The Swineherd

You may or may not be interested, but the background to this short story is this: it's based on a dream that I had several years ago that I have always wanted to put into story form. As G.K. Chesterton said, the short story is like a dream--it is evocative, disoriented, and it ought to stick in your mind for days afterward.

As I reflected on the dream, the themes that it seemed to convey were the burden of leadership, the gravity of ending life, and the terrible moral significance of being human. These aren't necessarily the topics I know anything about, they're just the ones that seemed to show up unbidden in the dream.

Oh, and I know the words that the pig shouted at the swineherd, but they're too terrible to share.

And now the thrilling conclusion...

Anyway, here's the end of my short story. You may want to re-read the rest of it below:

The squeals from the mud hole suddenly jumped in intensity. He scrambled to his feet and ran toward the knot of pigs. A few feet into the shallow puddle, one of them was being torn apart by several others; meanwhile, the rest of the herd kept pressing in to drink. The herder began driving them off, kicking the attackers and beating them with his rifle. All but one scattered; it was smaller than the others, but didn’t seem to care about the herder’s blows. It buried its face in the mangled body of its fellow.

Furious, the herder kicked it in the side of the head. It turned to him and squealed, higher in pitch than the others; and there, in that shriek, he heard human words:

“ __________________!”

He interrupted the horrible words with a yell of terror and began to club the small one with the butt of his rifle. Its squeals returned to wordless sounds and then fell silent.

The sun had gone below the horizon. The light was almost gone. He quickly began to sing the song, touching each pig with his rifle as he numbered it.

On the other hand...

It seems my accent identity comes down to how I pronounce "bag." Or possibly "vague." The last question asks if you pronounce "bag" to rhyme with "vague." I don't pronounce them the same: "bag" has a low front vowel like in "cat," while "vague" has a mid front vowel like in "bake." The quiz may be assuming that my pronunciation of "bag" is standard and is asking me to compare my pronunciation of "vague." I've heard people pronounce "vague" with the low front vowel, and it weirds me out. Actually, my friend Josh (from South Dakota) pronounced it that way. That would suggest to me that the western pronunciation is the one that uses the low front vowel for "vague." In which case, the question is scored wrong--North Centrallers have different pronunciations, while westerners have the same.

BUT--the quiz could be assuming that my pronunciation of "vague" is standard and asking me to compare "bag" to that. I have also heard people pronounce "bag" with the mid front vowel (as in "bake" and "bagel" [don't get me started on people who say "bagel" with the LOW front vowel as in "bat"!]), but I ain't one of them. So maybe North Centrallers are supposed to use the mid front vowel in "bag," and my use of the low front vowel makes me Western rather than North Central.

Upshot: the last question needs to be fixed.

What American accent do you have? Your Result: North Central   "North Central" is what professional linguists call the Minnesota accent. If you saw "Fargo" you probably didn't think the characters sounded very out of the ordinary. Outsiders probably mistake you for a Canadian a lot.
The West
The Midland
Boston
The Inland North
Philadelphia
The South
The Northeast
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

My supposed accent

I'm not sure how I ended up with a Western accent (although maybe rural western Minnesota is further west than I thought). I might try this again and change my answer to the last question...

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The West   Your accent is the lowest common denominator of American speech. Unless you're a SoCal surfer, no one thinks you have an accent. And really, you may not even be from the West at all, you could easily be from Florida or one of those big Southern cities like Dallas or Atlanta.
The Midland
Boston
North Central
The Inland North
Philadelphia
The South
The Northeast
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

The Next Three Paragraphs

Some of the pigs were gathering to his right. They had found a puddle of brown water and were noisily jostling each other to drink. The herder sat, leaning on his rifle to lower himself to the ground. The sun was setting, and he knew they would get no farther today. The pigs would not be dislodged from the puddle. He took a drink from his leather canteen and tried to relax his jaw. His hand started toward the bag that carried his food, but he clenched his fist and stopped short. He should wait until morning. A week ago, the last time he had made a fire, he had boiled the last of his meal into a porridge. Now his bag held only the pasty clumps of cooked meal scraped from the pot.

He knew that sleep would be an escape from his hunger, but he dreaded the end of each day. The sunsets made him sick--orange sky blending into a brown horizon. It was strange; of all the things that made him feel ill--the sound and smell of the pigs, the hot sun, the warm stale water from his canteen--it was the vomit sunsets and the coming darkness that made him feel worst.

He stood again and began to sing the counting song. The words were nonsense to him, but he had learned as a child to count the herd with this ancient chant. When he started out across the wilderness with his pigs, he had to sing it five times through to number them all. The heat and the lack of food and water were taking their toll; last night the herder only sang it through twice.