Harvey, Matthea

DINNA’ PIG

1. Members of the Family rarely spoke to each other, but when they did, they studied each other’s throats. The youngest grabbed a pitchfork for protection long before she learned to walk and when she did learn to walk she didn’t put the pitchfork down. Pa found the pig in a stall at market breathing heavily behind a sheet of corrugated tin. He felt something welling up inside him-love-and spat it onto the tin where it glistened like a chrysalis. That didn’t get rid of the feeling so he brought the pig home. Ma gave Dinna’ Pig his name so that no-one would forget where that pig was headed. She liked to call a spade a spade, hence her children: Mistake, Mistake 2 and Goddammit. Dinna’ Pig wasn’t particularly lovable; he didn’t run to the side of his pen oinking sweetly when he saw a family member. He wasn’t clean or smart. He sat in his shit and liked it. Goddammit thought she’d once seen him nose his own reflection in her shiny rubber boot, but she couldn’t be sure. In any other farmyard, love would have slid off Dinna’ Pig’s oily hair, seeped from his watery eyes, bounced off the coil of his tail and landed on something fluffier. But the Family couldn’t help itself-their love was stirred into the ray slop he was fed daily. It got in under his trotters, shone in the handle of the shovel they used to shovel his shit. Late one night Mistake rammed some love up Dinna’ Pig’s puckered little asshole. Goddammit, who’d been clutching her pitchfork in sleep, suddenly hurled it across the room. She was having a beautiful dream. It was Sunday dinner and she was the only one at the table cramming handfuls of love into her enormous mouth.