Pig Years by Ellyn Gaydos

Author:Ellyn Gaydos [Gaydos, Ellyn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780593318959
Publisher: Knopf
Published: 2022-06-14T00:00:00+00:00

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After so many days on the farm, I am shocked by the profusion of people at the market. From Plainfield, a town of twelve hundred, to a square visited by sixty thousand. A man with legs like a stork carries a bouquet of hydrangeas balanced atop his cane. Another man dips into the stand drinking a water bottle full of red wine. There are people in all-jean outfits, dresses, platform sneakers. People shopping with assistants who carry their new houseplants, loaves of bread, and cheese wrapped in white paper. A woman with thin arms comes up to our stand, where I idle behind the scale. “Ooh, you’re dirty,” she says, smiling, eyes roving down my white tank top, loose and covered in brown smudges, the cracks of my hands, wrapped around the cool Coke can, alive with soil. “I like to roll around in the dirt like a pig,” she tells me, batting sea-glass eyes. I bring the can to my lips and sip. “Oh nooo! You’ll feel the difference once you’re healthier,” she tells me, looking at the soda tragically. “You need Coca-Cola and beer to work,” I say, “but I eat lots of vegetables.” She buys a bunch of yellow beets before disappearing back into the street. “Animals love their families!” “Just like us!” the protesters chant. But nothing stops the flow of commerce. By one o’clock our entire cooler of eggs is sold out.

The piles of vegetables grow smaller and smaller as people come in and go out of the stand. After five we begin to box up what is left. We load the unsold flats of tomatoes and boxes of potatoes onto the truck, stow away the cashbox and scale, take down the tent, and sweep the emptied stall. Everything disassembled, Chris starts the truck for the drive north. I walk across the square and go down the stairs into the subway.

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