The Cowardice of Captivity

Neck twisting like a bottle grown soft and malleable with heat, Gertrude fought gravity until she sat. Rosey pressed her snout against her arm, puffing warm air. A fly spiraled by. The rooster had been done crowing.

She limply rubbed the sow. “Good morning, princess.” The regular sound of the pigs’ oinking and snuffling soothed her.

Old man give you medicine again? Rosie queried.

Gertrude smoothed her frizzy hair. “Loads this time.”

Rosie huffed. He oughtn’t to.

Gertrude glanced around for eavesdroppers. “That’s ’tween him and God.”

God has a lot of work to do on him, Big Joe put in between mouthfuls of slop.

Rosie crawled to the trough and drank her fill of water, watching a shard of leaf bob. She splashed her face and dried it on her dirty shirt. It’d been years since she encountered a mirror, but she heard the comments and made a little effort.

The side door slammed, and two men came around to the pen. One of them was a skinny stranger with a red beard. He looked at Gertrude for a long time.

She knew better than to look him in the face, but she studied his clothes and bearing. New clothes smudged up. He was tall and drooped as if after a certain height gravity’d got too much to bear.

“Is it a boy or a girl?”

Robbie laughed. “That ain’t the question.”

Gertrude reddened and scrubbed her face with her sleeve, not knowing that it only got it dirtier. The men both laughed. She hated laughter.

Then they got quiet. “Pull down your pants,” said Robbie.

It was no use arguing. Anyway, this had happened before when other people came by. She stood and did as told, wavering slightly, still messy in the head from the “medicine.”

The stranger whistled. “I’ll be damned. It is female, under all that.”

“Yep,” Robbie replied, pulling out a cigarette. Too bored to argue. Gertrude knew his moods well. She restored her pants and sat beside Rosey, whose body was warm.

“She ain’t worth near so much as the pigs.”

“Ain’t worth shit.” Robbie spat. Fired up, he said, “Used to try and get her to work.” He shook his head until it faced the ground, then straightened. “Boy, the old man got hot. He don’t want her outside the pen.”

He snapped his fingers. “Pig! ‘Mere, pig.”

Gertrude crawled to the fence. She could see the stranger’s shoes better now. Bright and shiny black like a beetle. She wanted those shoes something terrible.

Robbie backed up and the stranger followed suit. “Hey, Pig. Come on out here. Come on over here in front of me.” He backed up again.

Gertrude watched him from the fence, her face poking out over dirty forefingers.

Robbie motioned at her. “She won’t come out for nothin’. Old man got her trained good.”

“I’ll be damned.” The stranger turned away as though the sight were too much to bear. He took off his hat and patted it on his leg and put it back on again. He walked back over to Gertrude, who fell backwards in her scramble to move away.

Robbie laughed. “Naw, it’s alright, Pig. Come over’n say hi.”

When she returned, the shadow of the stranger and his wide hat fell over her. “Can I pet it?” he asked. “Does she bite?”

“It better not,” Robbie warned her.

The stranger gently patted her hair. “I’ll be damned,” he said again.

Robbie blew out a cloud of smoke and stalked about the yard.

“I don’t know, Rob,” said the stranger, still patting her head. “I don’t know but I just might buy it.”

Robbie coughed. “What the hell for?” He calmed himself, and Gertrude recognized his bargaining mode from when he sold pigs. “Alright, well, the old man won’t let it go easy. He’s got a soft spot for it. His little pet.” He said the last word with a sneer despite himself.

The stranger turned to him. “That don’t much bother me. I’ll give you one thousand.”

“You’re joking.”

“One thousand even, cold hard cash.”

Robbie had to collect himself again. “Alright. Let’s go talk to him.”

They were inside the house for a long time. They came out as three.

“Hey now, Pig!” the old man called. Gertrude moved to her designated spot.

“I hate to lose ya, sweetheart,” he crooned. “But a grand’s a grand, ain’t it?”

Robbie poured more scraps into the far end of the yard, drawing all the pigs away.

The old man opened the gate and grasped Gertrude’s hair tight against her skull, then dragged her out into the yard. Her hands and feet pawed at the ground. “Shut that gate, will ya?” he said to Robbie. “Else she’ll just run right back in.”

Robbie shut the gate.

“Stay now. Stay!” The old man raised his hand threateningly as he slowly released her hair. She glanced nervously at her family. The pigs were still occupied with the food, no concern for her.

“You want a leash or somethin’? I ain’t givin’ you a refund if she runs off on ya.”

“Won’t she just take it off?”

Robbie shook his head. “You still don’t know what you gettin’.”

The stranger considered Gertrude. “Maybe better,” he said.

When they got to his pickup, he spread a towel over the backseat. He lifted her in because she wouldn’t stand, to which she submitted because her life had no playbook for this. He tied her leash around a bar built under the seats.

“OK,” he said, not really to her.

The farm dwindled. She snuffled. She felt that she would never see her family again.

Road and trees and trees and fields and trees.

It made her uncomfortable to be led indoors. The old man had washed her down with the hose occasionally, so the shower wasn’t too hard to get used to. She didn’t know what to make of her face in the mirror, so she put it aside. New clothes — now, that was exciting. But he kept trying to get her to stand in his presence, which wasn’t right.

Finally, he sat her on a chair at the kitchen table and stared at her. She looked down.

“You speak English?”

“Yes,” she replied.

“I’ll be damned.” He sat back and tapped the table in thought.

“Freedom,” he said. “That’s what I have to understand. A man — a person — can’t call themselves a human being if they don’t give a damn about freedom. So, what are you?”

She tried to make her body smaller, pressing closer, tighter.

“Because you weren’t on no chain. This isn’t slave times when they’d have the whole county after you if you ran off. How many years you been there?” The man’s manner of speech was strange. He sounded more like the veterinarian in one moment, more like Robbie the next.

“I’m asking, girl, why didn’t you run away?”

Gertrude knew that not answering questions never came to good. Sometimes, Robbie had come at her with questions similar to these. But she never knew how to answer. He didn’t ask them in earnest. A simple reply was usually enough.

“I was scared,” she said.

He rubbed his head. “So, it’s that simple.”

She was wearing a white dress. White.

“Do you…want for anything?”

That was an easy one. She knew the answer to that. “No.”

After a long pause, he stood. “Alright.” He sounded wore out.

He pulled out the chair and sat back down. “No, listen.” He slapped the table. She jumped. “Do you understand what it is to be free? Do you understand you was in a cage? How old are you? Sixteen? Eighteen? Twenty?”

When she didn’t reply, he went on. “Alright, you’re alive, and you ain’t too skinny, neither. Maybe you even made friends with some of them pigs back there, before they went off to slaughter. But what did you have that’s worth sacrificing freedom? There ain’t nothin’ some old man could do to me to stop me breaking free or dying trying, I’ll tell you that. Ain’t you got no human spirit?”

She felt him looking at her hard. She didn’t like this. She missed Rosey. This man had come along to haul her away and question her existence like it was any of his business. When money changed hands, the animals went away with someone new. But she didn’t care for this new owner, not at all. At least the old man with his whiskey and taunting and striking — that, she understood.

“What I want to know,” he said, “is whether the spirit got trained out of you or trained in to me.”

“You got any whiskey?” That felt safe to ask.

He laughed, and it was worse even than normal laughter. He stood and wandered through the room. “She wants to know if I got any whiskey.” He laughed a little more, then slammed a cabinet three times fast, yelling, “No!” each time. She didn’t know how to make herself smaller, unless she got on the floor. Maybe under the table.

He brought over a bottle and two glasses. “We’re gonna drink to freedom,” he said grimly, filling them up. “Cuz I ain’t keepin’ you.”

She downed her glass all at once, wincing, even though it was almost brimming. She hated alcohol.

He followed suit and asked, “Is this why you stayed? The old man got you hooked on drink?”

Gertrude felt her body warming, loosening. Sometimes she didn’t even know what she’d said to the old man. He would sit on the other side of the fence even drunker, forcing her to keep taking swigs from the bottle, and they’d talk for hours. Sometimes he’d ask her to do tricks, cackling at her sloppy efforts.

“What if I took you back?” he pressed. “What if I took you back there, and they put you back in the pen. Would you run away now? Everybody’d be on your side. It’s a crime what they was doing. You could be free. Didn’t know that, isn’t that all? But you know now, don’t you?” He gripped her arm. “Don’t you?”

She winced, and he released her. “Sorry. Sorry. I won’t harm you.” He rubbed his head, sighed. “But you’re not a pig. You know that, right?” She sat silent.

“I promise I won’t hurt you. Promise. Promise. No matter what you say. You can say anything. Hey — I’m like your pig friends, alright? Not like the old man and Robbie. I’m not gonna hurt you. I’m different, OK?” His voice got softer and softer. “So, tell me, girl. Why’d you let that happen?”

She looked him in the eye. “Why’s it me?”

He sat in stunned silence, then found his voice again. “Oh, I see. I see. You want to know why I’m dolin’ out cash to the likes of them, talking civil to them, and draggin’ you around asking you a bunch of questions, asking what’s wrong with you? Why don’t I ask the old man what’s wrong with him, is that it?”

She nodded warily.

“Well. That’s because I understand the likes of them. But your kind, I never could figure out.”

“That’s what’s wrong with you,” she said, scarcely able to believe she’d said it.

The comment struck him like a blow. He sat back in his chair. It was too much. She never fought or fled her captors, but he, her savior who’d purchased her freedom, was fair game? Looking at her hunched up in his daughter’s dress, he almost wanted to slap her.

She felt it in his posture, the coiled spring. “See,” she whispered.

He did.