As Menno hurried toward the spring wagon, he saw Jonas’s body. His head was thrown back and his face was contorted.
“He’s caught! He’s caught!” one of the cousins was shouting, jumping up and down beside the wagon.
“What were you trying to do?” John shouted, not waiting for an answer. He slid to a stop and grabbed Jonas from behind.
“Don’t pull!” Menno ordered, bracing his hands on the side of the crate. “Just hold the boy until she lets go.”
Jonas whimpered, tears streaming down his face
A stick! We need a stick! Menno thought. Where is the stick I used as a prod this morning? Didn’t I put it in the wagon? Yah, here it is! He grabbed it from the bed of the spring wagon and poked it through the crate slats, jabbing it hard into the sow’s stomach, shoving as hard as he could. He yelled at the top of his lungs, “Yah heee! Let him go!”
The sow gave a great snort and released the boy’s arm. She jumped to the far side of the crate. John held the sobbing Jonas as the sow contemplated them with beady eyes.
“What where you doing here?” John demanded.
“We were just trying to unload the sow,” one of the cousins said, his voice trembling. “We wanted to help.”
“You were told to stay away!” John lowered Jonas to the grassy lawn, cradling his head in his arms.
Menno heard running feet behind them and then gasps as the women approached. They formed a circle around John and Jonas, a few running back toward the house, their skirts pulled up nearly to their knees. They would be going for water and soap. Hog bites needed to be cleaned quickly.
Miriam pushed through the line, taking over for John, murmuring and stroking Jonas’s forehead. The others backed off. Menno pushed in close enough to see the puncture wounds in the boy’s arm—long lines of jagged teeth marks where the sow had crunched down and pulled. One of the boy’s fingers went off in a crazy angle, and there was white slobber all over his hand and arm.
Menno glanced up as movement came from the house. Esther and Betsy, John’s wife, were returning with two plastic water buckets, washcloths, and towels. They ran across the lawn, their faces red from the rush and the weight of the buckets. Setting the water down, they knelt on either side of Miriam. She held Jonas’s arm as they dipped the washcloths into the soapy water and squeezed the liquid over the boy’s injured arm.
“Will it hurt more?” Jonas asked between moans.
“No worse than it already does,” Miriam said. “We have to clean the cuts.”
“We’d better do something about this finger first.” Esther held Jonas’s hand by the wrist. “It’s going to hurt worse if we don’t.”
“Is it broken?” John asked.
“I don’t know,” Esther said, holding her hands over Jonas’s eyes and whispering to the others. “It’s definitely not right.” She stroked Jonas’s hair.
“Should we leave that for the doctor?” Betsy asked.
That is a good point, Menno thought, looking around the group. Someone needs to call a driver, and the sooner the better. Esther’s husband, Henry, caught his glance and nodded. Without a word he ran to the barn. He’d take care of it. Few men were better at getting things done than Henry.
“Cleaning is the problem,” Miriam was saying. “But you’d better straighten the finger, even if it’s broken.”
Jonas whimpered, burying his head in his mamm’s chest.
“Just do it.” Miriam whispered as she held her hand over Jonas’s eyes this time.
“The men had better do this.” Esther stood up. Betsy stayed down, holding Jonas’s arm.
John grasped the boy’s palm.
Jonas seemed to have stopped breathing.
John jerked the boy’s finger hard.
Jonas screamed, digging his face deeper into his mamm’s chest.
“There now. It’s done,” John said, releasing the hand.
Betsy continued to hold the arm, lifting it for the others to see the straightened finger.
“It wasn’t broken, I think,” John said. “Just out of joint.”
Henry’s wagon rattled down the driveway past them. His hand on his hat, Henry clutched the lines with his right hand. He was likely heading for the nearest phone shack and would be back with a driver soon.
“Okay, here we go.” Esther knelt down again, dipping one of the washcloths in water and gently moving it over the punctured skin. Betsy did the same on the other side of the hand.
Jonas had his eyes open now as Miriam stroked his forehead. The two women worked, allowing the soapy water to run into the wounds and working the blood and slobber off. At times Jonas flinched, and they would pause, continuing with the task when his whimpers died down.
“We need fresh water,” Esther announced, looking around the circle.
Two of the older teenage girls took off running toward the house.
Menno fidgeted. There must be something he could do. He looked at the sow still in the crate. She was grunting, her nose in the air, seemingly satisfied with herself.
“You won’t live long now!” Menno vowed with a glare. Several of the boys smiled but sobered when Jonas screamed again.
“That bite is pretty deep…and the one over here,” Betsy whispered. “I hope the driver gets here soon.”
“Henry will find one,” John said.
Betsy nodded.
Across the lawn the two girls came running back with fresh water, soap suds rolling over the top of the buckets. Menno smiled at the sight in spite of Jonas’s continued whimpering. The girls must have dumped in extra soap in their haste, but that was better than not enough.
On the ground, Betsy and Esther exchanged the water buckets, and the cleansing continued.
A pickup truck soon rattled into the driveway. Old Mr. Davis, a neighbor from down the road, was driving. Mr. Davis jumped out of the truck and ran over to the circle.
They all turned to look at him.
“Henry found me in the field, and told me what happened. Where are we taking the boy?”
“You’d better take him to Louisville, to the children’s hospital,” Miriam said. “He looks like he doesn’t need more than stitches and cleaning up, but I don’t know. These are hog bites. I’d feel better if we took him someplace other than Scott Memorial in Salem.”
Heads nodded.
The men lifted Jonas and carried him over to the truck. Miriam and her husband, Joe, spoke in whispers for a few minutes. Apparently the decision of who should go was made between them. Miriam walked with Joe to the truck. She climbed into the passenger’s side and pulled Jonas tightly against her shoulder. Joe shut the door and said something before stepping back as Mr. Davis took off.
“Okay!” John shouted as the truck turned onto the main road. “Everyone back to what they were doing. We have a long day ahead of us. And boys, keep away from the hogs—even if they look harmless!”
Most of the boys hung their heads, their hats tipped low over their faces.
“Now,” John turned back to Menno, “it looks like you get to butcher your hog first.”
“Yah!” Menno said. He had no problem with that. Someone handed him the twenty-two rifle, and they all backed away. Walking up to the crate, he pushed the barrel close to the sow’s head and fired. Vengeance of sorts—the kind that didn’t belong to Da Hah, he figured as he handed the gun back to Edna’s oldest boy.
“The water’s hot,” John hollered from the water trough.
“Come!” Menno said, picking up the spring wagon shafts. He steered while the boys pushed, backing up to within a foot of the steaming water. They attached ropes and pulled the sow out, lowering her into the trough. In one side and out the other she went, the scalding water splashing as the trough nearly tipped over.
They heaved the sow up onto a wooden picnic table that creaked under the weight. Starting on each end with knives held on edge, they peeled the hair off. The day’s real work had begun.
“Come on! We’re already late!” John hollered, as more picnic tables were brought over.
The women came with their kettles and then separated the meat into piles. A grinder was brought out, the gasoline engine attached to a belt. Two boys fed the meat in while Betsy watched.
“Keep your fingers away from the auger!” Betsy repeated the words in a chant. “We don’t want fingers lost today,” she added at times. “One accident today is enough.”
John stoked the fire as more hogs were brought and drug through the scalding water. Intestines were taken out and turned inside out on the grassy lawn. Scrubbers were assigned, and they went to work on a picnic table, brushing down the future sausage tubes.
“I can help here,” Menno offered, approaching the red-faced boys working on the intestines. Grateful hands offered him their scrub brushes.
Betsy intervened. “Nothing doing!” she ordered from her place at the head of the meat grinder. “If Grandpap wants to help, there’s another brush over there in the grass.”
Menno laughed as the boys groaned.
“I’m never eating sausage again. Not ever in my lifetime,” one of them muttered, taking his brush up again.
“Hah! Come winter,” Menno said, “you boys will be eating with the rest of us. This memory will be long gone.”
“I suppose so,” the boy said. “But it sure looks awful now. Pig guts… phew!”
“Surely you knew where sausage came from?” one of the others said with a laugh.
“Knowing and seeing are two different things,” the boy said. “Do you ever get used to this when you’re older, Grandpap?”
“I suppose so.” Menno shrugged. “I don’t think about it anymore. I just bite into Anna’s delicious sausage on cold winter mornings and I think, ‘My, this couldn’t be better!’”
They all laughed and scrubbed away.
By lunchtime the lawn lay littered with meat, blood, hair, and sausages in various stages. They all washed their hands in a basin set outside by the washroom door and then filled their plates with the prepared lunch fixings. They ate under the shade of the oak trees.
“I’m going down to call Miriam,” Joe said, getting to this feet. “She should have been back by now.”
“I’m sure Jonas is okay,” John assured him.
But we would all do the same had it been one of our children, Menno thought. He watched Joe leave moments later, his shoulders squared as he drove his buggy out the driveway. Da Hah had given him gut sons-in-law—all of them. Only Susan remained single, but that was best not to think about right now.
When lunch was finished, the work resumed while the younger girls took the remaining lunch food back into the house.
Joe returned, and he unhitched his buggy by the barn.
“What’s up?” John hollered to him.
Joe didn’t answer until he had the horse in the barn and approached the group. They all turned to listen when he cleared his throat. “The doctors have worked on Jonas, Miriam said, cleaning up things. Sounds like the danger of infection will be the biggest problem. They want to keep him overnight so they can keep tabs on his wounds and make sure there’s no infection.”
“Do you need to leave?” John asked. “We can bring your share of the meat over this evening.”
Joe shook his head. “Miriam will stay with him for the night, and Mr. Davis is back home already. He offered to take me down tonight after the chores.”
“Not really bad news, but still bad enough,” John said.
“I know,” Joe said. “We can be thankful it wasn’t worse. Now, where can I help?”
John waved toward the meat grinder. “You could give the boys a break. They’ve been hard at it.”
Smiles covered the faces of the boys.
“Aw, it’s not that bad,” Joe teased. “Let me see what I can do.”
They stepped aside and threw themselves onto the grass, flailing their arms in gestures of mock exhaustion.
Betsy laughed, but let them be. She turned and walked toward the house, taking a bowl of ground meat with her. “I’ll be back in a little while,” she said over her shoulder. “You boys aren’t going to lay on the grass all afternoon, right?”
They all groaned their reply but were happy to be relieved even for a short time.
By four o’clock everything was done, the meat divided, and the area cleaned up. They all had home chores ahead of them, except for Menno. Sure, he had to feed the horses, but that didn’t keep a person’s mind occupied for very long.
Menno sighed as he took the hog crate off the spring wagon and washed out the bottom with the garden hose. He helped Anna load the tubs of meat, and they readied to leave. We will eat well this winter, he thought, holding the horse while Anna climbed in.
He pulled himself onto the wagon bench seat, took the reins from Anna, and hollered, “Get-up.” The horse set out at a brisk pace.
“It’s been quite a day,” Anna said as they went out the driveway.
“Yah. Too bad Jonas had to get hurt.”
“We need to write Susan and tell her what happened.”
“You can do that,” Menno said with a shrug.
“She might come home,” Anna said.
Menno looked at her and shook his head. “No, I forbid it. Jonas will be fine. You won’t go making things sound worse to Susan than they are. That’s not right.”
“But Jonas could get a bad infection,” Anna insisted. “You heard Joe say so yourself.”
“He’s in the hospital, under a doctor’s care. You will not ask Susan to come home unless there is good reason for it. As of now, there is no reason.”
“But she’s our daughter!” Anna said, her fingers clutching the side rail of the buggy seat as the horse and wagon turned a corner.
“I know,” Menno said. “But nothing gut comes out of tricks like that. Susan would figure it out once she got back. I say that if Susan comes home, it will be by her own free will.”
After a silence, Anna agreed, teary-eyed. “You’re right. I know you are.”
“Yah,” Menno said. He was crying too—only on the inside.