Pa got up and lighted another lantern.
Noah, from a box in the kitchen, brought out the bow-bladed butchering knife and whetted it on a worn little carborundum stone.
And he laid the scraper on the chopping block, and the knife beside it.
Pa brought two sturdy sticks, each three feet long, and pointed the ends with the ax, and he tied strong ropes, double half-hitched, to the middle of the sticks.
He grumbled,
“Shouldn’t of sold those singletrees—all of ’em.”
The water in the pots steamed and rolled.
Noah asked,
“Gonna take the water down there or bring the pigs up here?”
“Pigs up here,” said Pa. “You can’t spill a pig and scald yourself like you can hot water.
Water about ready?”
“Jus’ about,” said Ma.
“Aw right. Noah, you an’ Tom an’ Al come along.
I’ll carry the light.
We’ll slaughter down there an’ bring ’em up here.”
Noah took his knife, and Al the ax, and the four men moved down on the sty, their legs flickering in the lantern light.
Ruthie and Winfield skittered along, hopping over the ground.
At the sty Pa leaned over the fence, holding the lantern.
The sleepy young pigs struggled to their feet, grunting suspiciously.
Uncle John and the preacher walked down to help.
“All right,” said Pa.
“Stick ’em, an’ we’ll run ’em up and bleed an’ scald at the house.” Noah and Tom stepped over the fence.
They slaughtered quickly and efficiently.
Tom struck twice with the blunt head of the ax; and Noah, leaning over the felled pigs, found the great artery with his curving knife and released the pulsing streams of blood.
Then over the fence with the squealing pigs.
The preacher and Uncle John dragged one by the hind legs, and Tom and Noah the other.
Pa walked along with the lantern, and the black blood made two trails in the dust.
At the house, Noah slipped his knife between tendon and bone of the hind legs; the pointed sticks held the legs apart, and the carcasses were hung from the two-by-four rafters that stuck out from the house.
Then the men carried the boiling water and poured it over the black bodies.
Noah slit the bodies from end to end and dropped the entrails out on the ground.
Pa sharpened two more sticks to hold the bodies open to the air, while Tom with the scrubber and Ma with a dull knife scraped the skins to take out the bristles.
Al brought a bucket and shoveled the entrails into it, and dumped them on the ground away from the house, and two cats followed him, mewing loudly, and the dogs followed him, growling lightly at the cats.
Pa sat on the doorstep and looked at the pigs hanging in the lantern light.
The scraping was done now, and only a few drops of blood continued to fall from the carcasses into the black pool on the ground.
Pa got up and went to the pigs and felt them with his hand, and then he sat down again.
Granma and Grampa went toward the barn to sleep, and Grampa carried a candle lantern in his hand.
The rest of the family sat quietly about the doorstep, Connie and Al and Tom on the ground, leaning their backs against the house wall, Uncle John on a box, Pa in the doorway.
Only Ma and Rose of Sharon continued to move about.
Ruthie and Winfield were sleepy now, but fighting it off.
They quarreled sleepily out in the darkness.
Noah and the preacher squatted side by side, facing the house.
Pa scratched himself nervously, and took off his hat and ran his fingers through his hair.
“Tomorra we’ll get that pork salted early in the morning, an’ then we’ll get the truck loaded, all but the beds, an’ nex’ morning off we’ll go.
Hardly is a day’s work in all that,” he said uneasily.
Tom broke in,
“We’ll be moonin’ aroun’ all day, lookin’ for somepin to do.” The group stirred uneasily. “We could get ready by daylight an’ go,” Tom suggested.
Pa rubbed his knee with his hand.
And the restiveness spread to all of them.
Noah said,
“Prob’ly wouldn’ hurt that meat to git her right down in salt.