In the fall of 1980, my mother pulled a reverse Beverly Hillbilly move, packing us up and driving us 1500 miles south to live with her parent’s house in Georgia. I'm sure New York was a lot for a single mom with two kids and she thought things would be easier in a podunk town; spoiler, it wasn't. We had already moved several times before, but this time felt different. It felt more serious somehow and my mother didn't help the situation. Two days before we were set to leave, my mother gave me a bag of goodies for the road, including several activity books, a brand new Rubik's cube, and rolls of butter rum of lifesavers- to settle the car sickness doing activity books in a moving car triggered. Then she dropped a few hard truths she’d been hiding on my 10 year old heart.
It turns out, the guy I had been loving, hugging, and calling dad my whole life was not my father at all, but my brother's father. My father, and his whole family, lived in Georgia and I was going to meet him in a week or so. And, yes, her delivery was about that blunt; Phyllis was not much of a coddler. She is also the woman who whispered in my ear as I lay on an emergency room gurney after a car accident, “this is why it's important to wear clean underwear”. So one hellish road trip and three weeks later, I’m sitting on my new grandmother’s living room floor drinking orange Nehi from a bumpy glass bottle and sharing a big tin foil ball of Jiffy Pop with my new cousin, Misty. We’re watching a sepia tone Dorothy Gale hysterically try to get her Aunt Em’s attention about that nasty old Miss Gulch.
CBS first aired The Wizard of Oz on November 3,1956 as part of the Ford Star Jubilee and the film continued to be broadcast annually until 1991. In the pre-VCR 70s, if you missed it that was tough titties cause all the kids would be talking about it the next day, and you'd hafta wait a whole ‘nother year for it to come on again. Our mother hated the movie and felt like one viewing was sufficient for a lifetime, so every year we had to pitch fits until Phyllis caved and let us watch. Sometimes we'd watch at a friend's house depending on where we were. It was easy in New York, we had friends in our apartment building to watch with; but in Georgia, we had cornfield friends, meaning you had to walk clear across a cornfield to hang out.
As a gingham bound Dorothy balances on the railing of the pig pen, Papa Karl, my new grandmother's second husband, grunts around the butt of his cigar. When she falls in with the pigs, he spits it out, “Dumb girl, them hogs’ll eat her to bones in two minutes!” Papa Karl knew everything about pigs and I am flabbergasted by this statement. This is the moment I learn what the word omnivorous means in terrifying technicolor detail and will never see the Wizard of Oz the same again. I think he was amused by my awe and horror but not enough to sit through a musical and as Dorothy sang about a rainbow he retreated to his room to read one of his many Louis Lamour books. Before leaving, he uses this opportunity to stress the importance of staying clear of the big pig pens at work.
My first job was working with my Papa Karl. Saturday mornings he would wake us up dark early, and we'd go to Carter’s and get a sausage biscuit with mustard before driving to Mr. Charles Baell’s farm to take care of his hogs. I started with clipping teeth and tails on the tiny piglets, so they didn't bite them off, but I was stronger than my cousin and quickly moved up to cutting. Male piglets are castrated to prevent boar taint, where the meat smells like a mix of sweat, urine, and shit. First, I learned to catch and hold the piglets properly for Papa Karl. I watched hypnotically as he demonstrated every step of the simple yet precarious procedure numerous times before giving me a scalpel. I can still see the big proud grin on his face as I held out the first tiny testicle like I was a girl scout getting a badge for it.
Papa Karl was easy to love; he didn't have kids of his own and doted on us to no end. He built a lot of stuff for me and my cousins, like a go-kart, race track, swimming pool, and camper playhouse. He let us drive him to the liquor store, gave us cigars that turned us green, and would put a little bit of Old Grand Dad whiskey in our Dr Peppers when he would do a shooter himself. He taught us to be tough but he didn't scream at us, never whipped us, and unlike other men in my life he never tried or did anything creepy. I didn't even care that his nickname for me was Crisco cause he never said it in a way that made me feel bad and it was better than getting called “shit bird” like my cousin.
Things I learned from Papa Karl stayed with me, like a redneck bank of knowledge. 15 years later, my brother's girlfriend's best friend's gay aunt moves to town and doesn't know any other gay people, so we take her into our little queer clutch. Loni and her stepfather Gary ran a roofing company, they'd also started a pig farm way out in the boonies where land was cheap. I started working with them roofing and would spend the weekends building up the farm with Loni. Working with pigs was old hand and the farm was a great place, we could hang out, have bonfire parties, pass around the Boone’s farm, and rock the boombox without bothering a soul.
Like the cliched phoenix, I believe we are reborn stronger from tragedy. Did I believe this when I woke up with my face in a baseball cap full of blood? No. I didn't really think I was going to survive at all. People often say they had a strange feeling in the pit of their stomach before something bad happened to them. Me, I had no clue what was gonna happen that day in the pig barn. Even as I regained consciousness, I had no clue what had even just occurred. I knew I was on the ground and blood was coming from somewhere. Had I tripped? Had I cut myself? Did I accidentally touch the electric fence line? Did a pig get me? Moving to get up, I try to ask what happened but only get out, “Whaaa…” before Gary, a pig I had fully trusted, comes at me with a huge Dirty Harry style .44 magnum revolver gripped in his filthy fist. I turn my head and, with a dull thud and a flash of light, I'm out again.
Pistol-whipping is the use of a handgun as a blunt weapon to repeatedly beat a person, generally about the head. When a blunt object forcefully hits a body region where the skin overlies a bony support, the soft tissues are squeezed and finally torn and it often produces a ring-shaped laceration with a roundish skin flap punched out. The pistol blows may produce patterned lacerations, skull fractures, brain contusions, and render the person unconscious. Check. Check. Check, and check. Turns out, Gary is proficient at pistol whipping and the four inch flap he leaves in the back of my head is the cause for the profuse amount of blood on the ground.
A life review is what scholars call the phenomenon of ‘your life flashing before your eyes’. Mine was a grainy b-roll film of my family and friends jumbled together with still photos. None of it stood as a particularly special moment in my life, but I saw my living and deceased family together, like Great aunt Frankie with Papa Karl and my brand new month old niece. It was safe, familiar and very far away from the filthy, stinking dirt floor of the pig barn I was currently bleeding on. It felt like I watched this movie for a long time but in reality I was probably out for less than a minute.
When I open my eyes this time, my brain scrambles to assess the situation and it is clear the situation is pretty shitty. I'm still laying in muck, face in cap, but blood is pouring even faster down my face now. It’s running into my eyes and mouth, it fills my ear and muffles the sound of my pounding heart. I hate the taste, all coppery, thick, and hot. I spit it out and want to wipe it away, but realize my hands are bound behind my back. I pull, struggle, and try to twist my hands free. I want to yell and scream and maybe beg and plead, but a gag is shoved in my mouth and the severity of a situation sets in real fast when you're bound and gagged.
Gary is full on laying on top of me now, his bony hips and elbows dig into my sides and I feel his legs wrapping around me. His breath, sickly sweet from a black and mild cigar, is hot and sticky in my ear. “I’m not gonna hurt ya.” he whispers. I scream obscenities into the cloth gag and his fingers claw at my shoulder trying to find leverage to roll me over. I don't know his plans but I have enough experience to know I'm not giving this pig access to the buttons of my jeans. Kill me and feed me to the pigs but we ain’t going there, fucker. I use every single cell in my body to fight against him and keep my shoulder pinned to the ground; heavy as an anvil, stiff as a board.
“What’s going on?” I don't know if it’s a disturbance in the force, my muffled screams, or the screeching squeals of the pigs that makes Loni save my life that afternoon, but I tear up at the sound of her voice. Her eyes are wide and her jaw is slack with awe as she sees Gary over my body, the hole in my head, blood everywhere, and as he stands up, the gun in Gary’s waistband. Loni is ex military police, a black belt in taekwondo, and thinks I have been shot in the back of the head. He really should have taken her out first because she immediately springs into action to disarm him.
As they wrestle over the gun, I work my way out of my bindings. Lucky for me, in his haste to launch his attack, Gary cut up a t-shirt to use as a gag and to tie my hands and I can stretch it enough to wriggle free. Miraculously, I stand and avoid being shot by Loni as she repeatedly squeezes the gun trigger in an attempt to empty the chambers of the revolver. Operating purely on survival mode, I pick up a board and break it across his back before choking the ever loving shit out of Gary. Loni has the gun as he goes down and the fight just leaves him like a puppet with its strings cut. Loni, still thinking I've been shot in the head and amazed I'm alive, gives me the gun and runs to call 911. I step on Gary’s throat, blood drips onto my hand, the ground, and the gun barrel I am pointing at his head. I hear him beg for his breath and I press down harder. I want to make him hurt. I want to end him. I want with every cell in my body, every drop of blood left in my veins, and every shiny light in my soul to pull that fucking trigger.
But I don’t, I save myself the endless torture of replaying that movie in my head for the rest of my life. I lift my foot and let him breathe, and kick him a little bit, but we all walk away. Well, Gary gets hogtied, thrown in the back of a truck, and taken to the police. Loni and I catch a ride to the hospital with my mother and stepfather, who find us before the ambulance can. But we all live that day. I wish I could tell you Gary went to jail. But he didn't. He got off with 14 years probation and a few weeks in a psych ward. Loni sold the farm and moved to a commune in Minnesota, and probably still sleeps with a knife under her pillow. Me, I got a check for $2400 dollars and a catalyst to get the fuck out of Georgia, cause Dorothy wasn’t kidding when she said they’re no place like home.
Holy shit. So glad you survived and left and now I get to know you.💜 And read your incredible writing.
I haven’t resumed breathing yet. I am so grateful you’re alive. Jesus H. On a lighter note, this made me literally laugh out loud: “He let us drive him to the liquor store, gave us cigars that turned us green, and would put a little bit of Old Grand Dad whiskey in our Dr Peppers when he would do a shooter himself.” Thank you!