David Lee

Christopher Smart, 1722-1771 Blackula Poland China, 1971-1975 (memorandus) For I will consider my black sow Blackula. For she is the servant of the god of the feed bucket and serveth him. For she worships the god in him and the secret of his pail in her way. For this is done by screams of incantation at the appointed hour and lusty bites of daily communion. For she stands with forelegs upon the top rail of the wooden fence in supplication. For she grunts her thanks while she eats. For she stands for the red boar with closed eyes at the appointed hour. For having done she lies in the mud to consider herself. For this she performs in ten degrees. For first she rolls in her wallow to cover her body. For secondly she lies still to feel the wet. For thirdly she stretches her length and casts her belly to the sun. For fourthly she exhales God’s air in huge sighs. For fifthly she rises and examines her feed trough that replenishment might miraculously appear. For sixthly she scratches her side against the fence. For seventhly she scratches her jowl with delicate pastern swipe. For eighthly she smells the breeze to ascertain the red boar’s presence. For ninthly she returns to her mud and plows large holes in the earth. For tenthly she lies again in the wallow to cool her frame. For having considered her world she will sleep and dream dreams of herself and her god and the red boar. For like Eve for softness she and sweet attractive Grace was formed. For the red boar lusteth mightily and foameth at the mouth for her. For he might escape and enter her pen. For if he does this in a nonappointed hour she will scream loudly and discourage his kisses. For her belly is full and needeth no more. For in one month she will bring forth life in abundance. For in her last litter she farrowed eight piglets of the red boar. For three were black and five were red. For she raised them all and laid on none. For one in eight is normally crushed by the sow. For she is exceedingly good in all that she does. For she is surely of the tribe of Elephant and forgetteth not. For she weighs near six hundred pounds. For she has ears of tremendous size. For she is heavy. For a large sow is a term of the Titan Elephant. For she has the appetite of a bird and would eat the day long which in debt her master suppresses. For he would not have her too fat or his checkbook hollow. For he keeps her well-fed and she breaks no fence. For she grunts in pleasure from the mud when he scratches her ears. For she is a tool of God to temper his mind. For when she eats her corn she turns and shits in her trough. For her master is provoked but hereby learns patience. For she is an instrument for him to learn bankruptcy upon. For he lost but four dollars each on the last litter of pigs. For this is admirable in the world of the bank. For every man is incomplete without one serious debt or loss. For she provides this with her good faith. For every farm is a skeleton without a mortgage. For the Lord admonished black sows when he said lay up no stores of treasure on earth. For she prohibits this daily. For she is a true child of God and creature of the universe. For she is called Blackula which is a derivative of the Devil, but false. For she does worship her God and Savior. For she was given her name for breaking a fence and eating Jan’s garden beets. For when Jan came with a stick and wrath she lifted her head and smiled. For her teeth and mouth were stained with red beet pulp. For Jan dropped the stick and laughed. For she looked like a six-hundred-pound vampire. For she was called Blackula. For we feed her red beets daily to watch her smile. For she is humble when well-fed. For she makes her point well when she is hungry. For there is nothing swifter than a sow breaking fence when she desires. For there is nothing more beautiful than a sow in full run when being chased through a garden. For there is no sound more pure than her scream when she is hit with a stick. For she is meek in all aspects when satisfied. For when John Sims saw her lying in mud he proclaimed her majesty. For he whistled and called her a pretty sonofabitch. For he offered to trade his beat-up truck for her straight across. For she has divine spirit and is manifest as a complete pig. For she is tame and can be taught. For she can run and walk and sleep and drink and eat. For she can scream at the red boar. For she allows her ears and belly to be scratched. For she allows small children to ride her back. For she sleeps in mounds of straw at night. For she produces litters of healthy black and red pigs. For she can root the earth. For she can carry sticks in her mouth. For she will grunt when she is addressed. For she can jump not far but hard. For dried earth cracks in the places where she walks. For she is hated by the breeders of cattle and sheep. For the former loses more money than I do on his stock. For the latter fears her mind. For she has no wool and will not blindly follow his steps. For he carries no bucket of feed. For she litters twice per year. For he litters but once. For her belly is firm and can take much abuse. For from this proceeds her worth. For I perceive God’s mystery by stroking her teats. For I felt tiny lumps of flesh within and knew they were alive. For the life is the physical substance which God sends from Heaven to sustain the appetites of men. For God has blessed her womb and the red boar’s seed. For they multiply in ecstasy at the appointed time. For God has blessed her in many ways. For God has given her the red beets to eat. For God has given the water for her to drink. For God has allowed the water to run to mud in a place for her to lay. For she cannot fly to the mountain streams, though she walks well upon the earth. For she walks the earth heavy upon tiny feet. For she treads all the rows of the summer garden. For she can jump the fence. For she can push it down. For she can eat.

What’s the matter with you today sed John you and Jan fighting? On no I said it’s not that it’s a letter I got that’s bothering me. Must be from the govament or the insurance, I can understand that. No, John, it’s not them this time it’s from a friend. Did he die or summin? You aint sed a decent word all morning I might as well be working by myself and let you set on the nailkeg unrolling barbwore Oh dammit, John, it’s just a letter that pissed me off, I said. It’s from a writer who saw something I wrote about coyotes killing sheep and he wrote saying that never happens. He sez what? sez John. He said there’s no documented evidence that a coyote ever killed a sheep unless it was rabid, I said. And he said my story was a lie and should never have been written. He’s a writer? sez John. What does he write about? Oh, he writes novels, I said. Books about cowboys and Indians and the California mountains. He sez that sed John did he? You know most chickens I known of is layers and most folks I known is liars and most of them don’t know the different but that don’t get in the way of their opinions. It was a preacher got his first call to come to our town back home his first sermon that everbody showed up to hear was how all people is good it aint no such of a thing as a bad person he wasn’t in town half a year before Travis Newberry knocked up his daughter in the eighth grade and he was twenty-four by then. He’d started preaching late after giving up on farming and owning a grocery store must of been too late he run out of words after bout a year we had to elect him to office to give him something to do. First thing he voted no taxes and no pay raises to schoolteachers so they all known he’d be a good one mebbe governor some day had to move him out of the parsonage and into a house where he had to pay rent like real people so they found him a place out on the end of town where they could be alone with that pregnant girl they took out of school. It was skunks out there a mama and four babies and his wife and that girl sez oh they’re purdy let them alone we like them so he did by the time she had her baby they’d killed all their chickens the Easter ducks and the cats it was mice and skunks running all over that place they couldn’t live there no more so he run for state office they sent that girl off to Christian school we never heard of her again and tried to raise the baby boy but couldn’t do that neither. He got elected to the campaign of no taxes and close down the schools cause he blamed it all on Travis Newberry hanging around the jr-high parking lot and moved to the state capital to live and before they could rent that house again they had to set out traps for two months and rat poison sed they got twenty-four skunks but nobody counted the mice it was awful took a year for the smells to go off and it wasn’t no hippies back then to rent it to they had to wait it out so he run for Warshington office six years later and put the boy in the orphanage up for adoption he might of been a scandal but he didn’t get elected they made him a judge instead after that and he’s rich still there and being so famous he don’t pay no rent the state gave him a house and a car and a maid but that still don’t mean he known one damn thing about people or skunks or mice or preaching or farming or running a grocery store. I seen it with my own eyes a coyote running through a herd of sheep and killed nine lambs just to do it and we set up five nights in our pickups waiting for him until he come back and he killed four more before we shot him and that’s nothing to what Allen Dalley out to Summit lost that one year when they say coyotes got half his lamb crop that’s just a bunch of bullshit because he done one thing don’t mean he knows nothing about anothern and if he doesn’t know what he’s talking about you tell him to just keep his mouth closed or run for office that’s what it’s there for so why don’t you forget about it and you can forget him too for now let’s get to work cause all this is real not something in a book and has to be got done for sure not just by thinking about it and if you don’t get that frown put in a drawer this is gone be a long day of work

We sold it. To a man who would be a patriarch. I told John we were closed in, subdivisions and trailers all around, complaints of the smell (though there was none), Ira came out and told me to keep them fenced (though none broke out), the neighbors frightened because someone’s cousin’s friend heard of a hog that ate a child who fell in the pen (though their children rode my sows at feeding time), because I was tired, because Jan carried our child and could no longer help, because she wanted a home. And the patriarch lost his first crop to weeds, threw a rod in the tractor, dug a basement and moved the trailer on for extra bedrooms, cut the water lines for a ditch, subdivided the farm and sold the pigs for sausage. I told John they were his, they were no longer mine, I couldn’t be responsible. The wire connecting our voices was silent for a moment. “You stupid sonofabitch,” was all he finally said. “You poor stupid bastard.”

Ohdammit sez John I’m in trouble so I sed why John? John sez I got the bill for my insurance and I haven’t got no money to pay it cause I won’t get paid for swoking and bailing Keith Guymon’s hay till next week I done told him that would be just fine when he ast a week ago but LaVerne she went and opened the damn envelope on a chain letter and I aint got no time to write out twenty copies I got to get that hay finished so what am I posta do now? I sez what John? John sez it’s the damn govament sends them things out I know it and it works with the post office and the insurance to keep you in line I sez what John? John sez my brother oncet he got this chain letter back home he didn’t have no time to write out his copies neither it sez he has four days to wrote it before the luck comes good or bad it aint never good I heard of be he forgot back then it was $5,000 this feller got in four days and then later when the govament ruint the money he put on a zero it was $50,000 and then it was $100,000 now it sez he got $420,000 it’s the same guy it was in that letter back then just the numbers changed it’s the way the govament has to let us know how much he’s gone let the money be worth but the next day because he hadn’t wrote out his twenty letters he lost all that money but my brother he was busy too he didn’t do his letters the third day after he had to go kill these pigs for this man but this other feller was gone bring his milkcow down get her bred to my brother’s bull he told him go ahead and do it he sez he’d have his boy walk her down the road it wasn’t far so while my brother was gone his boy brought her down turnt her in the corral he climbt up on the fence to watch it might of been fine except the hogs been rooting up under the barn wall my brother he borrowed this lectric fence he strung it along the side of the barn so the bull mounts up on the milkcow she turns and backs him up against the barn he’s stuckt he gets his back feet tangled in that lectric fence one in front and one back he tries to move and he just tightens up the lectric wire that boy he sez you could hear it zzip zzip zipp that bull he starts to bellering milkcow she don’t know what’s going on so she backs him up tighter against the barn it isn’t no way he can get off he commences to jumping up and down on her and trying to get his feet loost of that lectric wire but he caint it goes zzip he bellers and she backs up more it goes zzip again it was like he was doing a dance like them crazy people do trying to get his legs loost hollering like a sonofabitch so it was hogs there too they heard it and here they come it wasn’t natural and a hog it won’t let nothing that’s not natural stay that way around them it has to get right or go away or die that boy sez they all run up grunted and squolt like hell when that didn’t work this one old mean bitching sow she run right in between them she bit that bull right on his seeds she wanted him to stop acting that way making all that noise jumping up and down like that right now that bull he just went over backwards right up against the barn like he’d been shot in the head knocked the whole goddam end of the barn down fell right on his back the end rafter come down on his chest it torn a piece of skin off his pecker to his seeds wide as your hand they swolt up like basketballs from the hogbite broke ribs they figured but it never did kill him that milkcow she wan’t finished she kept backing up and fell down right on top of him it was only the end of the barn come down the rest stood up that boy he’s ascairt he got daddy’s milkcow up off my brother’s bull he left he sed he seen enough for oncet my brother that night he’s coming home from killing them hogs he never knew none of this happened yet he’s driving see? and he’d lost his picking finger on his left hand in the leaf springs of a wagon when we’s kids so he’s driving left-handed and doing the gears and picking with his right hand it was a moon out so he’d turned off his pickup lights listening to the radio because his battery wasn’t much good he couldn’t do both while he was driving he couldn’t see good as he thot he could he hit this big chuckhole slung him right into the steering wheel he figured it would of broke his nose if he hand’t been picking but his hand took the cushion it only gave him a nosebleed but almost broke his hand where it hit his knuckles was bruised so bad he couldn’t even open and shut his fingers for a week he had to drive the rest of the way home left-handed and lean acrost and shift with that hand too he thot the other one was broke but it wasn’t he got home and the first thing he seen was the end of his barn out that bull standing there inside the barn with his head down low my brother thot he’d butted it down he run in the house to get his gun he was mad he would of kilt that bull but they told him how it happened so he didn’t he went out to look but it wasn’t no way they could get that bull to go back in that yard where them pigs was he wouldn’t go out the barn they him him acrost the butt with a board he’d just stand there he didn’t care no more they went in the house my brother he got out the dishpan and soaked some cold water so he lain his hand in it to get the swollen to go down he wouldn’t tell them how it happened at first but while he was setting there with his hand ducked he remembered that chain letter he jumped up and run to get it sloshed water all over the kitchen floor he was hollering how long’s it been? how long’s it been? they sez it happened this morning it was just his morning he sez whar? they sez when the sow bit the bull on his seeds knocked the barn down he hollers no not that how long’s it been since I got this here chain letter in the mail? they sez oh three days he sez goddam I only got one day left my brother he set up all night writing out his twenty copies he had to tape the pencil to his hand cause it was swole up his fingers wouldn’t bent they sed he even wrote some with his left hand it was so bad you couldn’t read the words he got them all done by sunup the fourth day like it sed and took it to the mailbox he waited all morning on the porch till they remembered it was Memoral Day the mail he wouldn’t come my brother he about had a worm he run out to the mailbox and got them letters he run over to his pickup and clumb in it wouldn’t crunk he’d run the battery down listening to the radio goddam my brother he was mad he busted the side winder with his head when the pickup wouldn’t turn over jumped out and slammed the door so hard it didn’t catch it bounce right back and hit him right on his swole-up hand it hurt so bad he sez he nearly fainted of the pain he knew he had to get them letters in the mail so he walked all the way to town it was more’n ten miles back then it worked nothing else happened they got the end back in the barn without it coming down but they had to shoot the bull finally and eat him because he wouldn’t do nothing just set there and waste away he’d seen enough they guessed it wasn’t no way he’d go back out there with them pigs in the corral since then ever time we seen a envelope in my family it looks like it might be a chain letter we don’t open it till we got time to set down right then and make out them twenty copies like it sez to do but this time LaVerne must of forgot it snuck up on her when I got home it was laying on the table and it wasn’t nothing I could do it was my name on the envelope I know it come from the insurance company it was two years ago the man’s wife from the insurance called she sez to LaVerne then that she wanted her to come to her house she wanted to tell her about selling Amway LaVerne she sez she wasn’t inarrested a week later here comes the insurance bill by god it’s gone up almost double I sez how come you didn’t go? you could of just set and nod now see what happened? but it was too late so I’m gone to have to stay up tonight writing chain letters I done wrote one to send to the insurance so he’ll know I did it and let the govament know I wrote him a note on the bottom and sez I’ll pay the insurance bill as soon as I can but things is tough all over I just hope he’ll understand I’d as soon right now rather not have no luck at all but I am willing to cooperate if that’s what my duty is as a patriotic American citizen