my brother spent two winters in
arizona for sinus; here he’s 13
in 1943. I was a lone kid on the
farm and sent him many letters.
“Craig, remember I wrote you about
that night walk Dad and I took to see
what was glowing in the nearby field
and found an ebbing funeral pyre of
animals, maybe sheep? Gruesome!
Today Dad asked Blodgett, who said
it was pigs, about 25 of them burning
that had died of a parasitic infection
of the intestines – highly contagious so
they had to be burned. So now we know.”
I felt bad for the pigs and our neighbor
but that companionable walk with my
dad over the silent fields I’ve never forgot
2020 Jacqueline Jackson
This article appears in Schools shapeshift.
