The Good Good Pig (19 page)

I pulled her carcass free. And then, out of the hole in the corner popped a tiny, pure white head. It stared at me with fearless black eyes. It was an ermine.

Ermine is the name by which we call both of our tiny New Hampshire weasel species when they're dressed in their white winter coats. I had never seen one before. They are only a few inches long, and exactly the color of snow.

Without backing down, the ermine looked at me, square in the eye, for perhaps thirty seconds. I had never seen a gaze so exquisitely fierce, so intense, so filled with the moment. Ermines may weigh as little as five ounces, less than a handful of coins, yet they are as fearless as God. They stop at nothing to capture their prey: they snake down tunnels, they hunt beneath the snow, they will even leap into the air to catch birds as they take flight. With their tiny hearts pounding 360 times a minute, ermines must eat five to ten meals a day. They are fierce because they have to be. This is part of what makes ermines what they are. Ferocity is their dharma—as pure, and as perfect, as their dazzling white winter coat.

The ermine had just killed someone I loved. Yet I could not have felt more amazed, or more blessed, if an angel had materialized in front of me.

My sorrow vanished. Holding the still-warm body of my hen in my arms, I felt, in that moment, the lightness of a heart relieved of the burden of anger—and the freedom that comes with forgiveness.

C
HAPTER 12

Coming Back to Life

I
N YOUNGER DAYS, AFTER WE'D CLOSE
C
HRIS IN FOR THE EVENING,
right before we would go upstairs to bed, Tess, Howard, and I would always play a final round of Frisbee in the yard. On full-moon nights, Tess had looked so beautiful: her sleek black and white form flying over the field like a spirit, leaping to catch the toy in her jaws, then racing back to us, gilded in moonlight.

But she was even more beautiful on inky, moonless nights, when we couldn't see her at all. Of course, back then, Tess could see perfectly in the dark. The tapetum lucidum—the light-gathering reflector in the eye that makes dogs' eyes glow when they catch the light at night—guided her through the blackness, the heritage of a predator who hunted both day and night. Humans, like pigs, lack such night vision. But we can enjoy the next best thing: the company of a dog.

Howard and I would follow Tess into the night, listening to the jingle of her tags, down to where the lawn leveled out to the field. Then we would whisper: “Tess—go!” and toss the Frisbee into the darkness. A second or two later, we would hear the dramatic click of her teeth on the plastic and know Tess had leaped into the air and caught it. The scene was all the more beautiful for the fact it was invisible. It was our private little miracle: each time she brought us the Frisbee, she gave us the gift of navigating through the dark.

With the events of March, we had left those days behind. Never again did Tess play Frisbee with us. It was weeks before she could even walk. She had the heart of a lion. The same way my dying father had struggled for that last, delicious breath of air, Tess—deaf, wobbly, and now nearly blind—had fought for a life she still found full of joy and meaning, rich with scent, full of tasty treats, and secure in the company of those she most loved.

By the time the wood frog chorus swelled in April, Tess was strong enough to walk outside with us again. Now she would stay close by, following our heat and scent. I remembered the lost magic of her younger nights, how she'd leap through the dark to catch the unseen Frisbee. But then I realized she had not lost that gift; she had simply brought it back to us, like the Frisbee. Now it was our turn; now we would lead her through the darkness.

There would be much darkness in the months ahead. Often—too often—despite medicine and prayer, despite faith and strength, the ones we love are torn from us, sometimes viciously, for reasons no one can fathom. But sometimes God, or luck, or the universe itself allows you a rare opportunity. That is the gift that the darkness brought: the knowledge that sometimes you really can love someone back to life.

P
IG VISITORS THAT SUMMER GOT QUITE A DIFFERENT SHOW FROM
years previous: as we left the house, out would stumble a fifteen-year-old deaf and mostly blind border collie, holding her head at a forty-five-degree tilt. Sometimes I'd carry Tess part-way to the barnyard, where we'd be greeted by a flock of hens composed partly of menopausal birds so aged that some of them had grown spurs on their feet like a rooster. Then, armed with the most tempting of slops, we would coax the arthritic Chris to limp from his pen. Sometimes he just couldn't be bothered to step over the threshold, knowing that usually he could just stay in the nice, cool barn—which Howard had recently upgraded by installing a rotating fan—while a crowd of admirers gratefully placed pastries in his open mouth.

But Christopher still knew how to rally for the right audience. When the
Chronicle
sent a TV team back to our barn to film a short retrospective on our pig that May, Chris played expertly to the camera. Christopher looked the lens in the eye, grunted forthrightly, then stepped out of his pen smartly as the camera rolled. “Oh, this is
great
!” the host cried as Chris ate blueberry muffins from my hand. “He's the only one on the block who's not on Atkins,” I said—and Christopher grunted in agreement, as if on cue. The moment they had enough footage of the pig eating, Christopher lay down on request. The cameraman shot several minutes of Christopher lying luxuriously in the sun, flicking away blackflies with his lavishly furred ears and flexing his moist nose disk exactly like an expert fashion model on the runway. Well, maybe not
exactly—
but as close as it gets around here.

When children came for Pig Spa, Christopher would almost always rise to the occasion. One afternoon the Miller-Rodats came with Jack and Ned and a friend, Isabel. Christopher displayed his entire repertoire: He trotted to the Plateau. He devoured slops greedily. He dug an enormous hole with his snout that the kids pronounced “like, so
awesome
!” We rubbed his belly and he lay down and allowed us to wash him with sponges and massage him with aloe-scented skin cream.

After a luxurious hour or so, it was time for Chris to go back in his pen. Howard was again off premises, and I would soon have to clean up and leave for a slide lecture I was giving at a local library.

But Christopher wouldn't get up.

Why should he? He was perfectly happy where he was. He was lying in the sunshine being petted by adoring children. If he got up, he knew full well that he'd be leaving the sun for his pen, and the children and I would go away. Why should he leave all this behind? Nothing doing. He was no fool.

Fortunately I had considered this possibility and brought a box of a dozen chocolate doughnuts to help lure him back to the pen. What I had not factored in was that during Pig Spa, the children would eat some of them.

We lured Chris to his feet with a first doughnut. A second doughnut got him moving forward. He stood there chewing it with a thoughtful look on his face. We knew he was considering turning back to the Plateau—or possibly strolling out to the pasture. We gave him another doughnut in an attempt to dissuade such thinking. Christopher walked forward several paces and then opened his cavernous mouth. He wanted another doughnut. We popped one in. A few more paces. His mouth opened again, his lips shaking with anticipation.

But now, disaster—we were out of doughnuts! Christopher dug another “awesome” hole with his nose, and halfway between the Plateau and his pen, he lay down. It was the worst possible scenario: now he was completely loose without even a tether to hold him, and I, still dressed for Pig Spa, had thirty-five minutes to get to a formal slide presentation at a library that was a half-hour's drive away.

We dispatched Mollie to the Cash Market to buy more doughnuts.

I made it to the library about ten minutes late. I was forgiven when I explained that I had been waylaid by a recalcitrant pig. The audience, many of them children, knew about Chris already, because the librarian—the wife of our optometrist—was on our Christmas mailing list and had been vamping for time recounting Chris's adventures.

T
HE TROUBLE IN THE NEXT YEAR BEGAN WITH A BUCKET OF SLOPS.

We always checked Chris's slops bucket, for a number of excellent reasons. The first was to satisfy our curiosity, as there was local culinary history in those slops buckets. Oops, somebody burned the brownies again. And who overestimated the pancake batter? Well,
that
soup didn't go over. We could also look into the slops bucket and foretell the future. Were there lots of melon rinds? Remains of hors d'oeuvre rollups? That was evidence of a catered event—often one we might well attend ourselves. Our pig's cuisine would give us a peek at the party menu.

We also scanned the slops with safety in mind. Although Fiddleheads' employees were generally very careful, occasionally someone would forget and toss a napkin, a plastic bag, or a toothpick into the bucket for Hogwood's slops. Also, we wanted to make sure nothing had spoiled.

And finally, there was simply the matter of balance. Sometimes we would get a bucket of mostly one thing. Pigs are not known for their innate sense of moderation, so if we got an entire bucket of mainly, say, hash brown potatoes, we would try to administer it in smaller doses. You never want to give anyone too much of a good thing.

But sometimes the slops seemed to have a mind of their own. Especially when the buckets were heavy with slippery items, the slops would plop out in one big bolus, and Christopher would have a bonanza. And that is what happened one bitterly cold January morning, when I tipped the bucket toward Chris's bowl and out slid about five gallons of tomato sauce.

Chris slurped happily. His appetite was excellent, and no wonder: this was one of those brutally cold days when a trace of moisture on your hands will cause your skin to freeze to a metal doorknob, and the hairs in your nose will freeze as stiff as a porcupine's quills. Even with all that lard and his fluffy bed of fresh hay, Chris needed extra calories to stay warm. Maybe all that tomato sauce was a good thing: I recalled having read recently about the medicinal wonders of tomatoes—the cancer-fighting carotenes, the lycopene for eye health—and I didn't worry.

Until a few hours later, when I returned to find Chris lying on his side and moaning.

He had suffered tummy aches before. (More of them than I had realized: Howard had spent more than a few nights up beside the pig while I had been in Southeast Asia, as Chris recovered from indigestion.) In fact, Chris had suffered a bout of digestive trouble just before Christmas, but after a meal of warm bran mash, which I sweetened with molasses and fed him with a spoon, he was fine again.

So this was what I tried that evening. He ate a few spoonfuls, and drank some warm water I poured into his mouth from a yogurt cup.

But in the morning, he was worse. He didn't stand to eat. He lay on his side. His grunts were weak. Even more upsetting, he would take a breath, hold it, and then let it go in a shivering moan. Worse yet, he felt cold to my touch. I had never seen anyone who looked this sick who survived. I was terrified and called Chuck at home.

Chuck said it was the tomato sauce. “Tomatoes are no good for pigs!” he told me. In all my fourteen years of swine-herding, I had never known.

“What's wrong with tomatoes?” I asked.

“Too acidic,” he replied.

The solution? Try to get him to swallow some activated charcoal—I actually had a huge bottle of this, left over from a digestive ailment I had acquired in Southeast Asia—and get some antacids into him. How many? “As many as you can get him to eat.”

This was easier said than done. I was faced with an unusual problem: Christopher did not want to open his mouth.

As Howard reminded me of the variable quality of our small local hospital's emergency room, I forced my freezing, naked fingers past the thicket of Chris's tusks and teeth.

First I placed the antacid into the cavern of his mouth, tiny pills that I thought he would surely swallow. A few went in, but then what? I don't know that he ever knew they were there. Did he swallow them? It didn't look like it to me.

“Come on, sweetie,” I begged. “Please eat this for me.”

“Unh.” Nothing doing.

“Please!”

“Unnnnnnnn!” He was getting irritated.

Next I tried Tums. Because these were larger and sweet like candy, I hoped they might prove more promising. He spat them out. I tossed in activated charcoal capsules—but because they are black, I couldn't tell whether they simply fell out the other side of his mouth or not. I poured in a bottle of Pepto-Bismol. The pink liquid oozed out his lips.

There was nothing to do but stay with him. In the eleven-below-zero weather, I put one arm around him and lay down beside him in the hay. Howard came out and brought us a blanket.

I
T SEEMED
C
HRISTOPHER FELT BETTER THE NEXT DAY, BUT HE
still wouldn't eat. He wouldn't open his mouth for warm mash, not even sweetened with molasses. I couldn't tempt him with the choicest slops. I made him soup. He wouldn't touch it. When he spat out a pastry, I burst into tears. The tears froze to my face.

But he would drink warm water. When I poured it into his mouth, he opened wide for more. Later that day he stood up for a shaky moment as I poured water into his dish. Chuck came out and decided Chris needed injections of a really powerful antacid. To my horror, he gave me a needle three inches long, mounted on a syringe so big the entire assembly looked like the Empire State Building—so huge I almost couldn't look at it. But that's what we needed to get past all that lard and inject ten cubic centimeters—about two teaspoons—of antacid into Christopher's backside, twice a day.

Howard wouldn't even watch.

I carefully chose my plan of attack. I would administer these shots when Chris was lying down, I decided, with his back end facing the gate—my exit, in case I had to make a speedy one. I would pet and scratch his back end for a time before giving the injection. And right before the jab, I would smack the site smartly with my knuckle twice—a trick I remembered a humane nurse using on me during one of many series of shots I had needed for my travels, and which I had thought considerably dulled the pain of the injection.

But nothing I could do could have prevented Christopher from disliking my jabbing a three-inch needle deep into his flesh. He had every right to bite me. He never did. True, he said some horrible things to me—his emphatic grumbles and occasional roars could have been the sound track to a monster movie—but I knew he didn't mean it. When the shot was over I would crawl under the blanket and lie down beside him in the hay, and he would push his back up against me and give love grunts as I rubbed his belly.

Days went by, and still he wouldn't eat more than a spoonful or two of mash. He didn't want bagels. He didn't want bread. He neglected his pastries. Squirrels who retrieved the uneaten treats from his dish tried, unsuccessfully, to pull them through holes in the barn's stone foundation, to hide them in tunnels. As a result, I would find bagels and muffins lodged in the holes in the wall at odd angles, like some weird installation from the Museum of Modern Art in New York.