The Sound of Fall Falling

It all started the day before. That's when Rusty took a young deer up at the top of the hilly pasture, right along the tree line. Dropped it with one shot. Down at the mouth of the hollow, a battered looking pick up truck slowly came to a stop in the middle of the creek. Two men, fetching buckets of water, washed down the carcass of the pig lying on the bed of the truck. Down at the hollow's end, chain saws growled amidst the staccato chops of a heavy axe. Three men carried the remains of a large iron gate and laid it down atop a bed of smoking red Hickory embers. Several stood by sipping on cold beers as they watched the pig slide from the up-turned wheelbarrow onto the hot iron gate. Over by the barn, and hanging by it's hind legs from a tree limb, the deer was being patiently skinned, gutted and dressed. Rusty dropped the wet, warm deer skin into an old wooden barrel of salt and alum, and poked it under the water with a stick.

They would pace about and watch the fire all night, swapping stories as they poked at the embers beneath the smoking pig. It was starting to smell like Thanksgiving as the sun slowly crept up the far side of the wooded hill, its first rays diffused by the hollow's dense fog. There was the distant sound of a cock crowing, and the very faint rain-like patter of dew drops wetting the forest floor. Two men lay asleep on the ground near the smoldering fire, while a third man slid two black iron kettles onto the grate. One held a ground hog, the other, a 'possum. Two young boys, down along the creek bank artfully skinned a dozen or more squirrels, and gutted them over the swiftly moving water. A young girl with a bucket full of apples, bent to place them all around the pig, pushing some under the browning carcass, and at the direction of her father, stuffing one into the pig's mouth.

Several women chattered around a smaller fire as they shucked ears of corn, and stirred the simmering pots. There were cranberries, pole beans flavored with pig fat, red potatoes with cloves of garlic, and a stew of cabbage and carrots. The little ones ran playfully around their mothers clutching handfuls of wild turkey feathers, and tickling one another.

The feast started around three in the afternoon, with the sun already dropping again into the treetops. Several dozen people milled about the fire, drawing their clothes tighter around them as they ate. A cold air seemed to slide down from the woods above, causing the embers to flicker and blush. Winter was coming soon. And it would be a hard winter, at that.