34.
The sheriff was nettled. Jim Higginbottom was often nettled. If veins were brambles, his would have had thorns, his insides
always pricking at him in distaste. In irritation. He’d been like this since he was a young man, and felt like his body didn’t
quite fit in the world. Little things other people took in stride irritated the shit out of him. Like the way they coughed—though
he coughed, too—or the opinions they had, though he knew that his opinions could be wrong, too. He moved through his days
in a cloud of anger and couldn’t even say why. It was like anger wasn’t even an emotion anymore.
It was a state of being.
He had carefully arranged everything: the pig hunt, the exhumation. He was well aware of the laws regarding exhumations, and
knew that excavating a burial ground could cause all sorts of headaches and complications. It was far easier to do as he had
learned to on a farm, growing up: as long as you did quality work, rules and regulations be damned. But that investigator
had put the fear of God into the woman at the historical society and now he had to wade through all the ridiculous red tape.
He had spent the better part of one morning in a headache-inducing exchange with the health department, and now half the women
in town were complaining about the pig hunt, because their kids wanted to join and he had said no. It wasn’t a merry fucking
holiday.
Now, oiling his hunting rifle in his station, readying for the pig hunt tomorrow, he thought of his daughter, Emma.
He remembered one Christmas morning, getting up early, trying to cook some bacon so he could at least make it festive.
Emma was maybe eleven by then, and he had looked out his window to see Mitchell Brown, trying to learn how to drive his grandfather’s rusted old truck.
The boy was maybe fourteen or fifteen at that time, and his blind grandfather was sitting next to him, giving instructions.
It was a Christmas fucking miracle that the kid hadn’t hit anything.
Jim had run out, still in his plaid robe and slippers, though it was icy, grabbed ahold of the driver’s side door, and asked
them what the hell they were doing. The grandfather had cackled, whiskey on his breath, and said he was teaching his grandson
how to drive. It was his Christmas gift.
So the sheriff had them pull over, and his Christmas, followed by a tangle of bacon, was sitting in the truck with Mitchell
Brown and his grandfather, with Emma, excited, squeezed in next to him, while he taught the young man how to drive. Slowly.
Surely. Safely.
Later, Emma had said, “That was the best Christmas ever, Dad. Since Mom went away.”
He thought about Rosanna lately, too. Sometimes he wondered. Sometimes he knew. It was like his brain was one of those old-fashioned
cabinets they had in the hardware store, with a tiny drawer for each size of screw. Who knew what was in each drawer? You
had to open it to find out. Maybe someone had misplaced one screw, and you would find a 5/8-inch one with the 3/4-inch ones.
You might find your wife gone, her purse and car keys gone, and you might wonder if you did it. Because you know you did something. That was part of the irritation you carried. Irritation at yourself.
He shook his head. The rifle was ready. It had been ready for a long time. He wondered why he hadn’t ever planned the hunt
before, and then he knew: He liked the fact that the pigs were in the woods. It kept the locals from going there too much.
It wasn’t their land, after all. People should stay where they belong.