Ozzie's Promise

R ain. Endless rain. Rain pounding on the metal roof high above them droned on for days, lulling the hundreds of pigs beneath it into a melancholy trance. “Sister,” said Harriet as she slowly lifted herself to her feet, her belly heavy with babies. “I hear The Men say it is ‘rain’ that hits the roof above us, but what, I wonder, does that mean?” “Not a hill of beans, Sister,” said Ice, peering at her through her blue eye, which was the left one, as her neck was too stiff to turn and look at her through her brown one, as well. Ice also decided to haul herself to her feet. Standing gave her some relief from lying in the slime of her own manure and urine, yet once she lifted her own heavy belly off the floor, she felt the familiar ache in her legs and wondered . . . what was the point? Standing, sitting, lying down . . . it was all the same. Neither she nor her sister had left their crates for more than a few minutes at a time since they’d been put into them, and that had been several years earlier. There were hundreds of sows in the enormous barn and each of their bodies filled their crates so completely that none of them could move an inch. Ice opened her mouth and clenched a bar of her gate in her teeth. If she bit down hard enough she sometimes forgot about the aches in her body. “Sister,” Harriet said, “I have told you that you will ruin your teeth doing that!” “Oh, for goodness sake,” Ice snapped. “What difference would it make?” She bit back down on the bar, then opened her mouth and tried, as she often did, to stretch her tongue far enough to reach the latch on the gate. If only she could push it up and over she knew she could shove the door open and let herself out, then maybe take a slow stroll down the aisle to help relieve the pain in her stiff body. She opened her mouth wide and pushed her snout as close to the latch as she could, but as always, failed. “Sister, if only I could get my teeth around it,” she said, “I know I could get it open.” “But you can’t, my dear,” Harriet patiently replied, lying back down on the hard floor and feeling the familiar burn of the slime on the skin of her belly. At the far end of the aisle, over the noise of the pounding rain, the pair of lady pigs heard a commotion. They turned their heads and strained to see through the dim light. “What is it, Sister?” Harriet asked, again rising to her feet. “Can you see?” Ice stared down the aisle, trying to hear what the other sows were shouting about. And then . . . she saw . . . and gasped. “It’s water,” she cried. “Look at the floor . . . Look towards the door . . . there is water coming into the barn!” The large doors at the opposite end of the barn slid open with a whoosh and a clang and The Men rushed inside. “The water overtopped the sandbags!” one of then shouted. “Let the pigs out or they’ll drown!” “But there’s no place to put ‘em!” another one shouted. “Everything is flooding!” “We’re going to lose everything . . . everything!” shouted another. Harriet and Ice looked back towards the other end of the barn, and what had been a thin sheet of water sliding towards them across the cement was now a low, rippling wall. Terrified, Ice clenched the bar of her crate and screamed at the top of her lungs, but over the noise of the rain crashing against the roof, the other screaming pigs and the shouting of the men, no one noticed. The Men began to open crates, flinging aside gates and quickly moving on, and the freed sows clambered out into the aisle, but with so much chaos, they had no idea where to go. The water had already reached the ladies and in a matter of a minute was up to their knees. Ice clenched the metal bar in her teeth and screamed again, but Harriet, who seldom shouted, screamed right over the top of her. “Sister, Sister!” she shouted. “They are almost here! The Men are almost here!” One of them had sloshed through the water and was a few crates away, and the ladies heard him curse as he fought his way through a sea of screaming pigs, slipping and sliding his way up the aisle. The water lapped against the pigs’ bellies as he reached to unlatch Harriet’s gate and set her free, but another huge sow, not knowing which way to turn, knocked him to his knees. He struggled back to his feet, but instead of opening Harriet’s door, skipped past and opened Ice’s. The water was at her shoulder as she shoved past the gate and into the aisle “Run Sister!” Harriet shouted. “Run!!!!” The Man continued past them and up the aisle, leaving Harriet trapped behind a locked gate. Ice braced herself against the rushing water and the crush of pigs flailing about in the dim light. “Run!” Harriet shouted again. “Get out!!!” Sow after sow pressed up against Ice in a desperate frenzy to save themselves, but Ice clenched her teeth onto one of the bars of Harriet’s gate and held on tightly, waiting for a moment when no one was slamming into her. And then, with the water lapping at her chin, she let go, grabbed the latch and, just as she had imagined doing a thousand times over, lifted it high and slid it to the side. “Push!” Ice shouted. “Push it open!” Harriet shoved her head against her prison door. It swung open into the rushing water and she staggered into the aisle. “Now what do we do?” she cried. “Things are looking grim!” “Dearest Sister, we will swim!” Ice yelled back. “Swim as hard as you can! And we mustn’t lose sight of each other!”