I began to cry: a nasty, deep bawl that crescendoed and then petered out as I eased into a healthy state of shock. I assumed that the birds were doing their natural duty: indicating to beasts everywhere that there was food to be had down below, a boy on the brink of succumbing on a pig farm just outside the city limits. I thought they were the buzzards from the Westerns we’d get to watch on Sunday nights, or maybe the more exotic African vultures on Wild Kingdom. I was lying face up in the tractor’s loader when Darren came rushing back from the house. The birds’ chattering seemed to grow faster and louder, as if they were aping the awful whine of the auger motor that continued to grind wildly behind us, the acrid smell of burning rubber drifting over the barn lot. I could feel the stump throbbing, pulsing out blood like a squirt gun. In a flash Darren scooped me up in his arms and ran to the tractor, yelling to my other brother, Derrick, that they had to get me to the hospital. My middle finger fell to the ground my brother Darren had to kick it away from the hungry snout of a Duroc sow. The auger jerked to full speed, and the metal pulleys and rubber belts had their way with my hand. I had my hands on the belt, trying to turn the motor manually, like I’d seen them do, when one of them flipped the green toggle switch.

My older brothers and I were feeding the sows that day when the wet corn clogged the auger’s drive. Twice before the morning of the accident, other farmers had shot at Joe after they’d allegedly caught him chasing their pigs.

Our dog Joe, a German shepherd who was less than helpful around the farm, chased the birds around the barn lot.

Some of them swooped down through the cool air to peck at the spilled corn spread out before the tires of our John Deere. The birds called from the walnut trees and hopped among the combed-over swatches of fescue in the steaming pasture. They clung to the electrical wires that draped from the several small outbuildings to the large red barn in the center of the farm. The Saturday my fingers were mauled I distinctly recall black birds everywhere.

Wicked siter five nights at pinkies