I'm Thinking of Ending Things (8 page)

Limp and lifeless, both have been stacked up outside against the side of the barn. It's not what I'm expecting to see. There's no blood or gore, no flies, no scent, nothing to suggest these were ever living creatures, no signs of decay. They could just as easily be made of synthetic rather than organic material.

I want to stare at them, but I also want to get farther away. I've never seen dead lambs before, other than on my plate with garlic and rosemary. It seems to me, maybe for the first time, that there are varying degrees of dead. Like there are varying degrees of everything: of being alive, of being in love, of being committed, of being
sure. These lambs aren't sleepwalking through life. They aren't discouraged or sick. They aren't thinking about giving up. These tailless lambs are dead, extremely dead, ten-out-of-ten dead.

“What will happen to the lambs?” I call to Jake, who's walking ahead, away from the barn. He's hungry now, I can tell, and wants to hurry up, get inside. The wind is picking up.

“What?” he yells over his shoulder. “You mean the dead ones?”

“Yeah.”

Jake doesn't reply. He just keeps walking.

I'm not sure what else to say. Why didn't he say anything about the dead lambs? I'm the one who saw them. I'd rather ignore them, but now that I've seen them, I can't.

“Will anything happen to them?” I ask.

“I don't know. What do you mean? They're already dead.”

“Do they stay there, or get buried or anything?”

“Probably burn them at some point. In the bonfire. When it gets warmer, in the spring.” Jake continues walking ahead of me. “They're frozen for now anyway.” They didn't look all that different from lambs that are alive and healthy, at least in my mind. But they're dead. There's something so similar to living, healthy lambs, but also so different.

I jog to catch up, trying not to slip and fall. We're far enough away from the barn now that when I turn back, the shape of the two lambs looks like a single inanimate form, a solid mass—a bag of grain resting against the wall.

“Come on,” he calls, “I'll show you the old pen where they used
to keep pigs. They don't have pigs anymore; they were too much work.”

I follow him along the path until he stops. The pen looks abandoned, untouched for a few years. That's my feeling. The pigs are gone, but the enclosure is still there.

“So what happened to the pigs?”

“The last two were quite old and weren't moving around much anymore,” he says. “They had to be put down.”

“And they never got any new ones or baby pigs? Piglets. Is that how it usually works?”

“Sometimes. But I guess they never replaced them. They're a lot of work and expensive to keep.”

I should probably know better, but I'm curious. “Why did they have to put the pigs down?”

“That's what happens on a farm. It's not always pleasant.”

“Yeah, but were they sick?”

He turns back and looks at me. “Forget it. I don't think you'd like the truth.”

“Just tell me. I need to know.”

“Sometimes it's hard, out here on a farm like this. It's work. My parents hadn't been inside the pen to check on the pigs for a few days. They just tossed their food into the pen. The pigs were lying in the same corner day after day, and after a while, Dad decided he'd better have a good look at them. When he went inside, the pigs didn't look well. He could tell they were in some discomfort.

“He decided he better try to move them. Dad almost fell over backward when he lifted up the first pig. But he did it. He lifted and turned it. He found its belly was swarming with maggots. Thousands of them. It looked like its entire underside was covered in moving rice. The other one was even worse than the first. Both pigs were literally being eaten alive. From the inside out. And you'd never really know if you just looked at them from afar. From a distance, they seemed content, relaxed. Up close, it was a different story. I told you: life isn't always pleasant.”

“Holy shit.”

“The pigs were old and their immune systems were probably shot. Infection set in. Rot. They're pigs, after all. They live in filth. It probably started with a small cut on one of them, and some flies landed in the wound. Anyway, Dad had to put the pigs down. That was his only choice.”

Jake steers us out and starts walking again, crunching through the snow. I'm trying to use his same footsteps, where the snow's been compressed a bit.

“Those poor creatures,” I say. But I get it. I do. They had to be put down and put out of their misery. Suffering like that is unendurable. Even if the solution is final. The two lambs. The pigs. It really is nonnegotiable, I think. There's no going back. Maybe they were lucky, to go like that after what they'd been through. To at least be liberated from some of the suffering.

Unlike the frozen lambs, there's nothing restful or humane about the image of those pigs Jake has planted in my mind. It makes me wonder: What if suffering doesn't end with death? How
can we know? What if it doesn't get better? What if death isn't an escape? What if the maggots continue to feed and feed and feed and continue to be felt? This possibility scares me.

“You have to see the hens,” says Jake.

We approach a coop. Jake unlatches the entrance and we duck inside. The chickens are already roosting, so we don't stay in there long. Just long enough for me to step in some runny, unfrozen shit, of course, and to smell the unpleasant smells and see one of the last non-roosting hens eating one of its own eggs. It's not just the barn—every area has a distinct smell. I find it eerie in here with all these chickens sitting up on thin rails, looking at us. They appear more disgruntled by our presence than the sheep were.

“They'll do that sometimes, eat them, if the eggs aren't collected,” says Jake.

“Gross,” is all I can think of to say. “You guys don't have any neighbors, do you?”

“Not really. Depends on your definition of
neighbor
.”

We leave the coop, and I'm grateful to get that smell out of my nose.

We walk around behind the house, my chin pressed down against my chest for warmth. We're off the path now and are making our own way in the unshoveled snow. I don't normally feel so hungry. I'm famished. I look up and see someone in the house, in the upstairs window. A gaunt figure, standing, looking down at us. A woman with long straight hair. The tip of my nose is frozen.

“Is that your mom?” I wave. No response.

“She probably can't see you. Too dark out here.”

She stays at the window as we keep walking, plodding through the ankle-deep snow.

MY FEET AND HANDS ARE
numb. My cheeks red. I'm glad to be inside. I'm blowing on my hands, thawing them out as we step through the door into a small foyer. I can smell supper. Some kind of meat. There's also that smell of burning wood again, and a distinct atmospheric scent that every house has. Its own smell that its inhabitants are never aware of.

Jake yells hello. His dad—it must be his dad—answers that they'll be down in a minute. Jake seems a bit distracted, almost antsy.

“Do you want some slippers?” he asks. “They might be a bit big for you, but these old floors are pretty cold.”

“Sure,” I say. “Thanks.”

Jake rummages through a wooden bin to the left of the door, filled with hats and scarves, and digs up a pair of worn blue slippers.

“My old ones,” he says. “I knew they were in there. What they lack in appearance, they make up for in comfort.”

He holds them in both hands, examining them. It's like he's cradling them.

“I love these slippers,” he says, more to himself than to me. He sighs and hands me the slippers.

“Thanks,” I say, not sure that I should put them on. Eventually, I do. They don't fit right.

“Okay, this way,” says Jake.

We step beyond the threshold, to the left, into a small sitting room. It's dark, and Jake twists the switches on some lamps as we move.

“What are your folks doing?”

“They'll be down.”

We step into a large room. A living room. The house, unlike outside, is closer to what I'd been expecting. Hand-me-down furniture, rugs, lots of wooden tables and chairs. Each piece of furniture or trinket is distinct. And the decor—not to be so judgmental—but few things match. And everything is antique-looking. There's nothing in here that's been bought in the last twenty years. I guess that can be charming. It feels like we've stepped back in time several decades.

The music adds to this sensation of time travel. Hank Williams, I think. Or Bill Monroe. Maybe Johnny Cash? It sounds like vinyl, but I can't see where it's coming from.

“The bedrooms are upstairs,” Jake says, pointing to a staircase outside the living room. “Not much else up there. I can show you after we eat. I told you it's not fancy. It's an old place.”

True. Everything is old, but it's remarkably neat, tidy. There's no dust on the side tables. The cushions aren't stained or torn. What old farmhouse doesn't have some dust? No lint or animal hair or threads or dirt on the couch and chairs. The walls are covered in paintings and sketches, lots of them. Most aren't framed. The paintings are large. The sketches vary in size, but most are smaller. There's no TV in this room, or a computer. Lots of lamps. And candles. Jake lights the ones that aren't lit.

I assume it's his mom who collects the ornamental figurines. Most are small children dressed in elaborate attire, hats, and boots. Porcelain, I think. Some of the figurines are picking flowers. Some are carrying hay. Whatever they're doing, they're doing it for eternity.

The woodstove crackles in the far corner. I walk over and stand in front of it, turning to feel its warmth on my back. “Love the fire,” I say. “Cozy on a cold night.”

Jake sits down on the maroon couch opposite.

A thought occurs to me, and before I can mull it over I blurt it out. “Your parents knew we were coming, right? They invited us?”

“Yeah. We communicate.”

Beyond the entrance to this room, past the staircase, is a scratched-up, ragged door. It's closed. “What's in there?”

Jake looks at me as if I've asked a really stupid question. “Just some more rooms. And the basement is through there.”

“Oh, okay,” I say.

“It isn't finished. Just a nasty hole in the ground for the water heater and stuff like that. We don't use it. It's a waste of space. There's nothing down there.”

“A hole in the ground?”

“Just forget about it. It's there. It's not a nice place. That's all. It's nothing.”

I hear a door close somewhere upstairs. I look at Jake to see if he registers it, but he's lost in his own mind, looking straight ahead, intently, though seemingly at nothing.

“What are the scratches on the door from?”

“From when we had a dog.”

I drift from the stove to the wall of paintings and sketches. I see there are several photographs on the wall, too. All the photos are black-and-white. Unlike the sketches, all the photos are framed. No one is smiling in these photos. Everyone is stern-faced. The photo in the middle is of a young girl, fourteen, maybe younger. She's standing, posed, in a white dress. It's faded.

“Who's this?” I ask, touching the frame.

Jake doesn't stand but looks up from the book he's taken from the coffee table. “My great-grandma. She was born in 1885 or something.”

She's skinny and pale. She looks shy.

“She wasn't a happy person. She had issues.”

I'm surprised by his tone. It carries an edge of uncharacteristic annoyance.

“Maybe she had a tough life?” I offer.

“Her problems were hard on everyone. It doesn't matter. I don't even know why we keep that photo up. It's a sad story.”

I want to ask more about her but don't.

“Who's this?” It's a child, a toddler, maybe three or four.

“You don't know?”

“No. How would I know?”

“It's me.”

I lean closer to get a better look. “What? No way. That can't be you. The photo is too old.”

“That's just because it's black-and-white. It's me.”

I'm not sure I believe him. The child is barefoot and standing on a dirt road beside a tricycle. The child has long hair and is glaring at the camera. I look even closer and feel a twinge in my stomach. It doesn't look like Jake. Not at all. It looks like a little girl. More precise: it looks like me.

—They say he'd pretty much stopped talking.

—Stopped talking?

—Became nonverbal. Would work but not talk. It was awkward for everyone. I would pass him in the hall, would say hi, and he'd have a hard time looking at me square in the eye. He'd blush, become distant.

—Really?

—Yeah, I remember regretting hiring him. And not because he was incompetent. Everything was always clean and tidy. He did his job. But it got to the point where I had this feeling, you know? I sensed something. Like he wasn't quite normal.

—This sort of justifies your feeling.

—It does. I should have acted, done something, I guess, based on my gut.

—You can't start second-guessing after the fact. We can't let the actions of one man make us feel guilty. This isn't about us. We're the normal ones. It's only about him.

—You're right. It's good to be reminded of that.

—So what now?

—We try to forget this, all of it. We find a replacement. We move on.

A
t the table now, the smells are very good, thankfully. We skipped lunch today in preparation for this meal. I wanted to ensure I'd be hungry, and I am. My only concerns: my headache and the vague metallic taste in my mouth I've been noticing the last few days. It happens when I eat certain foods, and seems to be the worst with fruit and veggies. A chemical flavor. I have no idea what causes it. When I've noticed it, it's turned me off whatever I'm eating, and I'm hoping it doesn't happen now.