Three Small Sow: An Extinction Event

Three Small Sow: An Extinction Event

If the flood had never happened, this story might have a very different ending.

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The three brothers live in two houses on the top of a green hill, overlooking the valley below. Pork Chop lives in the straw house, and next to that sits Bacon’s house made of sticks. Ham is living in Bacon’s house; he sleeps on the couch and leaves his half-filled coffee mug on the breakfast bar every morning, no matter how many times his exasperated brother asks him to please wash it out.

Ham always meant to build a house of his own after the small town full of charming, sturdy log cabins in the valley below them was washed away by the flood eight months ago. Their neighbors had all cut their losses and moved away after that—the few that had survived, anyway. It was only the three brothers who stayed, vowing to build homes for themselves on the rolling hills above the valley, to avoid future floods while remaining on the land they loved, the land they were born and raised on.

(Also, if it has not been said yet, the brothers are pigs. Actual pigs. Not the messy-human kind, but the four-legged, hooved, snout-nosed, curly-pink-tailed kind. Biped, overall wearing, coffee-making, but still definitely and absolutely pigs.)

Pork Chop and Bacon had gotten to work right away. Pork Chop worked diligently, building himself a quaint straw hut that was humble but lovely, cozy inside with soft area rugs and tapestries on the walls to keep in the warmth during the colder months. Bacon built his house right next door, gathering the sticks from the nearby woods himself, one wheelbarrow at a time, and watching online videos to learn how to build a handsome little cabin. Both brothers took great pride in rebuilding after the flood, and had a deep sense of satisfaction when they returned from work every day to homes they had built with their own four hooves.

Ham really had intended to build a home of his own next to his brothers’, but it just never happened. He had borrowed Bacon’s wheelbarrow to gather some sticks, but after a couple of trips up the hill with the full wheelbarrow, he just … kind of quit. To be honest, Ham had never had much follow-through on anything. As a piglet, he had intended to learn the flute. He had played diligently on a used instrument from the thrift store for exactly three weeks, then thrown the thing in the back of a closet and never thought about it again. After high school, he thought he might want to be a nurse. He finished two semesters before he quit that, too. It wasn’t his fault, not really. It was just that anything that seemed worth doing in life was so much work.

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And so that’s how it came to be that Ham has been crashing on Bacon’s couch—it’s just temporary, really—for nearly a year now.

The brothers lead a good life, overall. They have a small garden that they share out back, between the two homes, which is the source of most of their food. They’ve got simple jobs in the next town over; Pork Chop works as a grocery store clerk, Bacon is a bank teller, and Ham does odd jobs, basic construction and painting and the like.

(Does it surprise you, reader, that the pigs have jobs? After all, they live in houses. One can assume this means that they have furniture, clothing, dishes, cleaning supplies, perhaps even decorative knickknacks. The money has to come from somewhere.)

One evening after work, the three brothers are gathered in Pork Chop’s tiny straw hut, eating dinner together and watching a basketball game on TV (no football for these guys—though the balls today are made with cowhide, the sport’s history of using pig bladders before the late 1800s is still a bit of a sore spot).

The brothers have finished their meal—fat and happy and full—when they hear something shuffling about outside the front door. Pork Chop stands from the table, walks across the room and looks out the small window near the door to see a huge, hulking, drooling wolf with sinister yellow eyes.

“Get out of here!” Pork Chop yells. “Go bother someone else.”

The wolf doesn’t go. It in fact seems to be agitated by Pork Chop’s voice, coming closer to the door and growling from deep in its throat.

“I’m telling you,” Pork Chop says, his voice wavering this time, “you need to leave!”

The wolf turns and starts to walk away, and Pork Chop breathes a sigh of relief. He turns from the window to face his brothers, who are still sitting at the table on the other side of the small house. “It’s fine,” he says. “He’s leav—”

The last word Pork Chop will ever utter is cut off midway, as the giant wolf lunges through the wall of the flimsy straw house and lands on him, teeth sinking into jugular.

The sound Pork Chop makes—a high and terrorized squeal like none the brothers have ever heard—and the blood squirting from his neck to splatter the pale straw walls, is enough to get Bacon and Ham out of their seats and moving quickly, out the back door and into the woods beyond.

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The scene the brothers find the next morning is carnage. The straw house has been reduced to wreckage. Broken dishes and shredded furniture are everywhere; it looks as if a tornado has come through. Amidst the torn bits of Pork Chop’s life are the torn bits of Pork Chop himself: on the ceiling fan, on the area rug, on the table amongst the remnants of last night’s meal.

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Time passes, as it always does. Bacon and Ham grieve, clear away what remains of the little straw house, and slowly and sadly go on with their lives. They garden. They go to work. They eat dinner in Bacon’s stick house; the last one that remains on the hill overlooking the empty valley. At least once or twice a week, Ham finds himself setting three places at the dinner table instead of two, then sadly puts the cup and plate back in the cupboard without saying a word.  

Months pass in the banality of daily life.

On an evening like many others, Bacon and Ham are preparing dinner together in Bacon’s small kitchen, discussing the gardening they plan to do over the weekend.

“Hang on,” Bacon says. “The garbage is full. I’ll take it out.”

Ham continues stirring the vegetable soup and checks on the apple pie in the oven. He’s ladling the soup into bowls when he hears a tinny clatter from outside—the sound of the garbage can hitting the asphalt driveway, then rolling over and over on its side.

He pauses, ladle hovering in mid-scoop, listening. Silence. Ham sets the ladle down, red splatters of tomato broth staining the white countertop. He walks to the door on shaking hooves, already knowing what he will find.

Outside, the metal garbage can is on its side, halfway down the driveway, still rocking back and forth ever so slightly. The white garbage bag sits a foot away, torn open, with bits of food and paper towels and whatnot spilling out the open gash. Bacon is nowhere to be found.

Ham looks about in the dark, warily, and walks down the driveway to the upturned can. He rights it and is bending down to scoop the trash back into the torn bag when he sees it. A single pig hoof, severed just above the knee, red splatters standing out against the pink flesh. He sees it now, a long trail of dark blood leading away from the spilled garbage and curving around the back of the little stick house.

Ham stands, fighting down the bile rising in his throat. He leaves the can and bag and strewn garbage exactly where it is and heads back into the house in a hurry.

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Ham wakes in Bacon’s empty house the next morning. He is alone. The life he and his brothers have built together is gone. His brothers are gone.

Ham is heartbroken, but resolute. He’s got to go on. He’s got to build himself a sturdy house—one the wolf can’t penetrate. The straw house was destroyed so easily. Ham has no doubt that if he’d wanted to, the wolf could have broken into the house of sticks with little trouble. He can’t stay here.

Ham decides to build a house of bricks. Sturdy and permanent, so he can live out his life on this land, the way the three brothers had always intended, and honor their memory. So he can pass the home on to his future piglets one day (if a mate and piglets are in the cards for him, which he hopes for but doubts).

He spends days and weeks working on the house in the sunshine, listening to the birds, living in Bacon’s empty stick house in the meantime. He purchases bricks, mortar, trowels, and other supplies, determined to build the house himself, from the ground up, as his brothers had done. He’s careful never to go out after dark.

As he works, he tries not to think about the sturdy log cabins down in the valley, the ones that were washed away in the flood. Those houses would have kept the big, terrible wolf out. He also tries not to think about Pork Chop’s cozy straw hut in shambles, blood splattering the walls, or the dismembered hoof in Bacon’s driveway, left like trash amidst the scattered bits of kitchen garbage.

After three or four weeks, around four o’clock in the afternoon, Ham stands and stretches, his back muscles strained from the repetitive work of spreading mortar, lifting bricks, laying them down. He surveys his progress. It’s not much. He’s built a square of bricks around himself, interrupted only by space for a door, about 600 square feet (all he needs, really), just two or three feet high. He really thought this work would be faster. Or easier. He really thought he would have made more progress by now.

Honestly, building a whole brick house seems like a lot of work. It’s a big commitment. It’s going to take forever. And for what? To spend the rest of his life up here on this hill, alone, thinking about the bloody bits of his dead brothers every day?

Ham heaves a heavy sigh. It’s decided, then. He was never very good at following through with things, anyway.

He sets down his trowel on a haphazard pile of bricks in the corner, wipes his hooves off on the front of his blue denim overalls, and sits down on the short brick wall he’s made for himself. He looks out over the valley, watches the sun set, and waits for darkness to come.