A Thousand Acres_ A Novel - Jane Smiley [75]
The events of that day and the next morning seemed then like they would be only advertisements on the wall of a tunnel that led to the next afternoon. My father’s trip to the doctor, where his cuts and bruises must have been inspected, but nothing was said to me—I simply waited in the waiting room; even the receptionist was out of the office. Dinner with Ty, then the afternoon in the farrowing house, helping him with the last of the newborn pigs. You had to clip out their eyeteeth, which were sharp and would get sharper, and dock their tails so they wouldn’t get chewed on and infected. The sows didn’t love this, our handling the baby pigs, but in the first few days they were still amenable and almost sleepy. We castrated about twenty little boars. By suppertime we were stinking and drenched with sweat, and in spite of the fans the farrowing house was so hot that the air-conditioned living room gave me the shivers when I walked into it. Showers, then macaroni and cheese for supper, bed before dark.
I lay awake in the hot darkness, naked and covered by the sheet. Every so often, I lifted the sheet and looked under it, at my blue-white skin, my breasts, with their dark nipples, the foreshortened, rounded triangles of my legs, my jutting feet. I looked at myself while I thought about having sex with Jess Clark and I could feel my flesh turn electric at these thoughts, could feel sensation gather at my nipples, could feel my vagina relax and open, could feel my lips and my fingertips grow sensitive enough to know their own shapes. When I turned on my side and my breasts swam together and I flicked the sheet for a bit of air, I saw only myself turning, my same old shape moving in the same old way. I turned onto my stomach so that I wouldn’t be able to look, so that I could bury my face in the black pillow. It wasn’t like me to think such thoughts, and though they drew me, they repelled me too. I began to drift off, maybe to escape what I couldn’t stop thinking about.
Ty, who was asleep, rolled over and put his hand on my shoulder, then ran it down my back, so slowly that my back came to seem about as long and humped as a sow’s, running in a smooth arc from my rooting, low-slung head to my little stumpy tail. I woke up with a start and remembered the baby pigs. Ty was very close to me. It was still hot, and he was pressing his erection into my leg. Normally I hated waking in the night with him so close to me, but my earlier fantasies must have primed me, because the very sense of it there, a combination of feeling its insistent pressure and imagining its smooth heavy shape, doused me like a hot wave, and instantly I was breathless. I put my hand around it and turned toward it, then took my hand off it and pulled the curve of his ass toward me. But for once I couldn’t stand not touching it, knowing it was there but not holding it in my hand. Ty woke up. I was panting, and he was on me in a moment. It was something: it was deeply exciting and simultaneously not enough. The part of me that was still a sow longed to wallow, to press my skin against his and be engulfed. Ty whispered, “Don’t open your eyes,” and I did not. Nothing would wake me from this unaccustomed dream of my body faster than opening my eyes.
Afterward, when we did open our eyes and were ourselves again, I saw that it was only ten-fifteen. I moved away, to the cooler edge of the bed. Ty said, “I liked that. That was nice,” and he put his hand affectionately on my hip without actually looking at me. His voice carried just a single quiver of embarrassment. That was pretty good for us. Then I heard the breeze start up, rustling the curtains, and then I heard the rattle of hog feeders and the sound of a car accelerating in the distance. The moon was full, and the shadows of bats fluttered in the moonlight. The sawing of cicadas distinguished itself, the barking of a dog. I fell asleep.
With Jess Clark in that old pickup bed in the dump the next afternoon, it was much more awkward. My arms and legs, stiff and stalklike, thumped against the wheel well,