Swine Not? (3 page)
Raising Humans Is Hard
RUMPY
M
Y NAME IS
Rumpy. As you can see, I did not go over the icy ledge, and it’s a good thing because you wouldn’t have gotten my side of the story. Living with humans is not easy. They have quite an opinion of themselves, but few of them seem to be playing the game of life with a full deck. How about that “ham sandwich” crack by the Moonwalkers coach? Well, Ellie made him pay for that one. It’s a lot different in the animal world. We don’t come with emotional baggage. I’m simply Rumpy, the pig who saved the game. It’s not the first time I have been called from the sidelines.
Since you have heard Barley, the soccer jock, give his version of the family, now I will give you mine. Despite all their human weaknesses, I adore them, and they adore me. At bedtime, the twins argue over whose room I’ll sleep in. Maple arranges my coat with a brush while Barley rounds off my hooves and gives me tummy rubs. Then Maple braids my tail. They bathe me once a month, dab me dry with towels, and cover me with rose oil to keep my skin soft. They love me so much.
I came into their lives as a baby and really don’t know any other home. I have a twin brother who — you may find this hard to believe — is even smarter than I am. He now lives a thousand miles away in New York. It has been many years since I have seen or heard from him, but something about being twins keeps us connected. His name is Lukie, and I have missed him terribly ever since we were separated.
To remove another stereotype, I am not a barnyard animal. I prefer the comfort of the farmhouse to the farm. My favorite place is Maple’s closet, where I go for afternoon naps. Unfortunately, Barley is a neat freak. The first thing he does after a game is wash his uniform! Maple and Ellie . . . well . . . I really hate to use this term, but it does apply here. They are such pigs. Barley’s bedroom always looks as if he is prepared for a surprise inspection by a drill sergeant. Though I respect Barley’s neatness, I love Maple’s closet. Her corner of the world is filled with piles of books, CDs, fashion magazines, and an abundance of outfits she creates for her dolls, her friends, and herself. That girl is into fashion, and if she isn’t studying designers on the Internet, she is cutting, stitching, and sewing, which makes for quite the mess. It never feels lonely with all the outfits and pieces of clothing dangling over my head — long and short, dressy and plain. Those twins are a huge responsibility for me, but it’s gotten easier since they turned twelve. We are just about the same age, but in pig years, I am the adult around here. In one more year — maybe two — I’ll have them fully trained. Next come the teenage years, and what happens then is anybody’s guess.
That brings us to Ellie Dean McBride. Now let me start off by saying that the math in this family has pretty much been minus one in the man department during and after her only marriage. She is the poster image for single mothers of the world, raising two kids, coaching soccer, working at the Opryland Hotel, caring for a farm full of four-legged creatures — and then there is the catering business that she created and runs out of an old smokehouse behind the barn. I don’t see how she does it all, but she does.
The only real problem any of us ever seem to have with Ellie is her rare, quick flare of temper that sometimes has long-lasting effects. Take, for example, her well-aimed soccer-ball shot at Coach Goonwalker. But, I guess, when you think of all Ellie has had to put up with, she deserves to give life a kick in the butt every now and then.
To her credit, with all the literal and figurative plates that she has spinning in the air, her kids have turned out pretty well so far. Not having a full-time dad around is not an easy way to grow up. The twins seem to think of him more as an older brother away at boarding school than as their father. They have accepted the fact that his e-mails, cell-phone messages, and occasional souvenirs from far-off lands qualify as sufficient parental participation here in the twenty-first century.
Instant Replay
BARLEY
“M
OM’S GOT
a date!” Maple beamed. “Maybe she was just warming up for a male encounter at the soccer game.”
This was big news around our house. With the exception of Dad’s unpredictable and unscheduled “pop ins,” there hadn’t been a lot of eligible bachelors “comin’ a courtin’ ” around the farm.
“She met him on the Internet!” Maple added.
“Oh my God!” I was shocked.
“What’s wrong?”
“The Internet . . .”
Maple rolled her eyes. “Would you rather she was looking for Mr. Right in a Hooters outfit, pushing hot wings? Women do it all the time, Barley.”
“I just thought she was done with dating,” I said.
“Her married girlfriends talk about it all the time, and the Internet is easier and safer than a singles bar.”
“When is this big date supposed to happen?” I asked.
“Tomorrow night,” Maple told me. “In fact, we are going out this evening to buy a dress. I’m planning on making her spend some money on herself and buy an outfit by Karen Wu. You want to come with us?”
Maple was obsessed with Karen Wu, one of the top fashion designers in New York. Her picture and photos of her creations were taped all over Maple’s room.
“Let’s see. I think I have a root canal scheduled after supper.”
Maple threw a pillow at me.
Rumpy and I watched from the porch as Mom and Maple drove away. Mom looked very excited. I had grown accustomed to only seeing her in jeans and checkered chef pants and soccer shorts for as long as I could remember. I was happy for her.
L
ATER THAT EVENING
, Rumpy and I were half asleep on the couch, and in the background I could hear the voice of Mario Batali coming from the TV as he explained the ingredients in a tartar sauce dip he was mixing on the Iron Chef.
“Wake up and read this,” a voice whispered loudly into my ear. I felt a nudge and opened one eye. Maple was standing over me with our cat, Syrup, draped around her shoulders. She was holding a handful of printed pages. There was no mistaking her seriousness.
I sat up, pushed Rumpy off my leg, and rubbed my eyes.
“I Googled Mom’s blind date. He’s not so blind anymore. You better check it out.”
Maple disappeared into her room, and I looked at the color photo on top. The headlines made my jaw drop. My mom was going out with a football coach.
Men Are Not Pigs
RUMPY
O
INK! WELL
, Syrup the Cat isn’t the only four-legged creature around here with a streak of curiosity. I, too, was awakened by Maple’s loud whisper, and I subtly opened one eye. Then I read the pages Barley was spreading out, one by one, on the couch between us.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. The first page had a large photograph of a smiling man with a preacher-politician grin. It spoke loads about cosmetic dentistry and plastic surgery. One could only wonder what was really behind that huge, reconstructed smile. I read on. Oh yeah, in case you didn’t know, some of us pigs do read.
The second page was composed of clippings from the Nashville paper, hailing Coach B. A. Boykin as some kind of messiah. He was a local ballplayer who had made the big time in the NFL and was now joining the Titans, our Tennessee pro team, as its new head coach, heralded by headlines, photo ops, and muffler commercials.
Like Barley, I am not a football fan. I had been exposed to the game far too many times in Pancake Park. Soccer is an afterthought in Vertigo, and Pancake Park had been groomed, manicured, and designed primarily for football, which is still looked upon as religion in Tennessee. When fall comes, battalions of leagues, from peewees to tiny mites to midgets to players from elementary schools and Vertigo High, take over the park and do battle. I think there would be a league for babies in diapers if some fans around here had their way. We soccer nerds take a very distant backseat to this kind of football madness.
The next page dropped in front of my snout. “Oh no,” Barley gasped. It was a story Maple had downloaded from a feminist Web site. The title of the article was “Women Beware: The Twenty Worst Eligible Bachelors in America and Why You Want to Avoid Them.” The story led off with Coach B. A. Boykin and his years as a pro quarterback with the Arizona Cardinals, his born-again experience, and his run for Congress. There were pictures of him deer hunting and playing golf with George Bush. Barley and Maple went off to search the Internet for more, so when I had read enough, I ate the pages, climbed off the couch, and went outside for a walk. Then I curled up on the rug by the porch swing for a nap.
I dreamed about Lukie and the time he rescued a little boy from a flash flood. I could sense that something big was in the air, and it had to do with Lukie. I could feel it.
My dream woke me up. It was dark, but the blue glow of the TV screen upstairs lured me inside. Ellie and the kids were watching ESPN Sports Center, and I cuddled next to them while Ellie scratched my head. On the screen was the now-familiar face of Coach Boykin, but he was not coaching. He was seated behind a huge set of drums made to look like football helmets. The interviewer was not focusing on football but on the fact that B. A. Boykin also played in a local country band.
“Not a bad drummer,” Ellie said, looking to all of us for some kind of approval of her date.
None came.
“Time for bed,” Ellie said. We all did as we were told. Tomorrow was going to be an interesting day, and we needed our rest.
Down on the Farm
RUMPY
I
F THE
H
UMMER
painted to match the eye-popping blue colors of the Tennessee Titans wasn’t enough, it was what Coach B. A. Boykin was carrying in his hand that freaked us out the most. You would have thought that, on a first date, he would be holding flowers or a box of chocolates. But no, when he planted those boa constrictor–skin boots in our driveway and stepped away from the car, he was carrying a football — autographed to Ellie! Do you know the slang term for a football? A pigskin!!!
The kids were standing next to Ellie and me on the porch. When prompted with a nudge from their mother, they walked forward to meet their guest. Syrup, who had been lying limp as a dishrag on Maple’s shoulder, suddenly sprang to life on all fours. The hair down her backbone stood up as she locked her cat radar on the man with the football. Then she catapulted from Maple’s shoulder to the nearby low-hanging branch of a pecan tree and didn’t stop climbing until she reached the highest limb.
“You a Titans fan, hotshot?” the coach bellowed to Barley.
“I’m a Red Bulls fan,” he replied.
“Me, too. Used to mix the stuff with vodka back in my drinking days before I found my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.”
Barley looked stunned by the coach’s first words to him, but the game had just begun.
“I mean the soccer team in New York,” Barley told him.
“Never heard of ’em,” Coach replied as he twirled the football in his bear-paw hand. “Know what we call those soccer-style kickers in the NFL?” He answered his own question. “Kangaroos!” His pronouncement was followed by an uncontrolled laugh. Then the six-foot-four man dressed all in black pointed his finger down the driveway and said, “Go long!”
“Me?” Barley asked.
“Yeah, you!” Coach shouted.
Barley shot a glance at his mother. She smiled at Boykin and motioned Barley down the drive with a slight wave of her hand. Off Barley trotted toward the barn, looking back at the man with the ball.
Barley has made known to me his feelings that football is a violent game played by men on growth hormones. He cares as much about football as he does about earthworms, but off he still went.
The ball sailed from the coach’s hand, spiraling skyward. Barley calculated the trajectory of the falling pigskin and ran toward it.
“Arms out in front of your body! . . . Extend those hands!” Coach bellowed.
Barley tracked the ball, but his arms remained at his sides. He measured the rate of fall and positioned himself under the ball. Instead of following the coach’s instructions, he used his left foot and stopped the ball inches from the ground. Then he kicked it up so it landed on his head, then dropped it back to his foot, and with a powerful kick, he launched the pigskin in the opposite direction — over the picket fence and halfway up the hill, where it disappeared into the branches of an oak tree.
“You’re supposed to catch it, son, not kick it!” Coach yelled out from up the driveway.
“In Europe, they call soccer football!” Barley yelled back.
Ellie met Barley halfway down the driveway. With a stern hand on his arm, she directed him to the fence. “That’s enough, mister. Go find Mr. Boykin’s ball,” she said in her strictest coaching voice — the one that signaled she meant business.
“It’s a present, and you can call me B.A.,” Coach called out.
Ellie hesitated, and then she answered, “Right.”
At that moment, Sissy, the teenage babysitter, cruised up on her Vespa, and Ellie pointed her toward the kitchen. “Sissy, there is a quiche in the oven for supper. We are going to the movies, and I will be back at ten. Barley, you find that football. Maple, get the cat out of the tree, and then help your brother.”
The coach assisted her in the climb that was required to get into the Hummer. She looked lovely in her new Karen Wu dress — graceful and elegant beside the screaming colors of the hideous Hummer. As we watched Coach walk around to the driver’s side of the mammoth vehicle, he stared straight at me. I recognized that familiar look of disdain in his eyes and knew right away that he envisioned me only as the main ingredient in a BLT — not as a member of the family. Then he roared down the driveway, spraying pebbles on the lawn.
The kids did as their mom asked and searched for the ball under the big oak tree at the edge of the woods, but with very little enthusiasm. Sissy called out from the house that supper was almost ready. That was all the excuse the twins needed to call off their search. They darted for the house, leaving me alone in the woods.
It was hard not to follow them; I wanted a slice of quiche, too. But something made me stay, and it was not Ellie’s command that kept me searching. There was another reason I had to find that football, but I wasn’t sure what it was. Soon I would know the answer.