Walking Home

If I rode to the end of the bus route it meant being on the bus alone with Jess all the way from Sidney Cross Roads back to Pungo Creek. I started getting off when the bus passed the end of our dirt road and walking to my house. I was afraid of Scott Toppin’s dogs, but it was better than being alone with Jess on the bus.

There was a pond in front of Toppin’s house. A driveway encircled the pond. Both ends of the drive met the dirt road. I never knew which end of the drive the dogs would come from. Aunt Sarah told me the dogs could tell if I was afraid. “Just pretend you don’t even see them. Just keep walking. If you run, they’ll chase you.”

I tried to walk calmly even though I felt like running past Toppin’s house.

There was something I feared more than the dogs – even more than Jess – and that was a hog.
Scott Toppin was a sausage maker and he kept hogs. Sometimes a sow would get through the fence that ran along the road. She would lie in the ditch and I wouldn’t see her until I was practically on top of her.

I didn’t know whether the same rules that applied to dogs applied to hogs but I walked as far from the sow as I could until I was walking in the ditch on the opposite side of the road. I held my breath and walked as quietly as I could. I didn’t look directly at the sow, but out of the corner of my eye I saw her moving. The old sow was crawling out of the ditch and lumbering to my side of the road.

I started running. The sow started running after me. I ran faster. The sow ran faster. When I got to the mailbox, I turned left down the lane that led to my house.

I screamed. “There’s a hog after me! Help me! Help me!”

Through my tears I saw Aunt Sarah up on the porch. In a blink the old woman was off the porch and running toward the sow with a broom in her hand. She ran past me waving the broom at the sow. I didn’t stop running until I was up on the porch. From there I watched as Aunt Sarah fought the sow back off our property.