked to Joe all day about his observation concerning his two sons. No one knew better than I how sweet the one was and what a prick the other had turned out to be. But at the moment I had more important matters to fret about.

“I’m sorry, Frank. Where did you say the milk was?” I had my head in the refrigerator all the way up to the fourteenth vertebrae. I was starting to get cold.

“In the crock. Just scoop it out with a ladle. The ladle’s in the top drawer. You’ll have to crawl back out of the fridge to get it.” I got the impression Frank was trying not to laugh and cry at the same time, what with his dad being so sick and me being so stupid.

Ah. So that’s what that white stuff in the big bowl under my chin was. It’s hard being a cook in someone else’s kitchen. And in a different century.

“So it’s just milk then,” I said, carefully dragging the huge, heavy crock out of the fridge and clunking it down on the counter, trying not to let it slosh all over the place. “Milk straight out of the cow. Unsterilized, unpasteurized, unhomogenized, unfortified with Vitamin D. Just plain old milk. Cow milk. Hot off the press, so to speak. Mmm. That should be healthy.”

Or deadly. Hadn’t these people ever heard of
E. coli
? Or tuberculosis? Or mad cow disease? Didn’t brucellosis ring a bell?
Coxiella burnetii
?
Bacillus cereus
? Good Lord, I was going to have to either start drinking water or stop watching The Learning Channel.

To hell with it. I ladled the milk into glasses and served them up, wondering how long it takes
E. coli
to strike. Then I wondered if anyone had ever survived a stroke and an outbreak of mad cow disease at the same time. Would they cancel each other out, or would you die that much quicker? Was it painful? Why the hell wouldn’t it be? I hoped someone would take care of Pedro when I was gone.

My concerns made Joe smile. I wondered how he could do it, as weak as he was. Smile, I mean. “Don’t worry, son. People were drinking unsterilized milk for centuries before Pasteur came along. Now it’s called organic health food and costs twice as much. We get it free on the farm. Drink up.”

So I did. We all have to die sometime.

While Frank and I wolfed down our food (cholesterol be damned, I was starving), Joe moved his around with his fork every now and then but very little of it ever seemed to make it to his mouth.

“Tom, I’ve let things go the last couple of weeks. Just haven’t felt like doing much, I guess. You and Frank here are going to have to get the work caught up. Think you can do that? Moody was kind enough to give us a hand this morning but from here on out we’ll manage on our own. Okay?”

“No problem, sir,” I said. “That’s why I came along. To help out. I’m a little worried about those chickens though.”

Frank cleared his throat to shut me up. I guess I couldn’t blame him. “Don’t worry, Dad. We came here to work and that’s what we intend to do.”

“I know you will, boys. And I’ll make it worth your while, don’t think I won’t. ’Cause I appreciate it. I do. One day this farm will be yours, Frank.” Joe turned a sheepish eye to me. “And I think maybe yours too, Tom.”

I started. “What?”

Joe gave his head a little shake. “I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck, Tom. I may be a simple farmer from Indiana but I know how the world works. And I know love when I see it. The way you look at my boy, and the way my boy looks at you, makes it pretty clear how things stand. And I’ve got no problem with it whatsoever. As long as you make each other happy, that’s good enough for me. Frank deserves to be happy. He’s a good boy. Just treat him right. That’s all I ask. Think you can do that, Tom? Think you can treat my son right?”