One pot simmered and stewed with liver and lights and haslets and rice liver pudding. Another pot slowly, carefully sputtered and spat as the blood, mixed with seasonings, thickened into pudding. The brains were taken out of the skull, which was put on for head cheese.
Breeze felt neither sadness nor squeamishness now. His mouth watered as his nose sniffed at all the appetizing smells.
The sun began throwing long shadows and Big Sue kept him hurrying. Every single hog hair had to be picked up and saved to plant in the potato patch next spring. Every hair would make a potato.
The waste had to be thrown in the creek. Breeze cast it in, a bucketful at a time. Horrid filthy stuff. It made him shiver, but the water swallowed it down with scarcely a splash, then flowed on smooth and clear, reflecting the bright clouds in the sky, shimmering in the last sunbeams, rising with the incoming tide to water its banks, which were yellow with marsh daisies. The willows were almost bare of leaves, and the slim naked trunks and branches bent over, looking away down into the Blue Brook’s quiet depths.
Sunset gilded the earth and cabins and trees, and streaked the white sandy yard with golden light. Uncle Bill hoped that such stillness would not bring rain soon, for the hay was in shocks in the field yet, and the corn not all broken in. He looked up at the sky as he spoke, and at once a light breeze sprang up to tell him to-morrow would be fair. He laughed with relief, and the big trees bowed gently, saying that they knew the little breeze had told the truth. Even the frost-faded grasses nodded and waved!
To stay fair the weather must turn cooler, and that would be good for Big Sue’s fresh killed meat. It would have a good chance to take the salt well. Such big hams needed careful curing.
Breeze must clean up the pen to-morrow and scatter ashes all over it, so Uncle Bill could bring Big Sue one of Melia’s red pigs to grow and fatten into a fine shoat by late spring.
Each piece of pork was rubbed well with salt and stored in Uncle Bill’s small log barn. There, they’d be safe until the morning, when they’d be rubbed again with salt mixed with sugar, and packed into a barrel to cure.
Old Louder sat on his thin haunches, patient and polite. He knew better than to beg, but his long ears failed to hide the pleading, wistful look in his eyes. Breeze tossed him a morsel of meat now and then and before one could touch the ground Louder caught and swallowed it with a deft snap of his jaws. Big Sue fairly screamed out:
“Feedin’ a dog wid my good meat, enty? I seen you. I’ll learn you better’n dat to-morrow mawnin’.”