“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”

― Charles Dickens

I had to move nine hours north to leave the pigs.

Just over a year before the U-Haul rolled out of my gravel driveway, I began my search—like so many other Grade 9 students—to find a part time job. Most of my friends worked in the cramped, grease-coated backrooms of the Domino’s or McDonald’s fast-food stores, strategically placed near the high school. I lived 20 minutes outside of town in a dusty village with a peeling welcome sign. My options were limited.

I wasn’t quite unemployed, though. In the summers, I would rake and chalk the ball diamond behind my house. On a sunny June afternoon, my boss made one of his infrequent visits and introduced me to an older teen who was to be my new co-worker. My colleague was quiet and smelt like manure—he said it was because of the job he had just quit.

“Where did you work?” I immediately asked.

“At a pig barn just outside of town. You wouldn’t like it there.”

“Why not?”

“Just trust me.”

I knew what he meant: I was not a farm kid. I was the lanky, untanned town-dweller who read books at the park and biked aimlessly around the empty streets talking to myself. I knew what farm kids were supposed to look like, and I did not fit the bill. I didn’t wear steel toed boots to school, I never wore camo hats, and I had no idea how to answer the question, “How much land does your dad own?”

Perhaps it was pride, curiosity, or maybe the fact that my application to the chicken processing plant got denied, that brought me to Mr. V’s laneway on the edge of town. Before leaving the house, my mom agreed to read over my résumé and cover letter (void of any farming experience), and she convinced me not to wear a button shirt.

Somehow, even after he watched my cautious exit from the Dodge Grand Caravan in my khakis and American Eagle t-shirt, saw the fear in my eyes when the pack of dogs came leaping, and felt the tenderness of my handshake, Mr. V decided it would be a good idea to put me through the purgatory of his pig barn and hire the gangly kid as his farm hand.

I got a text the next day inviting me to the barn on Tuesday after school.

“The gates of hell are open night and day; smooth the descent and easy is the way: But to return, and view the cheerful skies, in this the task and mighty labour lies.”

― Virgil

The first thing that struck me wasn’t the smell; it was the screaming. I expected to encounter the nauseating, manure-heavy aroma, but what I didn’t—couldn’t—anticipate were the tormented shrieks echoing through the cemented home of the condemned.

As I followed Mr. V through the once white side door, I became increasingly aware of the stench and less aware of his instructions. At some point during his monologue, he tossed me a manure-caked pair of overalls and interrupted my explanation about how I was ‘already wearing work clothes’.

“It’s not for you; it’s for the pigs,” murmured Mr. V’s voice from his half-donned overall.

There was a scraped-up piece of tape on the floor near the coat racks. Mr. V nodded towards the line and said, “Nothing you wear outside this building can cross the tape. Entire barns have been wiped out by disease.”

When I crossed the threshold, I wore a squelching pair of the barn’s size 12 rubber boots and a crusty pair of overalls.

Mr. V showed me how to pressure wash that night. He was doubtful whether I would be able to manage the machine’s recoil, but when I remained standing after pressing the trigger, he seemed content with my ability and wanted me to start washing that week.

Pressure washing was both mind-numbing and stimulating. The action itself was simple: up-and-down, side-to-side, then back to up-and-down. Although the movements were mundane, my mind was active. I would play over movies and books in my head, reflect on formative decisions I had made, and wonder the whole time whether the pigs could unite and eat me if they decided.

While I could not bring the outer world into the barn, there was no rule preventing me from taking the barn into the world. I carried it everywhere. The barn was present at the dinner table, it loomed over my desk at school, and it buried itself in my bed.

I still wear the barn on my skin. The smell has washed away, but I carry a small blue mark on my left forearm—it was earned in the sty. Mr. V’s pigs were required to receive a tattoo bearing the barn’s batch code before shipment. If there was a report of spoiled product, the unique digits would provide a link to the origin of disease. I would tattoo over a hundred pigs in one shift, and tattooing a pig is not as easy as it sounds. On one of the tattooing days, a pig charged me as it raced for an exit. At the end of the rambunctious encounter, I was left standing hopelessly with ink and blood trickling down my wrist as the pig ran free down the aisle with flapping ears and a full grin.

I never really left the barn during the year and two months I spent working for Mr. V, and I still remain close to it today.

“I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.”

― J.R.R Tolkien

There are three different types of pig barns: a sow barn, a weaner barn, and a finishing barn. Pigs take their first breath in a sow cage and eat their last crunchy feed in the finishing pen—they enjoy the wild days of youth running in the weaner corral. Mr. V owned a finishing barn.

Every few months, the pigs would rush onto a transport truck while I was at school and get shipped to a facility for processing. On those days, I would park my green bike at the entrance and immediately notice the absence of the welcome shrieks. I didn’t mind the hollowness of the barn on the day after shipment. Cleaning pens was much easier when there were no pigs to move, and there was plenty of cleaning required after shipment. Before a new batch arrived, the entire barn needed to be disinfected.

One such day, my routine walkthrough of the barn quickly revealed I was not alone. In the fourth pen, on the east side, there were two stragglers. I stopped and stared at them. Swine never struck me as attractive animals, but the two companions had a cozy look about them as the automatic curtain let some sun spill over their floppy ears. The one pig rested its head on the pork chop of the other and seemed to smile whimsically. I couldn’t help but smile back and kept smiling while I washed the adjacent stall.

The water stopped suddenly, and I understood this meant a human arrived in the barn. Visitors often cut the power to avoid getting sprayed by a startled teen. On weekends, I could pressure wash for eight or nine hours straight without hearing another person’s voice. If my name abruptly cut through the ear protection and din, there was a good chance they’d get soaked. After some silence, I saw a man poke his head through the utility door and heard him say something about working in the stall beside me. After our brief interaction, I returned to my washing and thought about the visitor, wondering if he too had to spend his days in the darkness of a barn. It dawned on me what “working” meant only a few minutes after the man entered the neighbouring pen.

I heard only the familiar sound of pressurized water on cold cement, and I refused to look over the wall. When the power cut a second time, the man walked right up to my pen and suggested I wash away the blood before it hardens. I nodded.

I cried into my blue pillowcase that evening. It was the first time I shed tears of sorrow working for Mr. V. I had cried out of frustration and disgust, but never sadness. When I smiled at the pigs, I knew they, like all creatures, were eventually going to die. I could accept the logic but was not prepared to face the decisiveness of death and wash away its reminding stain. I cried on that October night because I liked the pigs and hated death.

“Fresh air is good if you do not take too much of it; most of the achievements and pleasures of life are in bad air.”

― Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

The second time I shook Mr. V’s hand, I was standing beside the loaded U-Haul in my driveway.

On the July evening before I moved from the dusty town and pigs, the white truck rolled up my street, as it had done many times before when Mr. V would give me a ride home on freezing winter nights. Mr. V hopped out of his Ram 1500 in his scuffed work boots, faded jeans, and John Deere t-shirt. We stood in the gravel driveway for a while and chatted about the U-Haul and predicted its poor fuel economy. Mr. V was focused on the moving truck, and when he eventually turned to me, his eyes were wet. He pulled an envelope from his pocket and handed it to me.

“You did good.”

We shook hands, and this time, I matched his grip and callouses.

As I listened to the fading crackle of the truck’s tires on the gravel driveway and watched it turn down my street, I realized I would never have another boss like Mr. V. He taught me how to drive, operate a tractor, pursue excellence in every detail of my job, and find the courage he knew was buried behind my nervous eyes on the summer afternoon we first met. Mr. V gave me the gift of responsibility. I did not believe I could manage a barn, haggle with demanding truckers, or operate big, noisy equipment—but Mr. V did. He trusted his entire barn with a kid who didn’t know it was wrong to drive with two feet. The responsibility I received was Mr. V’s vote of confidence in me, and it was inspiring. At the end of a long day, I would sometimes find myself on Mr. V’s back porch eating a burger while he scraped the barbeque and told stories about working in his dad’s barn as a kid. Mr. V might be the best boss I’ll ever have, and that’s probably because he wasn’t really my boss: Mr. V was my friend.

The night before I moved, I sank in my deflating air mattress with tears in my eyes as I set down the open card from Mr. V. The job I had just escaped was likely the worst place I would ever work. It had robbed me of almost two summers’ worth of fresh air, forced me to the end of the lunch table at school, and provided enough chilling images to feed a lifetime of nightmares. But I knew it had compensated me far more than any other workplace.

In the morning, I gazed from the passenger seat of the U-Haul as the sun painted over the rolling rows of corn and steaming metal barns. I knew there were workers already toiling in those buildings, who watched the pieces of the sun slip through the small gaps in the plastic curtains. I knew those fragments were held more precious than the full sun I let wash over my face.

We drove with the windows down.