and sometimes he sang to them. He didn’t know what it was about his voice, perhaps it was a gift from God? Sometimes he wondered if it was a miracle wherein he was actually accompanied by angels he couldn’t see, but that the pigs could. Whatever was at play in each situation, he was always thankful his words worked. And he always praised God for it. A bead of sweat slid off his forehead and into his left eye. It stung. He used the back of his hand to wipe the sweat off his forehead and his knuckle to rub it out of his eye. He wanted to curse his luck that his struggle with the pig ended out of the jungle’s permanent shade. He wanted to curse the dry, baked sword grass, and to curse the fifteen feet between him and the cool shade. The sun poured down on him like the blast of an oven full of baking bread. So much for heat rising, he thought to himself. He wanted to curse the sun, to use words he’d carefully disciplined himself to stop using when he became a Christian. Instead of cursing, he furiously blinked his eyes against the brightness of the sun as if it would lessen the heat, and the desire to curse. He thought he heard some brush slapping and cracking against something in a dense patch of trees to his left. His heart pounded at the thought of another pig coming out of the jungle. He could smell his own torn intestines, not doubting the smell was strong enough to entice another pig. “Swine!” A curse word, an old one. He said it again as he finally was able to remove the dead pig’s head from his body. He lifted himself by his elbows and look around. That was when he noticed the sun was not only beginning to turn the blood he’d shed into pudding, but it was drying his exposed guts. It looked like something he saw in a gruesome war movie. His heart pounded harder. He looked at the gaping wound and could see his insides moving with the rhythm of his heart. With the tip of his index finger he gently touched a twist of intestine. It pulsed against his finger. He pulled back, frightened that it did not hurt to touch. Slowly, deliberately, he began to gently touch different exposures. At one point - though he could not see the point - he could feel a column of air against his finger when he inhaled. The hole in his lung. It scared him, making his heart beat violently. What frightened him the most was that only the torn skin and parts of slowly bleeding muscle near the top of the wound hurt to touch. Noth112
Manastash 2013