Chapter Text
Statement of Trudy Carlisle//February 27th, 2011//Statement taken by Taylor Hebert, in situ.
Statement begins:
Uh, hi. My name’s Trudy. Uh, Trudy Carlisle. I work at Jumbo Burger, the one off Freemont. It’s… fine. It’s hard work. And I guess the oil isn’t great for my skin. Pays like garbage too. But, y’know, it’s fine. I could probably get a better job, but I, uh… haven’t.
I do pretty well in school. I’m a senior. Go Catamounts! Heh…
Have a boyfriend.
He’s nice.
Most of the time.
My Gram’s nice too, she—
Oh, I live with my Grandma. Have for—y-yeah. My dad sorta… died, a little while back. Years now, actually. I was 10 at the time, and my mom wasn’t—
Yeah, I can tell you about that.
Yeah.
🟂
I grew up on a pig farm out in Wacamaw county. It wasn’t one of those industrial ones, there wasn’t one of those for 50 miles. No, just a small, family-run farm, and even that was pushing it, cause I didn’t really start helping out til’ I was eight or so. I mean, I helped out a little. Since I was three at least. Everyone helps on a farm. But how much help is a toddler ever gonna be?
I probably got in the way more than anything
No, it was really just my dad. He fixed fences, fed the hogs, did the… y’know. Um… yeah. He did it all. We couldn’t have ever had more than 30 hogs at a time, but it still kept him working from sunrise to set.
My mom left when I was younger. Got sick of him, the way he tells it. She got the money, he got me. I got my name from her, and I guess a lot more than that, cause I got sick of him too, by the end.
He’d tell me I was doing things wrong a lot of the time. He did that a lot more when he was holding a bottle. I—he said it was for my own good. And most of the time he was right. Hog farms are dangerous. People don’t really think about it, but…
I think he liked scaring me, looking back.
It made him feel big. He told me once about a man who had a stroke and fell into the pig pen, how he couldn’t move. The pigs didn’t wait for him to die to start eating him. He lived up til they reached his lungs, the way dad told it.
It’s… messed up. It’s a messed up thing to tell a five-year-old, I guess, but I took it to heart. Those lessons stick. No matter how friendly they seem, no matter how cute they look, and gosh, they look cute… they won’t hesitate. ‘They’re animals, Trudy,’ he’d say. ‘You gotta treat ‘em like it.’
I think he’s wrong about that, now that I'm older. At least a little bit. They’re a lot like us. You can tell when you look in their eyes, they look like a person’s. They’re thinking behind them.
I don’t think he’s wrong about what they’ll do to you. No. But… it’s not cause they’re animals.
People don’t hesitate either.
Sorry, I’m—getting sidetracked. Um.
I was about 10 when he died. The spring before, I helped him deliver a new litter—uh, he called it a ‘farrow’, actually—a new group of 11 little baby piglets, and—gosh. I didn’t really play much with them before. I was a little scared of them before then, which… makes sense. But, that spring…
I didn’t care much for most of them, but the smallest one, the runt of the litter, he was the sweetest, most precious little thing… all pink and so wrinkled you could bunch up his skin in your hand. I just about died the first time I saw him, held him in my lap. He didn’t open his eyes for three days, and when he did…
I don’t know what exactly was different about him, looking back. It’s hard to pin down what separated him from the rest. He was smaller, sure, but he didn’t act any different. He didn’t look any different.
It was something about his eyes.
You could tell he was planning. From the moment he opened his eyes, he was planning something. I remember, the first time he opened them and looked up at me, and I could feel it, something just as smart as me, thinking just as much as me.
I loved him.
I really did. I think I loved him more than my dad, to tell the truth. Named him ‘Rudy’. A little joke. A bad one. Trudy and Rudy.
I spent all summer playing with him, every day, and he grew, and grew—pigs grow fast, you know. He was the only one I ever took out of the pen. He’d follow me around, staring up at me, trotting at my heels. He’d come when I called him. I swear he knew his name, and late at night, I’d sit in the barn and I’d talk with him and he’d hear me. Really hear me. I know he could. He’d stare up at me with those big, brown eyes, eyelashes fluttering, and he’d know what I was talking about.
My dad didn’t like it much.
My dad didn’t like him.
A lot of times Dad'd sit on the porch in his rickety little chair, sipping a can of something or other and just staring at the two of us.
You know what happens on pig farms.
Of course you do.
I knew too, I think. But… it was a vague thing. Abstract. There weren’t many buildings on the farm. There was the house we lived in, old—older than old—built in the 50s and sagging in places. There was the shed, where dad kept his tools, all the dangerous stuff he warned me not to touch. There was the barn, and the pen. Wide. Very wide. Pigs take up a lot of space.
And, then there was the building dad told me not to go in.
That’s where he took the pigs when they were ready to be sold. Some farms actually don’t kill the pigs themselves, nowadays. Sometimes they’ll sell them to slaughterhouses, let them do the dirty work, but…
I think my dad liked it, actually.
I think he enjoyed it.
The building was the smallest of the four, ramshackle, made of rusty tin and a dark wood that left splinters when you dragged your hand across it. It wasn’t anything special to me, looking back. I never really even thought about what happened to the pigs he brought inside, but then again, I never really got attached to any of the pigs before Rudy.
I wish I hadn’t gotten attached.
He woke me up one night that fall, late enough you could almost call it morning. His breath smelled like beer, and his beard scratched against my cheek as he shook me, whispering ‘Get up, Trudy. You’re old enough now. It’s time you earned your keep.’
I rubbed my eyes and blinked up at him and asked him what he was talking about, but he just said the same thing again and again.
‘You’re old enough now. It’s time you earned your keep.’
I threw on my pajamas and followed after him as he left the house. It was muggy that night. Crickets were screaming, so loud it was like they were parked right inside my ear. I just shuffled after him, didn’t ask many questions.
Dad was stumbling a bit, and every now and then, he’d turn back to make sure I was still following. His eyes were red, and he kept wiping his lips, and when I asked what was wrong he’d just say it again.
‘You’re old enough now. It’s time you earned your keep.’
The pigs weren’t happy when Dad woke them up. One of ‘em bit at his boots, and he kicked it in the jaw.
I stayed outside after that, hugging myself. It wasn’t really cold yet. Summer was still holding, but I kept rubbing my arms anyway.
Dad came out a little bit later, lugging Rudy. He was big by that point, big enough dad couldn’t pick him up. Pigs grow fast, like I said, and it’d been a long time since Rudy was the runt of the litter.
Dad made me follow him. He dragged Rudy behind him with a lead. Rudy kept pulling away, and when I asked what he was doing with my friend, Dad’d just keep saying ‘You’re old enough now. It’s time you earned your keep.’
He opened the door to the building I wasn’t supposed to go in. It was latched shut with a heavy iron lock, and when the door swung open, the hinges growled at us.
It was so hot that night, but it was even hotter inside.
Have you ever been inside a slaughterhouse? Usually the killing floor is set about a grate of some kind, a place to let the blood flow.
The floor of the building was wood.
It stank.
Copper and sweat and shit and so much blood I could taste it in the air. I coughed again and again, and my eyes watered, but when I asked him what he was doing, he just shook his head and grabbed my wrist and whispered ‘You’re old enough now. It’s time you earned your keep.’
It was like the boards had been soaked clean through. They sagged beneath my feet like wet paper, like they were soggy with all the blood they’d drank up over the years.
Metal tools lines the walls, and something brown splattered across a rusty table pressed against the back wall. Rudy wouldn’t stop screaming. Not squealing, not any sound you’d imagine a pig making. He was screaming. He was screaming like a little boy, looking up at me with those big brown eyes, so much like a person’s. I grabbed my dad’s leg, and begged him not to hurt my friend, but he kicked me away, muttering again and again and again that ‘You’re old enough now. It’s time you earned your keep.’
I started crying once I understood what was happening. Really understood.
Rudy wasn’t even old enough to be sold yet, I don’t think. He wasn’t big enough.
Dad was just doing it to be cruel.
He tied Rudy to a hook hanging from the ceiling, and handed me something heavy and metal, with a long tube coming out the bottom. I’d never seen a bolt gun before, let alone used one. I asked dad why he was doing this.
You know what he said.
He grabbed my arm, so rough I had bruises, and guided my hand until the gun was pressed up against Rudy’s forehead. I kept asking him ‘Why are you doing this?’. Rudy’s snout pressed against my hand. He stopped screaming by that point, and when I looked at him he was crying. Crying, just like me.
Those big, brown eyes kept blinking up at me. Smarter than dad, maybe even smarter than me. I could see it. He was planning something. His little lips were flapping, like he was trying to speak. He’d always been planning something, but it was the first time I understood what he was thinking about. It was like he was telling me what to do.
I listened.
Dad was slow that night. Slower than me. He took out a cigarette and popped it between his lips but fumbled the lighter. He dropped it on the ground, then bent to pick it up. That's when I turned towards him, pointed the bolt gun at his head, right up against the skin.
He wasn't fast enough to stop me.
His neck whipped back from the force of it, and he fell backwards onto some of the tools. They made such a clatter as they rattled against the wall, and then it was quiet. Rudy wasn’t screaming anymore. I wasn’t crying. It was totally quiet, except for the crickets.
I just stood there, breathing hard while Rudy pressed his snout up against my side. I was so scared. I didn’t know what to do.
Dad groaned, and I screamed. His foot twitched.
I didn’t know how bolt guns worked at the time, but I do now. They don’t kill the animal. Not at first. A piston drives through the skull, destroying crucial parts of the brain and leaving them unconscious, but alive. It’s like a hand-held lobotomy.
He was still groaning, gargling, really, like he was choking on something. I must’ve not done it right. Or maybe humans are different. I’m not sure, but…
He kept twitching, and when I got up enough courage to look at his face, half his forehead was caved in.
I was so scared.
I don’t know why I did it. To this day, a part of me still thinks it was Rudy’s idea, not mine. I just listened, but…
Whatever it was, Rudy helped me drag him out of the building. I’m sure of that. My dad was a big man. I never could’ve dragged him myself. That’s what the police thought too. I never could’ve done something like that.
Me and Rudy dragged him to the pig pen, and tossed him inside. It took a lot of work to get him over the fence.
I put Rudy away in the barn, then went back to bed, and in the morning, I called the police.
Most of him was gone by that point, but they tested his blood, probably found it was more alcohol than anything else at that point.
The Medical Examiner ruled it an accident. Said he most likely fell in after getting drunk. The report said he died pretty quick after that, but that’s wrong. I know it is.
I could hear him. Even when I put my pillow over my ears, I could hear the pigs and I could hear him.
He lived for such a long time.
Statement ends