Bottom Feeder

BOTTOM FEEDER

Deborah Leblanc

Published by Deborah Leblanc at
Smashwords

Copyright 2010 Deborah Leblanc

It wasn’t so much the smell of pig shit that
got Nina’s attention, as it was the size of the pig shitting. It
looked like a Volkswagen with a busted gas tank. A light breeze
collected the scent of the brown stream squirting from beneath its
looping tail and sent it her way. She slapped a hand over her nose
but not quick enough to keep the putrid odor from drilling into her
sinuses. It was like snorting a cocktail of warm rotted meat,
vomit, and something metallic. She gagged, eyes watering.

The woman who’d introduced herself only
moments earlier as Lervette Patin let out a hearty laugh, revealing
pale pink gums with no teeth and a nicotine-stained tongue. Not a
pretty sight on any woman, but paste it on four hundred pounds of
blubber dressed in a faded green housedress and tattered sneakers
and you were looking at down right gross. Lervette clapped her
hands twice, and the rolls of fat on her body jiggled in every
direction at once. When her guffaws finally calmed to mild snorts,
she said, “Ol’ Maudwan’s been havin’ de drizzles for a coupla days.
Don’t know how long dey gonna last, so you bes’ learn to breathe
out you mout’ when you come ‘round to feed.”

Nina gaped, one eye on the animal’s thick
yellow tusks and what appeared to be a quarter-size mole on the
left side of its snout. What was a sixty-plus-year-old woman living
alone doing with a creature like that? “I-I’ve gotta feed that . .
. that pig?”

Lervette arched a brow. “First off, dat ain’t
no pig. Maudwan’s a boar. All de reg’lar pigs is out back, pas’ de
feed shed.” She nodded toward an old wooden, paintless building
that stood four hundred yards beyond Maudwan’s pen. It looked like
an abandoned garage.“And what business you got gettin’ all uppity
anyways? Ain’t you de one was lookin’ for work?”

“Yeah . . . but I thought I’d be babysitting
or cleaning something. You know, like your house.”

“Where de hell you got dat from,
girl
?
I never said nuttin’ ‘bout you cleanin’ no house, and I ain’t got
no kids.”

Lervette said ‘girl’ as though the younger
sector of the female gender carried a contagious, disfiguring
disease. Getting more nervous by the minute, Nina glanced over at
the grunting Volkswagen and muttered softly, “My—my name’s
Nina.”

“Don’t matter what you name is,” Lervette
snapped, her eyes cold, brown marbles. “Work is work. What? You
t’ink just ‘cause you young and skinny and got dem big titties you
too good to slop hogs?”

Shocked by the tit comment that seemed to
come out of nowhere, Nina stared at her, mouth open, unable to
think of anything to say.

Lervette parked a hand on her hip. “Look
here, I ain’t got no time to watch you just stand dere like a broke
stick. You want de work or no?”

Tears stung Nina’s eyes, and she bit them
back, not wanting to give the woman the satisfaction of seeing her
cry. What had seemed like a good idea two weeks ago was turning
into an even bigger nightmare than the one she left’d back in
Dayton, Ohio. At the time, though, leaving seemed to be the only
way out. Her mother had refused to believe that Rick, Mommy
Dearest’s latest boyfriend,
really
preferred
eighteen-year-old girls. He’d already forced himself on her once,
threatening her life if she told anyone, and Nina knew if she
didn’t leave, one of them would wind up dead. So she’d stuffed
clothes into a knapsack, swiped seventy bucks from Rick’s wallet
while he was in the shower, and left home.

Although she hitched rides and slept under
any hideaway she could find, the money only lasted four days. With
no money and no one willing to hire her, Nina learned to scrounge
through trashcans behind restaurants for food. It was either eat
garbage or go home. She chose the garbage. And the plan had worked
well until three days ago when a trucker, heading into Louisiana,
gave her a lift. They hadn’t put a hundred miles under the wheels
of the big rig before he tried shoving a grubby paw between her
legs. She’d screamed so loud and long he wasted no time pulling off
at the next exit so she could get out.

Too afraid to get into another vehicle, Nina
had headed south on foot, and kept walking until she collapsed in a
laundry mat in some remote Louisiana town. That’s where Lervette
found her, dirty, starving, and huddled beside a Maytag. When the
woman offered work, Nina jumped at the chance, never thinking to
ask what kind of work. All she’d been able to think about when she
got into Lervette’s rusted old pickup was money and the double
cheeseburger with fries it would buy.

Nina weighed the cheeseburger against
Lervette’s sudden anger and snide remarks—against the eerie feel of
this place. Storm clouds gathered over the acres of barren fields
surrounding them, tinting everything gray—Lervette’s shack of a
house—the broken board fence that bordered her front yard—even
Maudwan. The air felt too thick, the boar’s grunts too loud, and
everything seemed to collect in Nina’s brain and insist she leave.
But without food or money, where would she go? As if in response,
her stomach grumbled loudly—
Pick the burger . . .

So she did.

“The—the feed’s back in that shed?” Nina
asked quietly.

Obviously taking the question as a positive
response to the work required, Lervette smirked, then took off in
the direction of the shed. “Come, I’ll show you what you gotta
do.”

As Nina followed her, she caught distant
movement to the right out of the corner of her eye. She glanced
over and saw a little girl standing just outside Lervette’s front
door. She appeared to be no older than five or six, wore a faded
yellow, shift-type dress, no shoes, and had disheveled,
shoulder-length blond hair. Even from here, there was no mistaking
the sad expression on the child’s small face. She just stood there,
hands at her sides, watching Nina’s every step. Unless Lervette had
some kind of miracle womb, the child looked too young to be her
daughter. Granddaughter maybe? But Lervette had said she didn’t
have kids . . .

Nina was about to ask the woman about the
child when Lervette pulled open one of the shed’s double doors and
an overwhelming, rancid odor yanked the question right out of her
head. It was a thousand times worse than what she’d picked up from
Maudwan. “Jesus, what’s that smell?”

Instead of answering, Lervette waddled into
the shed, signaling for her to follow.

With a hand clamped over her nose and mouth,
Nina stepped tentatively across the threshold. Lervette flipped a
switch near the door, and a single, bare light bulb that hung from
a cord in center of the ceiling flickered on—off—on. Pale white
light jittered through the thirty-foot building as if hesitant to
reveal what was inside.

Two huge metal barrels stood side by side in
the middle of the room. Both were at least four feet tall, had lids
with rope handles, and the bulk of each barrel had bright orange,
vertical stripes. A long handled paddle and a metal bucket were
propped between them. To the right of the barrels, a pyramid of
plump burlap sacks with RICE-BRAN stenciled on them lay on the
concrete floor. Beside the pyramid were two, white plastic buckets,
each looking like oatmeal had sloshed over their sides. The wall
beyond the sacks supported rows of shelves, all of them filled with
various tools, boxes, paint cans, and other assorted junk left to
storage. A long, wooden table sat at the back of the building with
a large coil of garden hose on it and a straight-back chair on
either end. The table had an abrupt lean to it, as if both right
legs had been cut a few inches shorter than the ones on the left.
Beneath the table, the concrete appeared stained with something
dark, like oil.

After coughing up a loogie the size of a
walnut and spitting it on the floor, Lervette walked up to one of
the barrels and pulled off the lid. The stench that rolled out from
inside the barrel gave a whole new definition to rot, and it plowed
into Nina like a freighter hauling dead cows. She doubled over, dry
heaving.

“You bes’ pay attention,” Lervette said.
“’Cause I’m just gonna tell you dis one time.” She paused, waiting
as Nina, still gagging, righted herself. “De sack feed is for de
pigs out back. See dem plastic buckets? Fill half de buckets wit’
rice-bran, de other half wit’ water. De faucet’s out by de
pens—so’s a broke shovel handle. Use dat handle to mix de bran and
water real good, den dump the mix in de troughs. You
un’erstand?”

Afraid to speak lest she start dry-heaving
again, Nina nodded. God, what had she gotten herself into?

“Good.” Lervette set the barrel lid on the
floor, then grabbed the oar. “Now Maudwan him, he don’t eat no
bran. You gotta feed him what’s in de barrel.” With that, Lervette
stuck the paddle in the barrel and worked it back and forth and
around. Thick sloshing, gurgling sounds rose from inside along with
a stench so horrid, Nina felt herself grow faint. She had little
doubt that even if she stuck her head in the swollen belly of
week-old road kill it would smell far better than this.

“See, all de good stuff settles to de bottom
so you gotta stir ‘cause Maudwan only eats what’s to de bottom. Now
when you got dat all stirred good, take dat metal bucket, fill it
up wit’ swill, den pour dat in his trough. Four buckets each feed,
and you feed t’ree times a day.” Lervette pulled out the paddle,
propped it against the barrel, then picked up the metal bucket and
handed it to Nina. “You can go on and start now ‘cause I know
Maudwan’s hungry. I’m gonna go back to de house. Got some clothes
to get off de line before de rain comes.” Before Nina had a chance
to protest, Lervette left the shed.

Nina stood, bucket in hand, her empty stomach
cramping and roiling with nausea. She didn’t care if Maudwan
starved to death or even if
she
starved, no way was she
going to go stirring around in that gross-ass barrel. No amount of
money was worth that.

“She won’t let you go.”

Startled, Nina whirled about. The little girl
she’d seen earlier stood just inside the door of the shed, the same
sad look on her face. “Jesus, you scared the sh—the heck out of me!
You shouldn’t sneak up on people like that.”

“She never lets any of them go.”

Nina frowned. “You mean Lervette? Is she your
mama?”

The little girl stared at her, not offering a
response.

“Your grandmother?”

Silence, save for a sudden gust of wind
pushing past the doorway.

“Who doesn’t she ever let go?”

After studying Nina for a moment longer, the
girl finally said, “He was bad, and they were bad. She punished
them. That’s why he eats from the bottom. That’s why they have to
feed from the bottom. Not all of them, though. Not all. You have to
go—but I can show you.”

Confused and thinking the child might be
mentally challenged, Nina didn’t question her further. She set the
bucket on the floor and had every intention of making a quick exit
when the girl suddenly held out a hand.

“I’ll show you,” she said again.

“Show me what?”

The girl lowered her hand. “Money.”

Nina snapped to attention. “Money where?”

Instead of answering, the child turned and
slipped silently out of the shed.

“Wait!” Nina sprinted after her, but when she
got outside, the girl was nowhere to be seen. Not in the yard that
stretched between Maudwan’s pen and the shed, not even by the
house, which was a few hundred yards away. How could a little girl
disappear that fast?

“Where are you?” Nina called. When she didn’t
get an answer, she raced toward the back of the shed. It was the
only logical place the kid could have gone in such a short period
of time.

Nina cornered the back corner of the building
and came to an abrupt halt. She didn’t see the little girl—just
twenty to thirty pigs corralled in three pens that were lined up
one behind the other. The pigs were all small to average size, and
not one made a sound. And they all appeared to be staring at
her—with wide, blue eyes.

Blue-eyed pigs?
Was there such a
thing?
Must be, stupid, you’re looking at them . . .
.

“Over here.”

The sound of the little girl’s voice jerked
Nina’s attention away from the pigs, and she pivoted on her heels,
scanning the yard, but didn’t see her. In that moment, lightning
split ragged seams through the western sky, and thunder shook the
ground. A heavy gust of wind tangled her hair about her face.

“Over here.” The girl called again.
“Here.”

Nina strained an ear, trying to get a bead on
the direction of her voice.

“Heeeerrrrrre.”

The wind seemed to stretch the syllable into
forever, or at least long enough for Nina to follow it back to the
front of the shed. That’s when she spotted her. The girl was
standing in the front doorway of Lervette’s house, one hand
extended, motioning her over.