SOW-ER ENTERTAINMENT
by
Michael Allender
(The second in a series of fourteen stories)
Sow-er Entertainment
(Story # 2)
Following Ben's instructions to the letter, I lifted the crock of sourdough starter out from under the pantry floor where the earth kept it at a cool temperature. After filling a bucket three quarters full of flour, I poured in the starter, added some warm water from off the stove, and mixed the ingredients into a bubbling slurry. Then, hardly able to contain my excitement, and making sure no one would see me, I lugged the living, ballooning stew to the pigsty where Matilda, our best sow, awaited this strange new offering. It was some hard financial times and a thirst for entertainment that had brought the three of us--me, my older brother Ben and Matilda--to this crossroads. There were lessons awaiting each of us.
***
This was one of Ben's grander, if less mature ideas. I suppose that's fitting, since we were only six and eight. On our farm in east Texas, the depression years had followed us into the late forties. We were still a couple of years away from electrification and its conveniences, and the only formal entertainment we could afford was either gleaned from books, which my parents kept us well supplied with, or from practical pranks, at which Ben excelled. Most of his pranks had been fairly benign up until then, and perhaps he thirsted for more notoriety. Partly because I was often the butt of his little escapades, I preferred books for my entertainment.
One chore I didn't mind at all was helping to make the daily bread...weekly in our case. I can still remember learning from Mother not only how to make bread, but also why the rising process worked. After mixing the ingredients in a bowl, she plopped the dough onto a large board that had a slight scooped out center. The board was placed on the floor, and with my head full of anticipation and pride, I knelt over my work, using the weight of my whole body to fold, push and refold the huge mass of sticky wheat dough that was to become three loaves of sourdough bread. The first time I was assigned this duty I kept a vigil by the warming oven for the entire hour it took for the dough's initial rising.
There was another 'rising' phenomenon on the farm that I was fond of but too young to understand--the fecund swelling that preceded Matilda's early spring deliveries. I consider piglets the cutest animals on earth, but the sale of wiener pigs represented a substantial portion of our families' income. The last litter our other sow (Jug-a-wine) birthed had all died when she failed to produce milk for them. It had been a serious blow. We felt the stress it caused our parents as they struggled to make do with less, and I also felt the personal pinch in the lack of new books in the house. It was Ben who came up with a plan.
"Matilda needs some babies," he said. "They're inside her, see, and she swells up like a balloon and pushes 'em out. Same with cows and cats." He gave me a sideways glance to see if I was following, and I nodded in wide-eyed agreement. "All we have to do," Ben said with wrinkled brow, "is put some air in Matilda so they'll pop out. Then we'll have another batch of pigs."
"Yeah," I chimed in eagerly, "and Mommy and Daddy won't have to sell their hutch." There had been open talk By Dad about trying to sell the antique highboy that had been in the family for nearly a hundred years. Such discussions could make my mother stiffen up and pound a skirt steak into tender submission.
By bedtime, Ben was convinced that the very next day I should put his theory to the test. That way, I was told, (and I can still picture the sincere look in his eye) I would receive all the credit.
The next morning I hefted the big metal bucket, filled with the commonplace ingredients of bread, and proceeded down the path to the sty. Using the alchemy of a youthful imagination, it was no trick at all to transform all that sourdough into uncommon solutions for all sorts of financial problems for our parents. And, it would make Ben happy too, which was at least as important as anything else. Even though Ben was only two years older than me, I considered him something of a family deity at that age, and how often does one get to impress a god? Ben wasn't with me as I made my way to the pigsty, though. Said he had some important chores to tend to. God's time is valuable, you know.
Matilda hesitated for only a brief moment when the unusual yeasty aroma greeted her twitching nose. In less than a minute the sourdough was cleared right down to the smooth boards of her trough. Then she nosed around a bit, making sure she had found the last of such a tasty treat, and waddled over to a corner making satisfied sounding noises. She plopped down heavily on her rear end, just like, "Hey kid, good job. Now I'll just wait for something to happen."
For me she was a pot I could not afford to watch for long since I still had my own set of chores to perform. There were old candles to melt down, eggs to gather, and I had to discover the hiding place of a suspected litter of kittens. Anyway, sourdough takes a while to work, so I decided to wait till the evening feeding to spring my surprise on my family. Ben was going to be so proud of me.
Supper took darn near forever. Fried ham, with a thin gravy my grandmother called sop, yams, butter beans and biscuits. Dad became suspicious when I declined a second helping of wild persimmon cobbler. There was no big rush, really, but I was afraid it would get too dark to count how many new pigs our plan--and Matilda--had produced. Ben and I kept eyeing each other throughout the dinner, but we had agreed to wait to tell our parents until something positive had happened.
Finally, all the trimmings and scraps were placed in the slop pail and I made a dash for the door and the well worn trail that I could follow on the blackest night. Matilda was obviously a changed pig from the time of her morning snack, but for some reason the babies weren't cooperating. Did they know it was the beginning of winter, perhaps? Maybe they felt obliged to wait until spring. I dearly hoped not. In the growing dusk I could see that Matilda seemed most uncomfortable. She was walking the perimeter of the sty making little high-pitched squeaks, and then these urgent sounding two-toned grunts. I'd never heard that before, not even when she was giving birth to a litter of eight or ten little miniature Matildas. I thought about it a while and figured it would be best if ti kept the secret bottled up until morning, even though I was getting worried. I had seen what happens to a balloon that is inflated with too much air, and the thought of a midnight explosion, with various parts of Matilda flying in every direction--not to mention little piglet rockets... I could feel my heart begin to pound as I began to focus on this new image. Perhaps, I thought, I should consult Ben.
Ben's confidence seemed to spring a leak when I told him about Matilda, but then he gathered himself and put his arm on my shoulders. "You have to be patient," he said. "This might take some time." I noticed, however, that a few minutes later he went out to take a look for himself. When he returned he looked as worried as I felt. "Something's not right," he said. "She sure don't look very happy. How much of that stuff did you give her, anyway?"
"A bucket full. That's what you said." He didn't deny it, but he seemed displeased I had remembered. "Should we tell Daddy?" I asked.
"No! It's too dark," he said, which sounded logical at the time. Too much, too dark, and probably too late. "We'll just have to wait till tomorrow." I was wishing I'd never heard of sourdough, and I was also beginning to dwell on the fact that it was me, and me alone, that had fed it to Matilda. The whole bucket full.
The dark hours dragged on forever, and I kept crawling out of bed throughout the night, padding quietly over to the only window in my tiny bedroom to examine the inky blackness for any sign of a lightening sky. Finally, at 5:00 AM I heard Dad rekindling the fire in the kitchen cook stove. The hour had come. Once I had my dress on with the right side out and my long warm socks were p
ulled part of the way up, I burst through the door into the hallway just as Dad was heading for the privy.
"Whoa there, morning star," he said as I tried to squeeze past him onto the back porch. "Are you on fire or just in urgent need?"
"I have to go count Matilda's babies," I blurted out. No reaction. He didn't even look at me. He yawned as we went out the back door into the cold air and finally said, "Matilda's babies. Now there's something new. The sow won't have her little till spring. Where'd this notion come from?"
"Cause I have her some sourdough yesterday and she has a lot of air in her tummy so now the piggies should be out." Dad stopped and stood there, trying through his frown to glean some wispy