Uncle Douglas and the Whirring Blades Uncle Douglas scolded my brother and me for dawdling, called us his pests and teased us, big knuckles thumping our skulls like drums, then whisked candy canes out of our ears and armpits. Uncle Douglas fattened pigs for market. His windmill pumped sweet water to troughs and slaughter barn, hundreds of chubby pigs grunting and bumping buckets of grain and slop. His dark eyes crossed and uncrossed, his hairy nostrils wheezed--Wolf snout, my brother whispered one night-- the wolf that puffed the pigs' house down and ate them. If he's a wolf, I wondered, where is his tail? He cursed me, Dummy, under his coveralls. Look how fat his bottom is, his belly: he eats little nephews. Lie down and go to sleep. All night the windmill groaned and rattled, the squeal of whirring blades, the room so dark I swore he was at the door. -- Walter McDonald