Page 15 - SOUTHERN VOICES_2020

Mama was a single lady, a widow; Daddy had died about three years ago in a construction accident. We had all lived in the vast industrial sea of Pittsburgh and were getting good money from all the houses Daddy was building, though too many houses were getting built
too fast without proper regulations and a building had collapsed on top of twenty men. Daddy had been one
of them. Mama couldn’t handle the pain in her heart to live in the city anymore, so we moved down South, to Mississippi, with Grandpa and Grandma. It was cheaper down there, and Mama could make a small living off of sewing gowns for the all-girls school a few miles east.
With two boys, Mama had a hard time wrangling us up, so once she decided she had enough of the bickering and wrestling, she shipped us to Uncle Randy’s house so he could teach us to be proper men. I didn’t take
too kindly to Uncle Randy the first time I met him; he was Daddy’s older brother, but he was nothing like my daddy.
“Randy only got motivation to chug booze and touch pretty ladies,” my grandpa told me as he was driving me and my older brother, Robert, to Randy’s house.
I never did like the way Uncle Randy looked at Mama; he always gave her a wide nasty smile that showed all his missing teeth and made his eyes all squinty. It also made my stomach churn when he always insisted on giving her a long hug and a kiss on the cheek. Not only that, he treated Robert like scum.
Robert had been diagnosed with an illness by a fancy doctor in Pittsburgh. Mama had got nervous that Robert wasn’t acting like the other kids at school and
so she and Daddy decided it would be best to get him checked out. The doctor said that Robert got autism, and that means that even though Robert is seventeen he can’t act like it, and sometimes he gets real bothered by things like sounds and new people. Autism was a new name in Pittsburgh, and in the South it didn’t even exist. Uncle Randy liked to pick on Robert: he would smack his hands together real loud like, and that would cause Robert to slap his hands to his ears and wail.
“You’re the man of the house now, Michael,” Mama said, before she shipped us off for the summer. “You have to look out for your brother since he don’t know any better; you’re his keeper.”
Now in Mississippi, mud sucked our boots as we all trudged up the hill to the pig shed that leaned and shook when the wind was bad. The humid air clung sweat to all of our necks and backs as Uncle Randy slung two rifles on each shoulder while I hauled five buckets. Robert lagged behind; he was distracted by all the lovebugs that danced in the blades of grass. He was in charge of carrying the knives.
Once we arrived at the doors of the shed, Uncle tossed one the rifles onto the chipped floorboards and snatched a knife from Robert,
“Michael, go grab that young one back there.” His gloved finger pointed to the young piglet that lay sleeping at the sow’s plump belly.
“But that one’s little.”
“It’s a runt,” he grumbled “We don’t needa waste any food; it’s useless.” I nodded.
My boots sank into the soft earth as I tiptoed around the other sows lying on the floor of the shed and made my way towards the baby, but the edge of my rubber boot must have stepped on a tail because one of the adult pigs hopped up and began to screech. With that, they all began to shriek in unison. My hands tried to snatch the young piglet, but that only made the mama mad because she began to cry and jump in circles around my feet.
Robert’s hands leapt to his ears, and he began to wail as well.
“You idiot!” Uncle yelled and began kicking the buckets to the corner of the shed. Tin crashed against the wood, making it worse for Robert.
“Stop it! You’re making Robert cry!” I yelled at Uncle, pressing the sobbing piglet to my chest.
That must had made Uncle angry, me standing up for Robert, because with a dead look in his eyes he walked over to Robert and slapped him right across his freckled face. I had never seen Robert so distraught,
Keeper
Auriel Quiroz
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