The Malicarn Lowlands #2
At some point night turned to day and you stumbled out of the inn, half a sol lighter, and without a night’s sleep under you.
You had no horse now, but were so drunk you would have had trouble steering it regardless.
You walked out the village gates and up the road slowly.
You were hungry but too far from the Old Village by the time you realized it, so you continued home.
Marion was in bed, her feet particularly swollen, when you arrived in late afternoon.
“Where were you? Where is the horse?”
“I sold the horse.” You didn’t explain, and she didn’t ask. “No help to be found.”
“I nearly fell over milking the cows this morning. That other pig’s dead, by the way.”
That night, when you went to sleep, you looked at Marion for a long time and realized you had no idea who she was.
You knew married men got jealous, or bored, but you didn’t realize they could grow ignorant.
Ignorant not just of what they thought a wife was but ignorant of the whole idea of her in the first place.
Why was she beside you at all? What did you ever think you could understand by being with her?
And why were you still a loser? You thought you left that behind in Sacramento.
You hitched the mules to the wagon in the morning, tied up the dead pig, and began to cart it to the refuse pile.
The last pig watched him from the other enclosure.
You had only made it halfway when you heard Marion shout from the house.
You ran to her. She stood beside the bed, piss or something all down her leg.
“The baby!” Marion yelled. “The baby is coming!”
You ran up to the old mill, where you fetched the miller’s sister, an expert midwife, who followed you home with an armful of blankets, towels, and a kettle. She made you fill it with water and heat it on your fire, then she banished you from the house.
You don’t know anything about babies. You don’t now and you didn’t before.
You don’t want to, it’s not exciting, not interesting.
What if there is a war, an adventure to be had?
You’ll have to stay home, because of the baby.
Run away, you tell yourself. Leave now, go somewhere.
But you don’t. You do what you can on the farm, trying not to stray too far from the house, and it was several hours before the midwife reemerged and told you to come inside.
“It’s a son,” Marion said, sitting on the bed. “His name should be Buck.”
You looked at the boy, barely a person at all, and wondered how it was you ended up a poor man on a poor farm with a wife and a son who looked like a potato.
You didn’t need to buy any drinks that night. Your friends at the Black Crow treated you in honor of new fatherhood.
“I don’t know,” you said to your companions, head hung over the table. “What will I do? My pigs are sick. The crop is infested. There’s not enough rain. What will I do?”
“Sell your horse,” said a man named Brighton. “You can get by with the mules.”
“I’ve done that already.”
“Learn a trade, Frank, give up the farm.”
“I have a compact I signed with the local magistrate. I have to work the land fourteen years or I face a royal inquiry.”
“Oh no, you don’t want that. Better just to steal some money.”
It was an enticing idea, and it got you to thinking. Jack would be back soon, no doubt returning from a visit to other farmers and breeders off west. He would have the money with him, he said so.
Yes! Here, at last, a quest.
“Hey, Brighton? You want some extra change?”
The plan was simple. Jack would arrive with money for three pigs.
So what if there was only one? He would take the one, no matter how mad he’d be about it.
Then on his way out, a mile or so down the road, Brighton would ambush Jack and take the rest of his money.
At least two pigs’ worth. Jack didn’t know Brighton, wouldn’t connect him with you.
You and Brighton could split the rest—doubling your profits. Brighton liked the plan.
“I can beat a man real hard and let him live,” Brighton said. “I’m good at that.”
On the day Jack came Marion had been up all night with the baby. Buck wouldn’t stop crying and you started yelling at her to quiet him down, do something to make him shut up.
“It’s good he’s healthy,” Jack said, when you told him how loud your new son could be. “Crying means he’s strong. You want a strong child.”
“Yes, of course. You want them to be strong.”
“How’s your head doing there?” he asked, pointing to the gash on your forehead.
You ignored Jack’s question and took him to see the pig. You didn’t explain why there was only one left.
“So the sickness spread, did it?” Jack clicked his lips together, shook his head sadly. “Well, that’s a shame for you, Frank. But it’s not my problem. I wish you a good day.”
“I still got the one!”
“Last month you had five healthy pigs. Those I was interested in. Fetch a fair price for them. But now you got one pig that’s liable to be sick any day. I can’t truly bargain with that, no sir. Good day.”
Jack tipped his cap and walked off whistling. You could hear the baby crying from the house.
You spent the afternoon pacing around the farm, surveying the dying blueberries and the overfed chickens and the sheep who weren’t growing any wool.
You looked at the barren wheat field you needed to seed and the rotten apple trees you needed to cut down.
You thought about all the farmwork you needed to do and how little you actually understood about farming.
How mad you were that you were a farmer at all, how much you hated it and never wanted to do it, but how you somehow had to do it anyway.
You looked at your last pig, who was idly searching the dirt for food, and you waited on Brighton.
But Brighton never showed up. You waited a bit longer, thought about going up to the road yourself.
Finally, as dusk fell and Marion fed the young child, you marched up the hill to the Black Crow, where the old vets were singing their songs and telling their tales.
Brighton was among them. You walked right up and grabbed him by his shirt.
“Where’s my money?”
“Whaddya mean, Frankie?”
“I mean where is it? It was my job, where’s my share?”
“Oh, that. Yeah, yeah, sorry Frank. I was helping the missus, if you know what I mean. Plum forgot.”
“Liar! You buy rounds tonight? You buy for everyone? You buy with my money?”
“Calm down, Frank. It’s not like that. I just forgot is all. That fellow’s probably spending his money buying rounds for some other fellas somewhere else. Nobody’s ripping you off.”
You swung your fist into the side of Brighton’s face. He fell backward over the bar, and cries and huzzahs rang out across the pub. A few men pushed through, grabbed you, lifted Brighton.
“Now Brighton’s allowed to take a swing at you, Frank. That’s just fair.”
But you refused to stand for it and so they took the sol and a half you held in your vest and they threw you outside, into the dirt. “You come back when you can take a punch, Frankie.”
Marion was asleep at home, baby Buck in her arms. They were both quiet.
The farm was quiet, the land quiet. You sat in a chair at the table and listened to the farm.
Your trousers were caked in mud, the gash on your head still stung, and you picked at the meat pie, thinking about what to do, how you could make the best of it.
Find another buyer for the pig. Get back your horse. Something.
You didn’t want to sleep, didn’t want to be near Marion or the baby.
You walked out to the pigsty. The last pig wandered around the large pen, all alone, sniffing the ground, hoping for scraps.
In three days it would be dead, too, but it didn’t know that yet.
It was just looking for something to eat.
You remembered how, when you heard about the opportunity to join the Malicarn, you expected to be riding horses and shooting arrows on some battlefield.
You thought you’d be a different person.
The pig snorted as it sniffed the mud, and you found the whole scene very funny.
Frank Douglas, for reasons he could not fathom, began to laugh.