A Whole Hog

. . . .Don’t matter what it is: a human will take pride in anything. If one fellah takes pride in having traveled the world round, the next will take just as much in never having gone anywhere. If one fellah brags about having the strongest, hard-workingest and sweetest-tempered plow mule in the whole damned hills, another will claim title to the laziest, stupidest and most ornery.
. . . .What the old dirt farmer Lew was the most proud of was his razorbacked hog. Black as coal, wire brush ugly, tuff as road kill jerky and smarter than any brace of blue ticks or pickup load of bloodhounds, “Ole Hog” Lew called him, sometimes with a warm grateful tear welling up in his one good eye.
. . . .You want a hog for rooting around? Ole Hog he’d root up not just gophers and ground squirrels but yellow jackets and rattlesnakes, skunks and badgers. Always anxious to please, he’d burrow under redwood stumps that needing plucking and leave them looking like fat spiders teetering on tangled legs. Good Ole Hog he’d drop his nose and plow up an acre and then, after spending lunchtime eating the bark off your decks of saw logs, he’d plow up another acre before sundown. And have you ever wanted a watch hog? Lord Almighty. If you was a trespasser holding wicked intent and you locked eyes with Ole Hog, he’d be at you like lightning, his hoofs ah-thundering. He’d leave nothing of you behind as evidence, either. Not even a button.
. . . .So you can imagine just how tore up old Lew was that sorry night after the woeful tragedy that befell poor Ole Hog. The day had been crunching-footsteps-frosty and, just before dark up in the top corner of his place, Lew had tried to dynamite a big old stump that Ole Hog had dug out for him. Lew centered his bundle of four sticks under the stump, lay down behind a log, lit the fuse, watched its fizzling spark run away and disappear into the hole and then… nothing happened. Cold, hungry, end-of-the-day-tuckered and feeling superstitious—a fuse of dynamite has a mind of its own—Lew decided to leave the whole mess ‘till morning. He got to his feet, brushed himself off and moseyed on home.
. . . .The aching corns on the bottoms of his big toes told him a hard freeze was ah-coming, and Lew reckoned he’d best fetch his animals inside the barn and stoke up its potbellied woodstove to keep them from shivering overnight. Lew needed a sick animal and vet’s bill about as much as a broken leg, and then firewood was something he had plenty of. Since Ole Hog was off gallivanting in the woods, when Lew was finished inside the barn he propped open the door with a rock so that, when Ole Hog returned, he could swing it open with his snout instead of having to smash through it with his forehead. Then Lew went inside his cabin, washed up, ate supper and hit the sack.
. . . .While nobody ever did figure out just what had possessed him, Ole Hog sniffed out the dynamite Lew had left under the stump, crawled under there and ate it, crunching and swallowing them sticks like they was carrots. Then, his stomach turning sour, he trotted on home, let himself inside the barn and lay down bellied-up to that crackling woodstove.
. . . .The explosion blew out Lew’s cabin windows, knocked him clean out of bed, slammed him headfirst into the wall and put a painful crick into his neck. The explosion was so loud his neighbor Tom came ah-running from his place over the hill, wondering what in tarnation and crying mercy me. Tom found old Lew leaning like a rag doll on the smoking remains of his corral fence, slowly shaking his head and muttering to himself. When Tom asked him what-dah, who-dah, Lew turned and said,
. . . .“My barn’s been blown to bits, my cabin’s a shambles, my water tank’s knocked over, my horse, mule, milking cow and half my chickens are dead, my porch hounds done run off and. . .” Lew had to pause to contain himself, “Ole Hog he’s got himself one hell of a bad bellyache.”

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1st Place - under 12
Rowan Kawczak