Squeaky - Rebekah Gleaves Sanderlin

Only Uncle Ronnie would give two young’uns a whole-ass live human baby as a prank, but that’s what he did. Cute little pink thing, all rounded, soft, and making these breathy little squeaky sounds. That’s what we named him, by the way, Squeaky.
 
Uncle Ronnie left Squeaky in a box on our front porch, wrapped up and tied in a bow like a present, but a leaky present, cause Squeaky pee’d through the box. Uncle Ronnie waited in his truck, parked under our weeping willow tree, to watch as we got off the school bus, spied the gift, and ripped into that box. I guess he thought we’d laugh, realize it was a prank, then take this unwanted burden back to the plant with all the others. Mama and Daddy did roll their eyes and sigh, “That’s your Uncle Ronnie for ya!” But by the time they got home and found us cradling Squeaky, Sissy and I were too far smitten to send him off to be fattened and slaughtered. I mean, how could we? Once we’d held that soft little round body to our chests, once we’d learned what each of his squeaks meant, we were dead set on keeping him. We begged and swore to a whole list of extra chores, but finally Mama and Daddy said Squeaky could stay as our pet.
 
Some of my friends thought it was strange that we had a pet person. We were the slaughterhouse family. Everybody knew that, and nobody judged us for it. They all ate meat, and half of our friends’ daddies worked for Grandaddy at the plant, right alongside Daddy and Uncle Ronnie. Everybody knew the meat on our tables had to come from somewhere. But sometimes when a new friend would come over to play, they’d see Squeaky and pull Sissy or I aside and ask, “How can you have a pet person, but also kill people?” To which we would say, “At least with us, we know our people were happy first. They had nice lives, with sunshine and clean stalls. At least we know we did all we could to spare them any pain.” Our tables and bellies stayed full and we rested easy at night.
 
And it was all true. My family had won awards for it. We were proud of that. All the pigs who worked for us were paid and treated well. And our people? Well, no people-meat had it better anywhere, I guarantee you that.
 
We built nice, clean stalls for them, four people to a stall. We fed them twice a day, and twice a week we hosed out their stalls to spray out the stinky muck that piled up in the corner. Humans are nasty creatures, by the way. Just shitting and pissing right where they sleep. But I suppose that’s why we’re higher on the food chain. And it’s hard to keep them clean. But we tried, lord how we tried. We sprayed them down every day. Grandaddy even built big shower rooms so we could wash them all at once and so they could have each other’s company during the washings. He said that made it more fun for them. But still they were prone to skin infections and sores and if you let them get to that point, their meat would be inedible. All you could do then was grind them up for feed. But humans are omnivores, so it wasn’t a total waste.
 
Back to Squeaky. He was the cutest little guy! Daddy built a pen for him behind our house. At first, we fed him cow milk in a bottle, and he liked that! But eventually he was big enough for soft food, and later for real feed. Mama let us pretend he was our piglet and we took turns carrying him around, dressing him in our clothes, and spooning feed into his mouth. There wasn’t much for him to do in his pen, but when he got bigger, we would step into the pen with him and throw a ball at him. He wasn’t very good at catching, but he still seemed happy to see us. And before school we would feed him whatever was left over from our breakfasts – some eggs, maybe some human sausage or bacon – we always snickered when he ate that – he liked it though! – somedays it was just the soggy remnants of our cereal and milk, he liked that best of all. Mama didn’t care how much we fed him. She wanted us to fatten him up, so anything that didn’t get eaten got fed to Squeaky. And since he mostly just laid around in his pen, staring up at the clouds, he fattened up quick!
 
After a few years he was too big for his pen and Daddy said we had to take him over to the plant with the other humans. Sissy and I cried, oh how we cried! We’d seen what happened to humans when they got just old enough and just big enough, before their meat got too tough. The workers would on the kill floor would stun them with electric sticks that made them go all numb. Then, while the humans were wide awake but limp, the workers would roll them onto their backs and tie their arms and legs together. Then they’d set each of them gently on the conveyor belt, so as not to bruise that precious rump and thigh meat. They’d all be placed headfirst so they couldn’t see what was coming for them – that’s one of the humane touches we won that award for. And then on that conveyor belt, one by one, the humans puttered down to what always looked to me like a giant pair of scissors. It would just snip off their heads, nice and clean. The heads would roll into one bin and the bodies into another. All the workers on the kill floor wore rubber waders because the blood was usually knee high, sometimes higher. That’s a sight and smell you don’t forget. Some of the workers like to drink the blood fresh, while it was still warm. They said it was an aphrodisiac. I had to look that word up. The kill floor workers are an odd bunch, Daddy said. He didn’t let Sissy and I go near them at the company picnic.
 
Most of the time the humans didn’t make a sound at all. But sometimes one would get a glimpse of the scissors and start screaming, and that would set the others off screaming. Sometimes at night I can still hear those screams. Anyway, that’s what Sissy and I knew happened at the plant so we begged Daddy not to take Squeaky there. But Daddy promised us that Squeaky would just live there until he died of old age, and we could always visit him, and he would never be meat. And what choice did we have anyway? Little piglets don’t get much say.
 
So Squeaky went to live at the plant, and true to his word, Daddy didn’t move him in with the other humans, and I felt kinda sorry for Squeaky for that because our humans really did have a pretty good life. When I went to visit, I would see Squeaky all by himself in his pen near the worker’s break area, looking off into the distance where the other humans were in a field together, running and playing their games, sometimes humping, sometimes just rolling around on the ground. Whatever they were doing, it looked more fun that what Squeaky was doing, which was nothing. And Squeaky knew it, too.
 
But the workers all thought of him as their pet, too, and they all fattened him up even more, feeding him the scraps from their lunches, and pieces of their candy bars. And, lord, did Squeaky ever get fat! Have you seen how fat a human can get when they have nothing to do but eat all day and they don’t have any room to move? I think Squeaky was the fattest human ever! Sissy and I would sometimes still visit and throw the ball at him, but it was funny for us to imagine that we ever carried him around like a baby.
 
After a while, we stopped visiting much. School kept us busy. And sports, and lessons, and life. And you can only see the scissors so many times before you prefer to not think about the scissors anymore.
 
One Saturday morning I woke up early and Mama had so much meat on the kitchen counter, butchering it. Meat everywhere, good, rich, fatty meat. I had never seen so much meat! I asked her where it all came from and she got real quiet and looked around, like there was an answer in the air somewhere and she was trying to find it. Sissy walked into the kitchen then and asked the same question. Mama set down her cleaver and walked over to the faucet and washed her hands. Wiping them dry on her apron, she motioned for us to sit down on the kitchen stools.
 
“Piglets,” she said, “There comes a time in every human’s life when they have to serve the purpose they were created for,” she began.
 
We nodded.
 
“Well, Squeaky reached his time. He got too big, and he started to get skin problems. The workers couldn’t keep him healthy anymore. So, rather than let him suffer like that, they put him out of his misery and gave us the meat.”
 
Sissy and I looked at each other, not understanding at first. Finally, Sissy spoke up, “This is Squeaky?”
 
Mama nodded. Sissy and I started to cry. “But he was our pet,” I stammered out between sobs.
 
“Not in a long time. You haven’t played with him or visited him in a long time,” Mama said.
 
“But Daddy promised he would never be meat,” Sissy protested.
 
“And your Daddy meant it, but Squeaky is happier now, I promise you that. That was no kind of life for him there, all alone in that little pen. You know it and I know it.”
 
We had to admit she was right. Who would want to live like that?
 
“Do we…have…to…eat…him?” I could barely get the words out.
 
“No, of course not,” Mama said. “I would never make you do that.”
 
Our shoulders dropped in relief.
 
She continued, “But it’s the only meat we’ve got in the house and I’m not going to have room for anything else in the freezer for a long time. So, if you decide not to eat Squeaky, then I’m afraid you’ll be deciding not to eat meat, at least not for a while.”
 
Sissy and I looked at each other, and then at the remnants of Squeaky spread across the counter in bloody piles, and then back at each other again. Sissy finally spoke up.
 
“It’s what Squeaky would want.”
 
I locked eyes with her and nodded, “It is,” I said, solemnly.
 
Mama hugged us both and smiled. “It is. Squeaky loved you so much. He’d love to know that he fed you.”






Rebekah Gleaves Sanderlin is a journalist and essayist turned creative writer. Her words have appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, U.S. News & World Report, USA Today, Self, Maxim, Business Insider, Huffington Post, and many other publications. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing/Fiction at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia.