Good Bits are Always Better

a story by J. Aaron Courts

He usually gives me some bits. I learned a long time ago if I helped him with his messes—that’s what he called them—messes—and laid good and still, some of the bits would be good ones.

He found me as a puppy, abandoned, with my back left leg caught in a snare. I’d gnawed my paw half off once all feeling was gone, but the snare was too high on my leg, and I couldn’t stomach eating my own body even if it meant escape. He probably would have fed me to his hogs, or cooked me for himself, except for the notion that I might be diseased. He was tall and grizzled, and I had the good sense not to bite him when he loosened the snare with a stick then reached for me with his long arms. He had heavy brown boots, and I knew he’d stomp my head if I so much as curled a lip or, what’s worse, leave me there to die and rot, so I turned my head and stayed still even though it felt like he was pulling apart my paw, piece by piece.

I was in and out of consciousness as he carried me to his house and didn’t fully wake to my surroundings until he laid me beside a stone pit and lit a fire. My nose was dry, and he rubbed water on it and let me lick it from his hands before putting a plastic bowl in front of me. The water was clean and cool. He put a small loop around my foot and rubbed my back as I lapped up the water. I hadn’t noticed that he’d placed a large knife in the fire.

It wasn’t until he pulled the cord and cinched the loop that I realized something was wrong and tried to bite him, but by then, he had kneeled on me and turned so that all I could do was reach and snap helplessly at his backside from too far away to reach it. I never saw the knife come down. I didn’t even feel it. Not at first. Not until I was dangling upside down by my useless, short hind leg, and he was placing the flat end of the knife, red hot, against the bleeding nub. I yapped and howled and flailed in between snips at his leg, and he hit me on the head with the flat butt of the knife handle and everything went dark again.

I woke to a throbbing swath-wrapped leg and tied to the trunk of a scrub oak by my neck. A fresh bowl of water sat on a flat rock by my head and barking squirrels in the tree above threw acorns at me in protest of my arrival. I’d never been so close to a squirrel, or so hungry, and I wanted to eat them. I hadn’t realized he was behind me. I sniffed the wrapped nub, and he yelled at me so viciously, I peed on myself and left my leg alone, crouching in my own urine, despite the pain that had begun to crawl up my ruined leg.

He left me there, tied to the base of the tree, subject to the aggressions of squirrels, probably waiting to see if I would make it. To see if I had the froths or some other affliction which might’ve caused him problems down the road. But he kept water in the plastic bowl, and after a day or two, fed me small scraps of thick bristly haired flesh I had never tasted.

I could have eaten a lot more—wanted a lot more—having not eaten since my mother quit letting us nurse and gave us a small, wounded bird to share instead. I had been the strongest then, but I was still so young, and maimed now, and I supposed there was no need to shovel food down the mouth of a dying pup, even if it was still breathing for a time.

I would learn of his refusal to waste in the coming seasons. And the speed with which he could turn to anger, turn on the things around him, living or otherwise, and strike. I was scared of him, but knew I would stay from the moment I awoke to squirrels, and sourness emanating from the stalls nearby, and his fresh bowl of water. Clean water was scarce as food in these dry, prickly parts, more so, in fact, and he did feed me, after all, eventually, so there was that. And there was a measure of protection.

This place is set at the base of a limestone hill, almost completely encircled by a gorge swollen with sharp brush and stinging nettles. The house faces an irregular wall of light brown rocks and boulders and fans out to the rear, where a small pool of blue water stays filled. We use a trail he cut up the hill, masked under trees with blue clumps of flowers and brush, thorned and speckled with waterdrop-sized black, smooth skinned berries. He picks and eats from the trees once they begin to shrivel and fall, and we go to the top of the hill sometimes to look out over everything.

I was never going to chase down wild game of any meaningful size. I was susceptible to predators then, as I am now, even from those smaller than me who run, four-legged, in packs or pounce from trees with claws that slice and fangs long and sharp enough to pierce my adult fur. But I had a home there, despite its eventual beatings and overwhelming awfulness, and a home was something I’d never had, not even before the snare got me and my mother left me alone, taking my brother and sisters with her.

That’s not to say I ever forgot he’d cut off my paw or any of the other things he did or would come to do. I didn’t, but I didn’t forget that I’d be a short pile of bones either—four legged or otherwise—still attached to a thin cable snare. There was security at his place. Certainly, more than a life with three working legs in a world so starved, creatures, large and small, ate their own.

I had water and, in time, more food, and as soon as I found a purpose—or he found a good use for me—I knew there would be more of both. And there was. And once I learned to help with the messes, well, I got my first taste of good bits, which he said are always better. It was true, but not always easy, at least not for me, and I’d find that out soon enough.

I’d know what he wanted most of the time by the way he moved, by the sound of his voice, and sometimes, by the way he smelled, but he talked to me like I understood all the things he said. Maybe he was really talking to himself. I don’t know, but I learned he said some words over and over again when he was in a certain mood. Like Let’s look for berries if he was in a good mood.

He’d pet my head, and I knew he wanted to walk our trail. In that place and the greater place around it, which I think I was born in and will never leave, no broken skinned berries are poisonous. He ate some and smacked his mouth and said Good berries more times than I could count.

He'd begin to walk faster when he was turning mean. Not on our trail, but rather, around the house, and he would pick things up and slam them down. He said loud words like I should feed you to the hogs and call me Hog bait, and it was during those times when I got tied to the tree and beaten. I never knew why he’d beat me or tie me to the tree and not feed me for a day, or sometimes two, but I did learn not to yelp because it made the hogs scream and I hate the sounds they make. But he was nice and quiet when he taught me what to do and said Let’s go hunt, and I’d go sit and wait.

When I heard the first group, I stood up and he gave me a piece of meat, then pushed me back to the ground gently and gave me another. When they came closer, I tried to stand up again, but he pressed my shoulders down, rubbing my back, and gave me another piece. Before long, I was the only one who hunted. I’d sit and sniff the air for new people then sneak to the yard and let him know they were coming. We’d go back together and wait to hear and see them, and I’d get more pieces of meat.

But his favorite word was mess, which he said after we got the people. Look at this mess, he’d say, or What a mess, or That one made a mess. He’d been killing them since before he found me, but I know I made things easier. Smelling the people so far away allowed him to do other things instead of hunting, like work on his cave, which he started after he taught me what to do.

This place sits in such a way people always come from the same direction as the wind, from the back. It’s mostly level there, with a lot of protruding boulders and rocks and brush, which at first glance, is inviting enough to funnel people our way naturally. But it’s also full of stickers. He’s manicured the area so it’s mostly thorn covered, juvenile mesquites in between meticulously selected scrub oaks. People are driven into the mesquites by the oaks and rocks. They get snagged and are given to bleed and complain.

Still, it appears—to those unaware—to everyone—like a suitable path. I expect they’re drawn to the rock wall and gorge’s arms for the same reason he was, a measure of protection from that which might sneak up and do harm. He just got here first.

He kills them but doesn’t eat them. I’ve seen him stare at the meat as he cuts it into chunks and separates their joints. He drools, more now than when he first brought me here, and swallows a lot, but he always said they’re hog bait and that their meat makes a man crazy, so he tosses it—their parts—to the hogs, and the hogs are what we eat.

He trapped a few wild ones some time ago, way before he found me, and separated the young ones. Though they’re dark just like wild hogs—boars and escaped pigs gone feral and their mean little offspring—he’s domesticated them otherwise. Their snouts are even smashed and turned up like a pig, and none of them are kept long enough to worry about filing their non-rooting tusks or them getting sick or crazy from meat.

He never kills a hog in front of the others. This way when it’s time to butcher them, the one selected for food trots willingly behind the stalls and dies snorting with a pig-smile on its face. I can tell they’re smart, but I can’t help but think, who’s smiling when the axe falls? Then, I remember another blade fell once, and I was smiling too, and I quit thinking about smarts. Or, at least, I try to and focus instead on what it is I’m expected to do.

I eat the hogs too and get some of their bits when they’re killed. But good bits don’t come from smiling pigs.

I don’t mind hunting the people for him. Most of them would kill and eat me, especially when they saw my short leg. It used to not be that way, but things are different now, and nothing which can be eaten is spared. I can smell the ones I don’t mind hunting by their breath, or the scent of old blood on them, or of other animals’ shit that lingers on their hands after cleaning out their guts. Or sometimes it’s other smells that remind me of his room, and I even like hunting those people.

But I don’t like that he takes the soft people who come this way into his room. The ones who smell like my mother when she suckled us, or soap, or other soft things. He closes the door, and the smells and sounds are overpowering. I don’t like any of that at all.

The last group before he got hurt had small ones—littles, he called them. It wasn’t too hot yet, and the berries were still plump and shining on the trees. What grass exists here was green and not yet dried to needles, and I was lounging under my oak tree watching the squirrels throw acorns at me, fantasizing about which one I would eat if it fell from the tree and hit its head on my rock.

I smelled the group. There was sweat and a little blood and one smelled like milk, all of which the breeze and layout of the place pushed toward me. But the strongest scent was lemongrass oil, the same as what he used here to attract swarms of bees. The oil was on one of the little’s fingers and, though none of them could smell it, I would have known they were coming without a breeze at all. I didn’t even have to go see if they were beyond the gorge and close enough to let him know. They were.

I stood and the squirrels barked and hopped from limb to limb and disappeared into the treetop. He was in the front chipping more rock out of his cave and stacking the chunks in a pile by the front door of the house. I let him know they were coming and guided him slowly to where they were. It wasn’t hard to find them.

All the wiry mesquites were trained to lean away from the house, like birds swooping in unison but never turning in a different direction, so while he was staring at the unsuspecting people, foliage was all they saw looking back. And he’d ripped the roots of other small trees and shrubbery off at the ground for so long in a subtle and specific pattern that crisscrossed lanes extended from the house all the way to the opening in the gorge.

He drove people, passively that way, in a direction which meant they struggled to walk directly across the interlocking lanes, stuck and scratched with the burning mesquite thorns and limited in sight to only a few feet. All we had to do was wait, and when he grew tired of watching them, strike.

Sometimes he took them quickly, but other times, if they were small people, or few in number, or if they were a group, soft and slow with littles, he would let them get almost to the house. So close they could hear the hogs snorting. You could tell when they did too. They would stop, unsure of what threat might lie ahead, but driven by hunger, push their fear down and moved forward.

The first group I saw with littles came on a frost blanketed morning in the winter and were allowed to approach closer to the house than he ever let anyone get again. They smelled the hogs and stopped like everyone did.

“Be quiet,” the big one said.

“They’re trying,” the mother said, “but these stickers—”

The big one held his hand up and silenced her, but the little she held, who smelled sweat, kept whimpering.

“Hear that?” the big one whispered.

It was the hogs, not us, but I could smell his nervousness—the exact opposite of lemongrass—over the scent of the woman and the littles and even the hogs. They inched forward again, but when they got close enough to see the hogs pinned up, the big one who led the group realized they weren’t wild and went stiff.

We watched him stand there inspecting his surroundings for a long time, longer than usual. So long, I became hopeful they would be the first to back out the way they came. If they’d only known what the stalls meant for them. If they’d only turned around and run, maybe they could have gotten out. But, of course, it was too late. In truth, I’m not sure it would have mattered much. The gorge didn’t allow much room to maneuver anyway, and they moved slower than most with the littles in tow. The big one’s face grew pale.

I was still in front of the group, though they didn’t realize it, and I saw him—the man who taught me to hunt—stand from his crouched position to the left of them all, one or two lanes away. His face was dark, but his yellow teeth grinned through his beard, and I knew what meant. I cowered as he became larger than I’d ever seen before, plain as a live oak surrounded by scrubs to me but lost on them completely. Invisible among so many well-wrought trees.

He killed the big one first, just as he turned towards the woman. I don’t think the big one even saw the blow coming. The woman screamed and I saw her squeeze the little she was holding so tight it gasped. He grabbed the woman by the hair with one hand and reached for the little standing beside her with the other, but it pulled back. I began to bark, and the woman tossed the little she was holding on the ground and yelled for them to flee. I almost ran after them instinctively while the mother fought to free herself. I could have caught them easy enough, even on three legs, but I didn’t. They would probably freeze to death that very night or starve if they were unlucky enough to survive it, but I wanted them to get away.

The mother struggled hard, and I think he enjoyed it, so he let her. Her howls were echoed by the hogs, and I turned towards the sound thinking maybe, somehow, they had busted through the pen. He pulled the mother’s head back with a jerk and punched her in the mouth. She fell to her knees, but he held onto her so that her shoulders slumped, and she sort of hung at his waste for a moment, limp. He was still so strong then. She coughed a mass of blood and shards of teeth onto the ground, and he let her body settle, still basically upright with his hand wrapped in a tangled mass of her hair.

She was heaving, only half conscious, and her lap grew dark with urine. He bent over to look her in the face and poked her mouth with a finger then thumped her nose twice. She opened her eyes and screamed so loud it hurt my ears.

“Run!”

It was piercing and I thought he was going to grab her by the throat, but he didn’t. He let the scream carry until her lungs, exhausted and empty, failed, then he tilted her head back again and pummeled her. Only the hogs kept up the screaming after that. He took the mother into his room, and I waited for him by the big man’s body until long after the frost, which had melted in the sun, returned, and the moon was high.

We found the littles in a tree not far from the entrance to the gorge. If they had just kept running, maybe he wouldn’t have found them. But it was cold, and they huddled together in a small tree like a pair of terrified coons—lemon scented raccoons—both within an effortless arm’s reach. He grabbed the bigger of the two littles by the leg, a male, and yanked it from the tree. That one had sent the smaller of the pair higher up the tree, though not by much and still within reach.

The little he yanked out landed flat on its back and its head bounced. There was a small whimper, but otherwise silence. He let go of its leg and it fell limp just like the mother had. I thought the smaller of the two—the lemongrass female—was going to climb higher, but when he extended his arms, it slid into them like he was the warmest thing ever. And I guess he was.

The following morning, he held out his hand to me. It was still dripping. I sniffed and curled my lip. He tied me to the tree and beat me, screaming Hog bait hog bait between strikes until he was out of breath and couldn’t whip or kick me anymore. I licked myself for days without food or water.

I didn’t mind the beating so much. The chilled air helped, and by afternoon on the second day, my body didn’t hurt much at all. The thirst was unpleasant, but licked at the frost, so it was the hunger which drove me wild. And the squirrels teased me as they dug up buried acorns and shook powder onto me from hopping around in the tree above. He untied me on the fifth day.

It was the longest I’d gone without eating since he found me, and the second time I’d starved. I decided it would be the last.

I can’t say I never enjoyed hunting. It’s what I was expected to do. I was good at it, and it kept me fed. But I can say I hated hunting groups with littles. Afterward, if a group had soft people he might want to take into his room, I would finish hunting then walk to the top of the trail and wait until the next morning to return. I would avoid him and stay quiet while he cleaned the mess—the messes. Still, I knew he would give me good bits, and when he did, I ate them.

Things went that way for some time. Alerting him of approaching people, cleaning messes, feeding the hogs, watching where the squirrels buried acorns, so I could dig them up and frustrate them when I got bored.

Then one day while he was cleaning some of the brush from the lanes and he fell near the same place he’d killed the man with the little. He hit his head on a small boulder and was on his side in the dirt for a long time. I licked the blood off his face and lay beside him until he woke early the next morning. The hogs hadn’t been fed, so they were restless, and their shrill cries could be heard for a long way. If someone had been near, they’d have heard and found him lying on his face in the dirt.

He was never really the same after that. He was slower and quit working on his cave. He fell several more times that season and started to grow thin, as did the hogs, and both became meaner and lashed out. I was watching the squirrels one afternoon and he kicked for no reason. I yelped and he kicked me again in the short leg and called me Hog bait. We hadn’t seen anyone in a long time, and I thought he might feed me to the hogs, so I walked to the end of our trail and sat alone watching the birds eat his berries. I waited for darkness, then walked back down our trail in the moon shadows of the flowering trees and slept on my flat rock, still warm from the long day’s sun. I kept a greater distance after that and resisted sleep during the day.

He stopped clearing the lanes and by the following winter, they were thick with brush and much of his advantage over strangers had been lost. A group approached. I let him know I could smell them, and he grabbed the old forest axe he always carried when there was going to be a mess. He grunted when he lifted it and there was dried spit in the corners of his mouth and his eyes were bloodshot. His beard had grown lighter and was unkempt, and a piece of brown oak leaf was stuck in it. I was sure his upper lip had dried blood crusted in the hairs.

The first man I saw in the group was much bigger than he was. As two more fanned out, I realized they all were. They had dark beards. They were much younger. They were much stronger. My hackles rose, and I knew I was in as much danger as he was.

There was more sweat and blood on these men than any other group before, but it was old blood, from a mixture of animals—maybe men—but I was sure it was not their own.

They walked tall, with confidence, pushing the overgrown limbs aside with sharpened sticks. Their eyes were stern and didn’t dart but swept from right to left like predators. This group wasn’t wandering or seeking the shelter of the hill.

They were hunting.

The leader had a long gun, and he carried it in both hands, pointed at the ground. I had only heard a gunshot once since arriving here, and that was many seasons ago. I couldn’t remember how loud they were and didn’t want to find out, especially if this man was going to be the one shooting it.

The large man raised his rifle, and there it was.

Bang!

I yelped and even scooted forward when he stumbled and crashed behind me. One of the men had a rope in his hand and lunged at me, but I bit him and ran. I heard them laughing and then, later, crashing around the house. A hog squealed, and I smelled fire then burning meat. They stayed for two days and nights, and I starved and wondered what bits they kept for themselves after they cleaned up their mess.

I made sure they were gone before I went back. He was lying in the same spot, but someone had rolled him onto his back and torn all his clothes off, so his good bits were showing. His eyes had turned milky and shriveled a little. Flies zipped in and out of his mouth and nose. They crawled over his eyes and on the hole in his chest and between his legs. The pungent smell of guts and greening meat hung in the air around him, but I didn’t mind. It smelled better than the hogs when they were alive.

I’d heard them kill one, had smelled it, and now saw where it had been done. But they had only killed the one. The hoofed tracks of the others led in a straight line to the front of his house and up our trail. They’d leashed the hogs together and taken them. It occurred to me then that I would have been leashed and led up the trail with a rope around my neck just like the hogs if I hadn’t bit the man or stayed away. Or what’s more likely, been eaten in place of the hog.

The thought sickened me, but not because I was thought about being killed or eaten, but because the thought of eating myself made me drool and I couldn’t stop. I’d gone longer without food. Once in a snare and then again tied to my tree, but it had been a long time, and I determined never to let it happen again.

The hogs were gone. And the squirrels and birds and other small game I might have eaten seemed to have fled with a renewed fear of men and gunshot.

I went to him. The man who’d saved me, yes, and fed me, that’s true, but also the man who beat me and starved me and cut off my paw.

The group who’d killed him had thrown the bones of the hog they ate near him in a lazy pile of carcass and rotting man. They weren’t picked completely clean but close enough. I left them where they were.

I licked his mouth and the hole in his chest and sniffed between his legs. A charred hog foot stared at me as I walked around his body.

My mouth was drooling, and I thought about what he used to say after he’d finished cleaning the messes in his room.

Good bits are always better.