The three little pigs
Amy RowlandThrough the kitchen window she saw him coming from the field, carrying a burlap sack of freshly dug potatoes. Vasta had a vision of his long potato-like head in the sack with the tubers, an image she would not be able to forget, of her father carrying his own head. She knew that she would be the one to act, and take on the larger share of guilt. She was the eldest sister and wouldn’t have it otherwise.
What will we do? Pearl, the middle sister, had asked two weeks before when they knew for certain, when their younger sister Alice had confirmed their fears.
We will kill him, Vasta said.
They were shelling field peas, Alice’s favorite, and their conversation was punctuated by the satisfying plunk of peas in the big green bowl.
But how will we get away with it? Pearl said. People will suspect. People will talk.
People always talk, Vasta said.
Alice came into the kitchen unseen, drawn not by the sound of the plunking peas, which she hated shelling, but by the conspiratorial pitch of her sisters’ voices. Alice, though called touched by locals, was gifted at assessing the tenor and even the gist of her sisters’ conversations by their tone and inflection.
We will do it for mother, Pearl said.
And for ourselves.
Can we really, Vasta?
We’ll manage. We always do.
We won’t get away with it, Pearl protested. They’ll take us in. Then what will become of Alice? And what will we do with the body?
There won’t be a body.
What’s the secret? Alice asked, lifting her striped cotton skirt away from her slender legs. Is it a surprise? At 36, she was the youngest by three years, still pretty with a round face that resisted wrinkles except around her luminous gray gold-flecked eyes.
Since the death of their beloved work-racked mother more than two decades before, they had been the women of the house, even though they were teenagers then. Their father, Wade, had both the cheated look of an early widower and the stubborn habits of a longtime bachelor; he was difficult to live under. For a while, he took a sort of pride in the pity showed him by the people of the small southern farming hamlet. But he was stingy and sloppy in his farming—he corn and soybeaned his fields to death without a break or rotation to rejuvenate the soil—and the neighborly pity was depleted well before the mourning casseroles.
He slung the potatoes by the cellar door, and sat down heavily at the head of the table, gesturing for Alice to bring his slippers. She brought them, loyal as always, and knelt to ease them onto his compression-socked feet. Pearl was at the sink, washing leftover lunch dishes. He glanced up when a glass clinked against a fork, and then down at Alice where she knelt. He reached out to touch the top of her head. From behind, where Vasta stood with the pistol raised, he might have been a priest offering a blessing or a customer guiding the head toward his lap.
He’d seen Vernon Tetterton at Jackson’s grocery. Do you remember him, Alice? He said he gave you a valentine in third grade.
Vasta met Pearl’s eyes above their father’s head. They never thought that even in his own disgrace, he’d be willing to haggle away his daughter’s life, and the lives of her sisters. Vasta stepped into the laundry room behind the kitchen and hastily hid the pistol in the basket with the dirty towels.
Have you spoken to him, she asked, coming back to the table and trying to hide her alarm.
I was asking Alice, he said. He hated to be disobeyed, and he suspected, correctly, that his two older daughters resisted him mightily in their minds. This spurred his need to dominate the youngest all the more.
The one they call Bunk, Alice said, and flushed.
Yes, that’s the one. You call him Vernon.
Vasta and Pearl were silent. They were thinking how it might have gone if they’d killed their father and he’d been in the middle of plotting his daughter’s marriage. He must owe money from Shiloh to Rocky Mount, and was looking to be bought out. He was always looking for a profit to be made, but he was seldom able to make it. If he did, he lost it to the horse races. It was illegal, but there were ways. He placed his bets in the back room of a rough bar, where peanut shells and sticky spills garnished the floor.
It had been a confusing night three months ago, when he went into Alice’s room, after years of leaving her untouched. He was a dead weight on top of her, full of drink and disappointments from a lost weekend at the unlicensed betting room. He covered her mouth and it was so fast she was hardly awake before he was crying on her breast, dripping his tears and rank drops on her white cotton nightgown. She had lain in shock, and then reached up to paw his shoulder and push him off. Pearl had been crossing the hall to the bathroom when she saw him stumbling by with his
belt undone. The next morning she told Vasta, who sat up outside Alice’s room for the next seven nights while he went on a bender at the betting room. When he came home in the middle of the eighth night, broke and bitter and stinking, Vasta was on the porch with a shotgun.
She’d seen a shadow earlier near the chicken coop, she told him. And she didn’t aim to lose any.
There’s thieves out there, he said. The world is full of foxes. Soon we’ll have to nail down everything we own, from the barn to the biddies.
I won’t bother with the nailing, Vasta said. I’ll just kill the thief.
The morning after the thwarted attempt to kill him, Vasta put on her dove gray cardigan and Avon lipstick from the lone tube (Pink in the Afternoon), readying to go to Jackson’s to gather the gossip. It had to be done and she had to go early, before her sisters saw she was dressed for town and wanted to come along.
At the store the usuals were already there, the retirees and men between chores, who gathered most weekday mornings to drink bad coffee and settle the affairs of the world. Shaking change Vasta called it, because they all had coins in their pant pockets that they jingled as they thought things through, deliberating before they spoke.
Vasta Jean, one said, and straightened up in his chair. He had heard she could soothe a cow with one hand and trache him with the other. He believed it.
The men parted to let her pass, and she cut through their circle, as they thought how handsome she still was, all three sisters were, even though some of the youth called her Hatchet Face. She was not a serial smiler as the other women of the town were trained to be.
Onnie, she said, nodding and moving toward the shelf with cornmeal and cowtails. How are you? she asked reluctantly, knowing she had to get some information.
Just passing the time.
Time does not pass here, Reverend, she responded, despite herself. It is bided.
True sister, true, he said, making her bristle. She did not go to church, which had solidified her label as the local eccentric.
How’s at your house, Vasta? the one they called Uncle Claude asked. They also called him Shade Tree lawyer, or Shady for short, because he liked to give free legal advice under the oak tree at the post office. He had apprenticed but not practiced.
Can’t complain, she said, and turned to Vernon, who nodded and touched his cap. He was the most decent of the lot.
The men carried on, discussing the price of pork and who was going to win the upcoming presidential election, Bubba or Mr. Republican. She bought enough that Vernon offered to carry her bags to the Buick. She handed him the lightest one, opening the screen door with her hip and pausing as they both waited for the other to go first. She won.
In the gravel parking lot, with the old gas pumps that were no longer in use, he asked about Alice.
She’s fine. I wanted you to know my father has been on a bender and isn’t in his right mind these days.
I figured as much. You know I wouldn’t want to, he paused, struggling for the words, compromise Alice.
The truth was Alice was recognized as a beauty, but Vernon felt he noticed it first, all those years ago when she had shared iced tea with him from her lunchbox Thermos in third grade, and he had made her a bracelet strung with dried beans. She was sweet and simple and there was nothing wrong with that. As a matter of fact, it seemed downright desirable. His own wife had divorced him six years ago after an exhausting fermented decade; she had always been a difficult woman. He knew that well before the shotgun wedding, but he went through with it because it was
the right thing to do. The three Gurkin sisters were different. They were a unit. None of them had married, and if one of them did, you’d be getting three for the price of one, which was a bigger bargain than anyone was able to make.
No one thinks that, Vasta assured him. I just wanted you to know Alice is fine. She has me and Pearl. Wade is just back from the races and I’m sure he’ll be off again real soon.
Let me know if you need some help around the place, Vasta.
He put the bag in the trunk and hesitated. I hope nothing’s wrong, up at your house.
What would be wrong?
I’m not sure. I think he was asking if I’m still interested in Alice, and a partnership on the farm.
Vasta slammed the trunk and asked him why he thought so.
Vernon hawed and shifted his feet before shamefacedly saying that her father had promised him the prized big field if he decided to take it on, to marry Alice.
Wade wanted to sell their two prizes, Vasta thought, Alice and the best land they owned. First, he took advantage of his daughter, and now he was going to take advantage of the circumstances. He wanted a little money up front, for the field, but not the full amount. And if things worked out with Alice, Wade would give him his money back, and the land would stay in the family, and he’d still own it eventually, either way.
It’s nearly the 21st century Vernon, she said, trying to keep her voice light. Wives aren’t bought, not even here, where property is all and every man rules his own roost.
She was deciding how to continue when Vernon, who was beginning to imagine what it would be like to live in the house with all three sisters, said, Of course, Vasta. Let’s not mention it again. Your father told me to give it some thought, and I have. No need to speak of it.
Inside the store, Uncle Claude remarked how it felt odd to see one prickly pickle without the others. That’s how Vasta, Pearl, and Alice were referred to behind their backs. No one had ever thought it was malicious, and no one even found it funny anymore. Now it was just a name.
Don’t talk like that, Vernon said.
I didn’t mean nothing by it, Bunk. Everybody knows they’re good-looking women, good women, too. Pickles is just what they’re called. They’re Gurkins. No offense in it, like we call Burl there Tadpole and Mamford is Pie and LL is Lyin’ Lynzie, he said, pointing his tobacco pouch at the other men in their circle. Some’s called right accurate, Vernon said, Shady.
I’ll kill him tonight, Vasta said to herself in the car, turning on the radio, and thinking of her father’s many faults. He lacked discipline foremost, and was known to shoot a hunting hound that didn’t suit him, and any other animal that came on his property— whether it was stray, wounded, wild, or owned. He couldn’t trust himself with Alice, she thought, so he was trying to eliminate temptation and get a little money from his own failure.
She drove past the big field, Bonnie’s Place it was called, after her mother, and was seized with the pride of it lying before her in the sunshine. He’d given up most of their good land; though he’d kept their best field, he didn’t tend it as he should. The farm was from their mother’s side of the family. He had frittered away or sold or lost half their holdings, and she wouldn’t let him have any more. He would not sell off one more acre. He would not sell Alice. I will drain him dry as hay, Vasta said out loud and turned up the radio.
It’s never too late for life insurance, the ad man was saying. It’s never too early to think about it.
She switched it off with a quick twist of the knob. The idea that it was never too late was for advertisers and the self-deceived, she thought. There was a time when it was too late to leave, and, for some, too late came early. So it was for the sisters. When their mother died of breast cancer at forty, Vasta gave up plans for the teachers’ college in Raleigh. Pearl was smart and kind and a little dreamy, but without a dream for herself. And the way the sisters lived in the house, like three peas in a shell, made it impossible by the time they were adults to think of one going away without the others. Also, there was Alice, beautiful addled Alice. It was at the county fair when she was 16 that Vasta had first really noticed her youngest sister’s beauty. Everyone said she was the beauty of Shiloh, but at the county fair there were people from other places and they saw it, too. Vasta knew because they offered Alice things. The man at the Ferris wheel bumped some children so Alice could ride, and he lingered as he secured the bar across her seat. It was the same at other rides, other booths. Alice was given prizes she hadn’t won and offered spins without a ticket. The fire eater told her she looked like Julie Christie in Dr. Zhivago, and it was true. Pearl and Vasta were pretty in girlhood and were still handsome, though Pearl’s face and figure were softening while Vasta’s were becoming more angular. Alice still looked like the queen of the ice palace of Varykino.
They would take care with his last supper, Vasta and Pearl agreed. After dinner, they would send Alice out to dump the tea leaves and the compost by the woods. It was her preferred chore and she took her time.
The three of them worked through the afternoon on his favorites: cornmeal dumplings and collards with fatback, potato salad, field peas, and fried chicken. Pearl made a red velvet cake, with her buttercream frosting that was called the best in the county.
Some who said this had never left the county, and they were the most particular and discerning judges of the best it offered.
The sisters had an easy companionship in the house, and they worked efficiently at their different stations in the kitchen. Their own interests had developed naturally over the years. Vasta could make things yield and make things work; Pearl had a gift with baked goods and garden vegetables. Vasta taught porcelain painting to some of the town’s children. She enjoyed the near impossibility of the task, of making them sit still and focus and try not to break their model. Once a month or so, she drove over to Greenvale to collect the broken pottery from the local guild. There were very few students who ever touched paintbrush to porcelain, which she kept neatly arranged in the china cabinet, but the parents liked to think of their children engaged in delicate work with fragile things. Alice painted, too, wild and surreal scenes that might have been recognized if there had been anyone to do so.
Vasta fried the chicken herself. Pearl frosted her cake, and Alice rolled the dumpling dough into balls.
Alice had been singing, but they didn’t say anything when he came inside, sat down at the head of the table and waited to be served. He rubbed his face; his gray whiskers scraped like the empty locust shells the sisters collected as children and used as tokens in their games. Alice hated the way the stubble had felt against her face, her throat, like a thousand locust legs.
What’s the occasion? he asked, as Pearl placed the plate in front of him, with the crispiest chicken thigh and the donest dumpling and the potato salad with a touch too much mustard, because he preferred them that way.
Give me the roses while I live, Vasta said, putting the fried paper-towel wrapped gizzards beside his plate like a present.
Give me the gizzards while I live, Alice sang, and smiled and Pearl smiled and Vasta and Wade gave what passed for theirs. Fried gizzards were a delicacy and he savored them one by one, staring into the distance.
He nodded, set his tea glass on the table, and wiped the grease from his mouth with his hand. Vasta wanted that big knobby hand to be still. His hands had probed all three of them at different times, but Alice most of all. He sat up, his back against the chair, and closed his eyes as he tasted the liverish organ meat. His hands lay in his lap like stones, and Vasta turned and left the room so Pearl could send Alice to the compost pile.
My feet are pure tired, he said and brought them from under the table. So Alice knelt and rubbed them, as she always had. She still wanted to please him. Don’t! Vasta wanted to shout, but instead she handed Alice the old coffee canister that held the scraps.
Alice paused near the compost pile at the edge of the trees. Deer tracks, she thought, although they seemed a little large. She was always on the lookout for chipmunks, rabbits, deer, and birds, with their quick-quick movements like their necks were broken, or someone was about to attack from behind. Something had definitely been in the pile. Egg shells and corns husks were strewn about, an olive loaf was abandoned halfway down the ditch. It is hard bread, she said, in understanding.
She had just tossed the tea leaves and made a wish when she heard a shot and looked toward the house. It was not unusual to hear gunfire, but it sounded very close.
I heard, she said, coming into the kitchen and dropping the compost can.
He had turned at the last moment, looking down and to the right, as though listening, and so Vasta caught him in the temple. It was close enough range that even the antique pistol was effective.
Alice, go upstairs, Vasta said sharply, and Pearl repeated the same words more gently. Go on now. It’s okay. Everything is okay.
Alice stood, looking at her father on the floor. The physical act, the labor of it, had protected the two sisters. Now Alice’s face showed them what they had done.
You’re here now. You might as well help. Will you help us, Alice?
She nodded, and picked up the can.
Vasta had everything ready. There was usually some lye around, and there was plenty left over from when the septic tank had been replaced the year before. It took a while, but the three sisters were able to wrap him in a tarp and drag him down the drive to the barn. It was a struggle to squeeze him in the drum of hot water and lye, but they did it. Vasta sealed it shut with cement. What if someone finds out? Pearl said.
People around here know better than to snoop. And he’ll be dissolved soon enough.
The sisters joined hands. They were not happy at this moment, but, they agreed, they would be in the future. Think happy thoughts, Alice said, as their mother had advised when they had nightmares.
In the middle of the night, Vasta drove his truck to the bar that hid the betting room, and abandoned it there. Pearl and Alice picked her up in the Buick and they were home by sunrise, waving politely at Vernon, who lifted his hat as they passed him on his combine. There was moderate blood to clean up because Pearl had thrown down the paint tarp before Wade realized what she was doing, and when he slumped from the shot, Vasta nudged him over so that he fell onto it. It was one of the most helpful, perfectly executed things he had ever done.
The kitchen table, where all the important family events happened, was the scene of a memory too fresh to sit with that
first morning. So they sat in the living room drinking coffee in silence. Later, they scrubbed and scoured the kitchen, and had tomato sandwiches for supper. Vasta took a slice of red velvet cake, its beautiful burgundy still moist under the cream frosting, and ate it in bed. It was the most decadent act of her life, and it was delicious.
They each worried in their own way that it couldn’t be so easy. They waited a week to report him missing. The truck was found, and it was assumed he went on a bender and met some trouble. No one was surprised and the investigation was slack. Pearl and Vasta had worried privately about Alice, but she was the calmest of all. She never mentioned their father, and though she had always been pleasant and quick to laugh, she became joyful. Her paintings took on radiance, with three costumed mystical creatures she called the old maids, or paintings of a wolf man and his witchy daughters.
Vasta continued to teach porcelain painting on broken pottery, but as spring passed and the afternoons grew warm, the children were rough and restless and loud. When Vasta was most vexed with the children, Pearl and Alice, whom they loved, took over while Vasta marched around the house ten times saying, Cease from anger, and forsake wrath: fret not to do evil. If she was too aggravated for all that, she’d repeat, Anger is a brief madness. Anger is a brief madness. If she was too mad even for that, she’d count to a thousand.
One day the Dixon boy, who irritated her the most and already had a hoodlum look, spilled paint all over the table. It dripped on the floor, onto the one spot that had been hardest to clean of their father’s blood. She boxed his ears.
We’re only here cause they make us! he shouted. They feel bad for you, you old, you old, he paused, searching for the word he had overheard, pig!
Vasta simply picked up the drop cloth by its four edges, with all the pottery and paints and brushes. It was quite heavy, but she was strong and didn’t care. She dumped the whole mess in the laundry room and calmly told the shocked children to get out.
Robbie Dixon stopped on the doorstep, one foot pointed to freedom. They call you the Three Little Pigs! he shouted and took off running.
Vasta came out on the porch and watched them go. And do you know why? She shouted to the receding bodies of the little devils. One obedient five-year-old named Nelly, who had red hair in springy ringlets, turned back. She had learned to speak when spoken to.
Why do they call you the Three Little Pigs?
Because, Vasta said, leaning over the porch railing, we killed the big bad wolf!
Pearl and Alice laughed from the doorway, and the children ran and ran all the way home.
Pearl and Alice were worried, but teaching money was never what kept them afloat. Land was what mattered: Property and ownership. They could sell timber to Weyerhaeuser, or rent more acreage to local farmers, or hock what they had, if it came to that. But it wouldn’t come to that, not for the Three Little Pigs.
The murder was not an opportunity missed, but one taken. He was gone; they were free. The secret they shared filled the house and gave them solace, usually. They would never be able to tell, not even each other, how cleaning the blood from the kitchen floor had changed how they felt about their favorite room in the house. Sometimes Alice was frightened. Sometimes Pearl was mournful. Sometimes Vasta was guilt ridden. House of straw, house of sticks, house of bricks, she muttered to herself. If only it were so easy in life to know what was best. But these feelings never lasted.
No one could say exactly when the spinster sisters, the Gurkins, the Prickly Pickles, had come to be called the Three Little Pigs. The children of the town were told it was because they walked down the dirt road single file, oldest to youngest, instead of three abreast, as was the country custom on an empty road. Townspeople suspected what had happened to Wade, and calling the sisters the Three Little Pigs allowed them to say it without saying it. That was how they let the sisters know they had been both judged and redeemed. What blame there was would be decided by locals; they would not allow it to be bestowed from elsewhere. They would determine the distance between fulfillment and forgiveness. Secrets would not be allowed either; that was the price. For the three sisters that was punishment enough. They were not called the Three Little Pigs to their face, though they sometimes referred to themselves that way. The label made them proud, made them unremorseful, made them undestroyed.