Chapter 4 - Forty-Two Every MorningWinter began early that year.
By late November, frost whitened the low fields before sunrise.
Clara adapted.
The smallest piglets received extra feed.
She built deeper bedding in the shelter.
She repaired the barn so she could move the herd inside during dangerous cold.
The forty-two animals began changing.
Slowly.
Their shoulders filled.
Legs strengthened.
Coats grew heavier.
They still looked smaller than ordinary market hogs of similar age.
But comparison mattered less to Clara now.
She was not raising ordinary market hogs.
She was watching whether the animals could survive, grow, and work the orchard safely.
Every morning she counted.
Forty-two.
The number became a ritual.
One.
Two.
Three.
Notched Ear.
White Foot.
Latecomer.
Forty.
Forty-one.
Forty-two.
Sometimes one disappeared behind a tree and Clara’s heart jumped.
Then a black snout emerged.
Forty-two.
Harold’s prediction followed her through winter.
By spring, none will be left.
She hated that his voice lived in her mind.
Especially at night.
Feed disappeared faster than she had calculated.
That frightened her more than cold.
Money was low.
She began stretching household supplies.
No sugar unless necessary.
No store-bought bread.
No new gloves.
She repaired Daniel’s old pair even though the fingertips did not fit properly.
At Christmas, her sister Ellen visited.
She stood at the kitchen window watching the boars.
“You can come stay with us.”
Clara did not answer.
“I mean it.”
“I know.”
“Sell the farm.”
“No.”
“Clara.”
“I said no.”
Ellen sighed.
“This place is eating you.”
Clara looked toward the orchard.
“No.”
“What would you call it?”
“Work.”
“That is what Daniel called everything.”
Clara turned.
The name hurt.
Ellen immediately regretted saying it.
“I’m sorry.”
Clara nodded.
Then they sat without speaking.
Later, Ellen walked the orchard with her.
The piglets had loosened broad sections of ground.
Their manure mixed naturally into disturbed leaf litter.
Old windfalls disappeared.
The sour smell of decay had lessened.
Ellen crouched.
“This soil wasn’t like this.”
“No.”
“You think the trees will come back?”
Clara looked upward.
Gray limbs crossed the winter sky.
“I think the ground is better.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“It is the only answer I have.”
Ellen smiled.
“You sound like Daniel.”
This time the name did not hurt quite as much.
January brought the hardest cold.
Clara moved all forty-two animals into the barn for three nights.
She covered gaps in the walls.
Added straw.
Carried warm water.
One especially small piglet stopped eating.
Latecomer.
Clara sat with him for hours.
Doctor Miles Avery, the county veterinarian, examined the animal.
“He’s chilled. Not dying.”
“Are you sure?”
“No one is ever sure.”
That answer irritated her.
Avery smiled.
“Keep him warm. Small meals.”
Clara did.
Latecomer ate before dawn.
She cried then.
Not dramatically.
She put her forehead against the barn wall and allowed relief to move through her.
Forty-two.
Still forty-two.
A week later Harold appeared again.
He stayed outside the fence.
“You’ve put weight on them.”
Clara continued carrying straw.
“That disappoint you?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“No.”
“You think this proves anything?”
“No.”
That answer seemed to frustrate him.
Harold pointed toward the trees.
“They’re still dead.”
“Maybe.”
“You spent winter feeding wild hogs beneath dead wood.”
“They’re boars.”
“They’re money with legs.”
Clara stopped.
Harold smiled faintly.
“You could still sell them while they’ve got some weight.”
“No.”
“You planning to keep forty-two forever?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
Clara looked at him.
“Come spring.”
She used his own phrase.
His expression hardened.
Clara walked back toward the barn.
Behind her Harold called:
“You think because that ground got darker, you proved me wrong?”
She did not turn.
“No.”
“What did you prove?”
Clara stopped.
“That you spend too much time looking over my fence.”
She kept walking.
Harold left.
Clara’s hands shook afterward.
Not from cold.
She hated that he could still do that.
That evening she wrote in the ledger.
Harold came.
He wants me uncertain.
Then she crossed out the sentence.
Too much interpretation.
She wrote:
Harold came.
Trees still bare.
42 alive.
That was better.
Facts.
February arrived gray and bitter.
Then, near the middle of the month, Clara noticed green grass emerging around several trunks where the animals had disturbed the earth.
Tiny blades.
Darker than everything around them.
She knelt.
Touched them.
Then looked upward.
The branches remained bare.
But the bark near one trunk seemed different.
Less gray.
A faint reddish undertone beneath the surface.
Clara placed her palm against it.
Cold.
Rough.
Then something.
Not warmth.
Resilience.
As though the tree were not dead wood.
As though something inside had not finished deciding.
Clara closed her eyes.
She did not call Ellen.
Did not tell Avery.
Did not tell the feed-store clerk.
She simply stood there.
Attention was more useful than hope.
Hope could make a person invent things.
Attention waited.
So Clara waited.
May you like
And every morning:
Forty-two.
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