Chapter 1 #3
“Rhett Butler, my Rhode Island Red rooster.” She walked around the coop and returned to stand near Gerard.
“He’s a sneaky bastard. If he’s around when I’m collecting eggs,” she pointed to a fish net hanging on the outside of the coop, “I scoop him up in the net, hang him on the wall and go about my business. When I’m done, I release him. ”
“Why do you hang him on the wall?” Gerard asked. This farming business was beyond strange.
“He’s got really sharp spurs,” Bernie said. “He likes to nail you from behind when you’re squatting down to collect eggs.” She frowned. “Trust me. I have scars.”
Gerard found himself curious about this woman’s scars. His groin tightened.
“Come on.” Bernie tipped her head to the side. “I’ll show you the barn, and then we’ll go out to the pigpen. I need to feed them and give them fresh water.”
She opened the big door on the front of the barn, stepped in and flipped a switch.
Lights blinked on overhead, illuminating the interior of the large barn. Hay was stacked in one corner. Several stalls lined each side, and there was a room with a door.
“This is the tack room. I have saddles, bridles and leads. We used to have horses, but I don’t have much time to ride.”
“Understandable.”
“I sold the horses after Ray died.” She pointed to a four-wheeler parked in one of the open stalls. “I use the ATV when I need to get around when it’s too muddy for the truck, like now. I keep hay and feed in here as well as my store of seeds I use to plant my produce.”
A three-legged cat limped out of the shadows and rubbed against Bernie’s leg.
“This is Eileen.” Bernie grinned. “Get it?”
Gerard looked at the cat. “Did you name her after a famous actress?”
Bernie sighed. “Not many people pick up on her name.”
Gerard thought harder.
Meanwhile, Bernie slung her leg over the seat of the ATV, twisted the key and pressed the start button. The engine chugged for a moment, then engaged, roaring to life.
His focus on the three-legged cat named Eileen, Gerard walked slowly toward Bernie.
When it hit him, he laughed out loud. “I get it. Not E. I. L. E. E. N. You mean it to be ‘I lean.’”
Bernie grinned. “She came to me as a kitten. I don’t know how she was hurt, but she was dragging one injured leg.
It was badly infected, and the bone was crushed.
To save the kitten, the vet amputated her leg.
” Bernie leaned over to scratch the cat’s chin.
“She’s the best mouser we’ve ever had.” She tipped her head over her shoulder. “Hop on.”
Gerard swung his leg over the seat and settled behind her.
“Hold on,” she said and gave the ATV some gas.
The vehicle shot forward, almost unseating Gerard.
He flung his arms around Bernie’s waist and held on as she drove the four-wheeler out of the barn and into a field on the opposite side of the barn from the pasture. She slowed as she passed long rows of green, growing things.
“That’s my produce garden. I grow four kinds of squash, three kinds of lettuce, mustard greens, okra, corn, purple-hull peas, onions, tomatoes, asparagus, rhubarb, strawberries, blueberries and figs.”
She nodded toward the field ahead. “The big field is full of watermelon, cantaloupe and honeydew melons.” She slowed. “What the hell?”
Gerard leaned around her. “What?”
“How did she get out?” She stood on the footrests. “No, no, no!” Bernie dropped down, gunned the throttle and raced along the side of the field, stopping when she came even with a large hulk of an animal, standing in the middle of the field of watermelons.
Bernie leaped off the ATV and ran toward the animal that had to weigh ten times as much as the woman.
Gerard ran after her, leaping over vines crowded with large, fat watermelons. Some of the melons were broken open, the vines uprooted.
“Penelope Pitstop!” Bernie yelled. “Back to the pen.” She waved her hands at the pig, circling her and then urging her toward a pen on the far side of the watermelon patch.
The huge pig moved slowly, rooting her nose through the vines and stopping to break open yet another melon to gobble up the juicy insides.
“No, no, no.” Bernie slapped the animal’s hindquarters. “Go to the pen, you greedy pig.”
Penelope grunted, finished the melon and moved on.
Four melons later, she reached the pigpen and grunted a greeting to the other animals contained inside.
Bernie unhooked a heavy chain and opened the gate wide.
The pig trotted through, happily joining her swine family while Bernie closed and secured the gate with the chain.
“I don’t understand,” she said as she walked around the pen, inspecting the thick bull panels.
“How did she get out? The gate was closed, the chain in place. There aren’t any holes or trenches beneath the wire. ”
Gerard followed her, looking for any signs of damage to the enclosure but finding none. The smell was overwhelming. When they’d completed a full circuit around the pen, they stopped at the gate.
“It was closed.” Bernie shook her head and turned to stare at the field of melons and clapped a hand to her forehead. “She must have been out all night.” She waved her hand at the destruction. “She’s decimated half the crop.”
Gerard looked from the field back to the pen. “Could someone have let her out?”
“How else could she have gotten loose and the gate be closed with the chain in place when we got here? There are no holes in the pen. Ray built it to withstand an elephant.”
Gerard peered through the wire into the pen at the quagmire of mud the pigs seemed content to wallow in, chewing on whatever they’d found to eat.
Something pale and white stuck out of the mud near one of the fence panels.
Penelope the pig nudged it with her snout.
“Wait,” Gerard said. “What’s that she’s sniffing?” He dropped to a squat, reached through one of the rectangular gaps in the wire and grabbed the object before Penelope could snatch it into her greedy mouth.
He straightened with it in his hand, rubbing away the mud. “This looks like a...” His hand froze as recognition struck like a punch to the gut. “It’s a foot.”
“A what?” Bernie leaned close. “Holy shit. That’s a human foot.”