Pigs Might Fly

Sunrise happened all of a sudden. One minute the landscape was dark and hidden, the next – grey, frosty and brittle. Daybreak even caught the rooster by surprise and his first crow sounded startled, but he quickly found his swagger—as if to say: “yeah, I did mean to start a little late…”

The farmhouse hunkered down, its occupants seeking a few more minutes under cosy bedding.

A groan, a curse, feet – one, two – thumping onto bare boards. The creak of springs as the bed ejected first one occupant, then the other.

Donning socks, trousers, shirt, vest – scratching his balls as he headed down the stairs – Wilbur Fernlough glowered at the day.

He headed to the barn, pulled the side door open and stepped aside to allow the cat to catapult itself into the morning air. He collected the night’s hunt – two were headless, the rest just matted and battered – and took the carcasses out to the hen house, leaving the door open so the hens could free-range after their mousey breakfast.

Returning to the barn he noted, as he did every day, the loose sheet of tin on the roof above the main barn door. He grunted and added it to the mental jobs list. Again. Well, at least the clouds were lifting and the sun was beginning to flex its fingers.

Stepping back through the door, he stopped. Something wasn’t right. A shaft of sunlight angling in where it shouldn’t. He looked up, “Fuck!”

The loose sheet of tin over the door was one thing, a gaping hole directly above the hayloft was another thing entirely. It’d have to be fixed before it before it rained. The thought filled him with dread. He was afraid of heights.

“Wilbur?” Rosemary was surprised to find her husband standing stock still just inside the door. She handed him the flask of tea, and paper-wrapped egg and bacon buttie she brought down to him every morning before collecting the eggs.

He pointed to the roof, “Give Tom a call will ya – needs to be fixed today, but pigs’ll fly before I climb up there.”

Rosemary held in a sigh. So much needed fixing, but Wilbur couldn’t do anything above head height, and it was getting harder to find anyone prepared to come and help out. Tit for tat was a big thing in the country, if you couldn’t afford to pay.

He moved to the old chair and sat down to eat his breakfast. Rosemary turned away, she couldn’t bear the defeated set to his shoulders.

Wilbur was good with mechanical things, though, and today he was giving the old tractor a service to ready it for the next few days’ furrowing and planting. Breakfast finished, he threw a dirty look at the barn roof then slid the big door back along its track to allow more daylight in.

Engines, grease, oil—it all soothed him. Motor parts made sense to him, when so much else didn’t. He stroked the flank of the tractor as he pulled the toolbox from its place in the cab and set to work.

Two hours later he stopped to finish the remaining tea in his flask. He stood in front of the tractor, leaning his back against it and enjoying the sunlight shining on his face. He knew Rosemary would have a fresh pot of tea and some scones ready up at the house, but he wasn’t ready to remove himself from his happy place of engine-tinkering.

The sound of a rough engine brought his attention to the driveway as Tom’s rust-bucket utility pulled in to stop outside the kitchen door. Wilbur watched the jaunty way Tom leapt from the cab and moved to the kitchen door. He could picture Rosemary’s grin of welcome, the pouring of tea, the buttering of scones. So much chatter. He turned away and picked up a spanner.

Half an hour later, a clearing of throat behind him called Wilbur out from the tractor’s sump.

“Tom.”

“Wilbur.”

Tom looked up at the hole in the roof.

“Found the missing sheets?”

“Haven’t looked yet,” Wilbur made a gesture towards the engine he was working on, “nearly finished, though.”

“Aha,” Tom nodded.

“I’ll have a nosey around then…”

“Right,” said Wilbur turning back to his engine. He had already finished the service and was now just cleaning down any spilled oil, but his awkwardness with other humans kept him busily occupied with the tractor engine until Tom was out of the barn.

He fired up the engine and enjoyed its throaty rumble for a few minutes, then backed up ready to fit the lift attachment he would use to raise Tom up to the roof.

Tom appeared, and so did a flush-cheeked Rosemary. Was she wearing lipstick?! Wilbur narrowed his eyes, taking in the both of them—the relaxed charm of one, and the jittery girlishness of the other. A lump formed in his gut.

“Found them,” said Tom. “One’s a bit twisted, but should be able to straighten it out enough. I’ll bring the truck down.”

Rosemary walked back to the house with him. Wilbur watched them and flinched when Tom briefly touched her shoulder.

“Pig!” thought Wilbur.

Shortly, Tom parked outside the barn and dropped the sides of the tray. He lifted the twisted sheet of iron onto the flat surface and hammered the kink to semi-straightness.

The men wrangled the lifter into place and Wilbur laid a sheet of heavy ply over the forks as a platform for Tom, the roof sheets, and the toolbox. He manoeuvred the machine into place alongside the barn and raised the forklift to its maximum extension.

Tom called down, “Nah mate – I can’t do this on my own. Need help to get the sheets off.”

The knot in Wilbur’s gut tightened, when 20 minutes later, Rosemary clutched Tom’s arm as the forklift lifted them both to the barn roof.

He watched while Tom explained to Rosemary where she should walk – one hand on her upper back, the other pointing to the nail line. The way Rosemary looked up at him, how she moistened her lips with her tongue—that’s when he knew.

He sat in the cab of his tractor watching them manipulate the two sheets of iron into place. Rosemary stayed on the roof while Tom fixed the sheets to the wooden beams, then he held her arm as she edged back to the raised platform of the forklift.

Wilbur started the engine as Rosemary dropped onto the platform then reached up to take Tom’s toolbox. She stepped to the back of the platform as Tom crouched ready to drop down and join her.

Suddenly, the machine jerked backwards and the platform Tom dropped his feet towards wasn’t there. He flailed for balance, Rosemary screamed and the tractor stalled. Tom fell, he tried to lunge at the platform which was now out of reach. He landed on the hard ground with a whump and lay there winded and broken.

Rosemary’s shrieks reverberated through the tractor’s cab as Wilbur, open-mouthed and shocked, thought “Well, fuck me! Pigs can fly.”