BOTTOM FEEDER
Deborah Leblanc
Published by Deborah Leblanc at
Smashwords
Copyright 2010 Deborah Leblanc
It wasn’t so much the smell of pig shit that
got Nina’s attention, as it was the size of the pig shitting. It
looked like a Volkswagen with a busted gas tank. A light breeze
collected the scent of the brown stream squirting from beneath its
looping tail and sent it her way. She slapped a hand over her nose
but not quick enough to keep the putrid odor from drilling into her
sinuses. It was like snorting a cocktail of warm rotted meat,
vomit, and something metallic. She gagged, eyes watering.
The woman who’d introduced herself only
moments earlier as Lervette Patin let out a hearty laugh, revealing
pale pink gums with no teeth and a nicotine-stained tongue. Not a
pretty sight on any woman, but paste it on four hundred pounds of
blubber dressed in a faded green housedress and tattered sneakers
and you were looking at down right gross. Lervette clapped her
hands twice, and the rolls of fat on her body jiggled in every
direction at once. When her guffaws finally calmed to mild snorts,
she said, “Ol’ Maudwan’s been havin’ de drizzles for a coupla days.
Don’t know how long dey gonna last, so you bes’ learn to breathe
out you mout’ when you come ‘round to feed.”
Nina gaped, one eye on the animal’s thick
yellow tusks and what appeared to be a quarter-size mole on the
left side of its snout. What was a sixty-plus-year-old woman living
alone doing with a creature like that? “I-I’ve gotta feed that . .
. that pig?”
Lervette arched a brow. “First off, dat ain’t
no pig. Maudwan’s a boar. All de reg’lar pigs is out back, pas’ de
feed shed.” She nodded toward an old wooden, paintless building
that stood four hundred yards beyond Maudwan’s pen. It looked like
an abandoned garage.“And what business you got gettin’ all uppity
anyways? Ain’t you de one was lookin’ for work?”
“Yeah . . . but I thought I’d be babysitting
or cleaning something. You know, like your house.”
“Where de hell you got dat from, girl ?
I never said nuttin’ ‘bout you cleanin’ no house, and I ain’t got
no kids.”
Lervette said ‘girl’ as though the younger
sector of the female gender carried a contagious, disfiguring
disease. Getting more nervous by the minute, Nina glanced over at
the grunting Volkswagen and muttered softly, “My—my name’s
Nina.”
“Don’t matter what you name is,” Lervette
snapped, her eyes cold, brown marbles. “Work is work. What? You
t’ink just ‘cause you young and skinny and got dem big titties you
too good to slop hogs?”
Shocked by the tit comment that seemed to
come out of nowhere, Nina stared at her, mouth open, unable to
think of anything to say.
Lervette parked a hand on her hip. “Look
here, I ain’t got no time to watch you just stand dere like a broke
stick. You want de work or no?”
Tears stung Nina’s eyes, and she bit them
back, not wanting to give the woman the satisfaction of seeing her
cry. What had seemed like a good idea two weeks ago was turning
into an even bigger nightmare than the one she left’d back in
Dayton, Ohio. At the time, though, leaving seemed to be the only
way out. Her mother had refused to believe that Rick, Mommy
Dearest’s latest boyfriend, really preferred
eighteen-year-old girls. He’d already forced himself on her once,
threatening her life if she told anyone, and Nina knew if she
didn’t leave, one of them would wind up dead. So she’d stuffed
clothes into a knapsack, swiped seventy bucks from Rick’s wallet
while he was in the shower, and left home.
Although she hitched rides and slept under
any hideaway she could find, the money only lasted four days. With
no money and no one willing to hire her, Nina learned to scrounge
through trashcans behind restaurants for food. It was either eat
garbage or go home. She chose the garbage. And the plan had worked
well until three days ago when a
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