The House on Fortune Street by Margot Livesey

our teachers’ private lives with tedious frequency. That afternoon, trying as usual to change the subject, I had said I wanted a smoke. We had set Horace aside and headed down the lane where I’d held forth about the ethics of eating meat. Now Davy led me to an adjacent field where the pigs held sway. We had last visited them while studying Animal Farm, and agreed that it was easy to see why Orwell made them his leaders. Their small, pale eyes were disquietingly
     
    human, as was their nakedness. Davy claimed that if you fell while feed-ing them they would try to eat you. After the rain their field was even more of a quagmire than usual. The teats of the sow nearest the gate grazed the mud.
    “How about Mabel?” said Davy, pointing at a pig with a large black patch on one haunch. “She killed three of her last litter by rolling over on them. I’m sure she’s ready for the great sty in the sky.”
    As Mabel rooted around searching for acorns, the poor pig’s truffles Davy called them, I made one last effort to explain myself.“If I’m going to eat meat,” I said, “then it seems immoral to be squeamish about killing animals but happy to benefit from someone else doing it.”
    “You eat carrots and you don’t grow them. Come on.”
    The breeze was quickening and in the hedgerows the birds, as if at some secret signal, had fallen silent. Davy was already heading down the road, back to the house. I trailed a few steps behind. At the back door he told me to wait. I stood idly scraping my boots on the boot scraper, hoping that whatever prank he had in mind would restore our relationship to its former ease. When he reappeared, he was carrying a rifle.
    “Are you allowed to have that thing?” I said.
    The only answer came from above as the rain started to fall. Davy was already striding across the farmyard. Once again I followed, hands in pockets, head down, as if demonstrating my reluctance to him, and to myself. I could never have admitted that somewhere deep inside I was also excited, swept up by Davy’s passion and wherever it was taking us. Back at the field, he balanced the rifle on the top rung of the metal gate and, just as I’d imagined, squinted down the barrel. Mabel had moved closer.
    “Fifty feet,” he said. “A tricky shot for a novice, but it’s easier to aim when you have a support.”
    “No.”
     
    Davy lifted the rifle off the gate, and held it out to me. I backed away. “Do you want people to think you’re a coward?” he said, looking me square in the face.
    “What people? There’s only you and the pigs.”
    Still looking at me, still holding out the gun, he took a step toward me. “Besides,” I added, “I’m not.”
    Davy took another step. In the rain his hair had turned almost black, and his eyes had a flat, bright look. “Come on,” he whispered, his face so close that I felt, rather than heard, his words. The barrel of the gun nudged my chest.
    People sometimes claim that at moments of crisis everything was a blur or, alternatively, crystal clear. For me that afternoon in the pig field was both. Davy’s eyes never left mine; the gun pressed against my chest; the pigs grunted and scuffled. I took the gun and I imitated Davy. I rested the barrel on the gate, peered along it until it seemed to be pointing, roughly, in the direction of Mabel’s patchwork rump, and pulled the trigger. I had no intention of hurting her. This was all about Davy and me and a certain heat between us. The gun kicked; my head filled with noise and the sharp smell made my nostrils prickle. Mabel screamed and the other pigs plunged into confusion.
    “Damn,” said Davy. “What have you done?”
    He scrambled over the gate. He had covered only a few yards—the mud slowed him down—when, still clutching the gun, I mounted the slippery metal bars and followed. The other pigs had stampeded to a far corner. If I fell, I thought, they could eat me in a minute.
    Davy came to a stop a few yards from Mabel.