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“Maybe he was too hungry to stay in the bed any longer,” Clem said.”When I saw him yesterday, he said he was so shrunk up and weak he didn’t know if he could last much longer. He looked like his skin and bones couldn’t shrivel much more.”

“I asked Arch last night after suppertime for some rations – just a little piece of sowbelly and some molasses. He said he’d get around to letting me have some the first thing this morning.”

“Why don’t you tell him to give you full rations or none?” Clem said.”If you knew you wasn’t going to get none at all, you could move away and find a better man to share-crop for, couldn’t you?”

“I’ve been loyal to Arch Gunnard for a long time now,” Lonnie said.”I’d hate to haul off and leave him like that.”

Clem looked at Lonnie, but he did not say anything more just then. They turned up the road towards the driveway that led up to the big house. The fattening hogs were still grunting and squealing in the pen, and one of Arch’s hounds came down a cotton row beside the driveway to smell their shoes.

“Them fattening hogs always get enough to eat,” Clem said.”There’s not a one of them that don’t weigh seven hundred pounds right now, and they’re getting bigger every day. Besides taking all that’s thrown to them, they make a lot of meals off the chickens that get in there to peck around.”

Lonnie listened to the grunting of the hogs as they walked up the driveway towards the big house.

“Reckon we’d better get Arch up to help look for Pa?” Lonnie said.”I’d hate to wake him up, but I’m scared Pa might stray off into the swamp and get lost for good. He couldn’t hear it thunder, even. I never could find him back there in all that tangle if he got into it.”

Clem said something under his breath and went on towards the barn and hog pen. He reached the pen before Lonnie got there.

“You’d better come here quick,” Clem said, turning around to see where Lonnie was.

Lonnie ran to the hog pen. He stopped and climbed half-way up the wooden-and-wire sides of the fence. At first he could see nothing, but gradually he was able to see the moving mass of black fattening hogs on the other side of the pen. They were biting and snarling at each other like a pack of hungry hounds turned loose on a dead rabbit.

Lonnie scrambled to the top of the fence, but Clem caught him and pulled him back.

“Don’t go in that hog pen that way,” he said.”Them hogs will tear you to pieces, they’re that wild. They’re fighting over something.”

Both of them ran around the corner of the pen and got to the side where the hogs were. Down under their feet on the ground Lonnie caught a glimpse of a dark mass splotched with white. He was able to see it for a moment only, because one of the hogs trampled over it.

Clem opened and closed his mouth several times before he was able to say anything at all. He clutched at Lonnie’s arm, shaking him.

“That looks like it might be your pa,” he said.”I swear before goodness, Lonnie, it does look like it.”

Lonnie still could not believe it. He climbed to the top of the fence and began kicking his feet at the hogs, trying to drive them away. They paid no attention to him.

While Lonnie was perched there, Clem had gone to the wagon shed, and he ran back with two singletrees he had somehow managed to find there in the dark. He handed one to Lonnie, poking it at him until Lonnie’s attention was drawn from the hogs long enough to take it.

Clem leaped over the fence and began swinging the singletree at the hogs. Lonnie slid down beside him, yelling at them. One hog turned on Lonnie and snapped at him, and Clem struck it over the back of the neck with enough force to drive it off momentarily.

By then Lonnie was able to realize what had happened. He ran to the mass of hogs, kicking them with his heavy stiff shoes and striking them on their heads with the iron-tipped singletree. Once he felt a stinging sensation, and looked down to see one of the hogs biting the calf of his leg. He had just enough time to hit the hog and drive it way before his leg was torn. He knew most of his overall leg had been ripped away, because he could feel the night air on his bare wet calf.