The Pigman (6 page)

“Bobo?” the Pigman called out sweetly.

John looked at me and I looked at him and he rolled his eyes up into his head.

“Bobo? Come out and say hello!”

At last Bobo decided to make an appearance. He was the ugliest, most vicious-looking baboon I’ve ever seen in my life. I mean a real baboon. And there’s the Pigman, the smiling Pigman, leaning all the way over the guardrail, tossing peanuts to this mean baboon. Mr. Pignati would take a peanut, hold it up in the air, and say, “Bobo want a peanut?” And Bobo would show these monstrous teeth that looked like dentures when they don’t quite fit, and the beast would grunt and swoon and move its head from side to side.
“Uggga. Uggga!”

Mr. Pignati was throwing peanuts right and left. About every third one would hit the bars and fall where the baboon couldn’t reach it. Sometimes Bobo would catch the peanut like a baseball. And the expressions on both their faces got to be upsetting. John had gotten bored with Bobo and moved down to the next cage that had a gorilla. He was imitating Tarzan and going
AaaaaaaaayaaaaaaaaaH!
—which I don’t think was the most original performance that gorilla had ever seen. Can you imagine what gorillas must think after being in a zoo a few years and hearing practically every boy who comes to look at them go
AaaaaaaayaaaaaaaaH
? If that isn’t enough to give an animal paranoia, I don’t know what is.

It was obvious that Mr. Pignati was going to visit awhile with Bobo, and John and I felt like we were intruding.

“Miss Truman and I are going to get on the touring car,” John finally announced.

“Yes….” Mr. Pignati muttered, tossing another peanut to Bobo.

“Mr. Pignati, we’ll meet you back here in twenty minutes.” I wanted to make sure he understood.

“I’ll be right here with Bobo—”

“I’m sure you will,” John added as we went out of the monkey house and got on this mechanical contraption that came by. It looked like a train, and it had five cars with rubber wheels because it didn’t run on a track. It only went about four miles an hour, and it’s a good thing because this blond-haired boy driving the thing looked like he didn’t quite know what he was doing.

I was getting full about this time because I had eaten more peanuts than Bobo, so I just sat back and watched the landscape drift by. We passed the bald eagle (which is also the nickname for the principal of our high school), the white-tailed deer, tahr goats, three white-bearded gnu, lions in a pit, one otter, a black leopard, a striped hyena (“a raider of graves”), two cheetahs that were fighting, four Bengal tigers, a Kodiak bear, an American bear, a polar bear, two hippos (“which secrete a fluid the color of blood all over their body”), an eight-ton bull elephant, and a giant anteater.

By that time we were almost back to the Primate Building, so we jumped off the tiny train and watched the alligators being fed. They were in a big outdoor pool, and two attendants were throwing huge chunks of meat and bone right at them. They ate the bones and all. It really made me feel like gagging. I mean, I just don’t see any point in having animals like that running around on earth. I think God goofed in that department, if you ask me.

When we got back to Mr. Pignati, he had a fresh supply of peanuts and was still chucking them over to Bobo, who kept flashing his dentures at him. Then John decided to strike up a conversation with the gorilla. Only the gorilla started to make these terrifying noises, and John started to make believe
he
was a monkey and began screaming back at the gorilla. I joined in finally and got this pair of chimpanzees going.
“Uggauggaboo”
I told them, and they knew right away it was a game.

I thought Mr. Pignati was going to blow his top with all that nonsense going on because at first he just looked at us, and I don’t mean with a smile.

Then I heard this
“Uggauggaboo,”
and I’ll be darned if it wasn’t Mr. Pignati starting in. And before you knew it, all three of us were going
Uggauggaboo
, and we had Bobo, two chimps, and the gorilla worked up into such a tizzy I thought the roof of the monkey house was going to fall in.

“I’ll miss you, Bobo,” Mr. Pignati said as we were leaving.

And when Bobo realized he wasn’t going to get any more peanuts, you should have seen the expression on his face!

P.S. The answer to the snake quiz is that only statements five and six are true.

I
don’t happen to buy all of Lorraine’s stuff about omens. She talks about me distorting, but look at her. I mean, she thinks she can get away with her subliminal twists by calling them omens, but she doesn’t fool me. The only difference between her fibs and mine are that hers are eerie—she’s got a gift for saying things that make you anxious.

I happen to have enjoyed that little trip to the zoo even if she didn’t. I think it was sort of nice that a baboon had a friend like Mr. Pignati. I’d say that baboon was @#$% lucky. As a matter of fact, the way the Pigman was treating Lorraine and me you’d have thought he liked us as much as Bobo. He bought me two cotton-candies-on-a-stick, one bag of peanuts, and a banana split at this homemade ice-cream palace. Lorraine got at least four bags of peanuts, one cherry ice-cream cone, and a black-and-white soda. If you let her, Lorraine would eat until she dropped, and if she keeps going at that rate, I’m afraid she’s going to be somewhat more than voluptuous. She could end up just plain fat.

We finally told him to call us Lorraine and John because every time he’d say Mr. Wandermeyer I’d forget that was supposed to be me. Besides, he was harmless—a little crazy—but really harmless.

Lorraine and I went to school the following day, and we didn’t get over to the Pigman’s until that night around seven o’clock. That was because when we were heading over there at three thirty, we ran into Dennis and Norton who wanted to know where we were going. We made believe we weren’t going anywhere, so we had to go to the cemetery to have a beer with them. We drink at a special part of the cemetery called Masterson’s Tomb. That’s where all the famous Mastersons are buried, you know. It’s a fantastic place because they have acres and acres all for their own tomb, and it’s fenced in with a private road which they only open up when one of the Mastersons dies. But there is a hole in the fence at one place in the woods, and that’s where all the kids go through.

The tomb is a great big marble building that’s set in the side of a hill so only the fancy front sticks out. The columns and everything are nice, but it’s all chained up, so we climb up the side of the hill and get on top by these two glass domes that let you peek down inside. You can’t actually see anything, but it sure makes you wonder.

I think cemeteries are one of the loveliest places to be—if you’re not dead, of course. The hills and green grass and flowers are much nicer than what you get when you’re alive. Sometimes we go there at midnight and hide behind stones to scare the @#$% out of each other.

Once I ran away from Lorraine and the others and hid in a part of the cemetery that didn’t have perpetual care. That’s the part where no one pays to keep the grass cut. I was just lying on my back, looking up at the stars, and I was so loaded I thought I could feel the spin of the earth. All those stars millions of light years away shining down on me—me glued to a minor planet spinning around its own gigantic sun.

I stretched out and touched stone. I remember pulling my hands back to my sides, just keeping my eyes on the stars, concentrating on bringing them in and out of focus. “Is there anyone up there trying to talk to me? Anybody up there?”

“Anybody
down
there?” If I was lying on somebody’s grave, whoever it was would be six feet away. Maybe there had been a lot of erosion, and whoever it was was only five feet away… or four. Maybe the tombstone had sunk at the same rate as the erosion, and the body was only a foot away below me—or an inch. Maybe if I put my hand through the grass, I would feel a finger sticking out of the dirt—or a hand. Perhaps both arms of a corpse were on either side of me right at that moment. What could be left? A few bones. The skull. The worms and bacteria had eaten the rest. Water in the earth had dissolved parts, and the plants had sucked them up. Maybe one of the molecules of iron from the corpse’s hemoglobin is in the strand of grass next to my ear. But the embalmers drain all the blood—well, probably not
every
drop. Nobody does anything perfectly.

Then I got very sad because I knew I wasn’t really wondering about the guy underneath me, whoever he was. I was just interested in what was going to happen to me. I think that’s probably the real reason I go to the graveyard. I’m not afraid of seeing ghosts. I think I’m really
looking
for ghosts. I
want
to see them. I’m looking for anything to prove that when I drop dead there’s a chance I’ll be doing something a little more exciting than decaying.

Anyway, we finally got away from Norton and Dennis, but it was too late to go over to the Pigman’s—mainly because Lorraine had to get home to check in with her mother.

She finally got out of the house again that night by performing an elaborate ritual about having to go to the library. As for myself, I didn’t have much of a problem.

“Eat your peas, John,” the Old Lady said, dabbing her mouth with a napkin. “Don’t roll them around.”

“I’m not rolling them around.”

“Your mother said to stop it,” Bore ordered. It was the first thing he’d said to me during dinner, and even though it wasn’t the warmest remark, I could tell he had given up prosecuting the case of the phantom gluer.

“Your father sold over three hundred lots today,” the Old Lady said, like she was patting a cocker spaniel on the head. Bore has a seat on the Coffee Exchange, and if he sells more than two hundred lots in a day, he’s in a good mood. Anything less than that and there’s trouble.

“It was like pulling teeth,” Bore returned, slightly embarrassed but pleased with the praise. He cut deep into the steak on his plate. “Wait until you start working, John.”

“I have to get the dessert,” the Old Lady said, violently polishing a teaspoon and dashing out to the kitchen. She always gets terrified if it looks like my father and I are going to have any type of discussion. A suitable pause occurred after Hyper left the room, and then he started in.

“I think your problem is you have too much spare time.”

“That’s an interesting point of view.”

“Don’t be fresh. I was thinking maybe you’d like to work with me over at the Exchange a few days a week. Just after school?”

I almost choked on a mouthful of yams when he said that. I mean, I’ve been over to the Exchange and seen all the screaming and barking Bore has to do just to earn a few bucks, and if he thought I was going to have any part of that madhouse, he had another thought coming.

“It’d be better than the way you waste all your time now. After all, what are you going to do in life?”

“I’m thinking of becoming an actor.”

“Don’t be a jackass.”

“You asked me what I’m going to do, and I told you.”

“Your brother is doing very well at the Exchange. He makes a fine living, and there’s still room for you. I’ve only got a few years left, and somebody has to take over.”

“Kenny will.”

“The business can be half yours, and you know it. I can’t take the strain much longer.”

Every time he says that, I get a little sick to my stomach because I know it’s true. He’s almost sixty years old, and I know he’s not going to be around much longer. All the guys at the Exchange drop dead of heart attacks. They gather around this circle and bellow out bids all day long, like Mexicans at a bullfight.

“Pass me the butter, please.”

“Just a couple of hours a day. You could help me close out the accounts. Even a dummy can learn how to do that.”

“Yes, I
could
—”

“An actor?” Bore blurted, as if it finally got through to him. “Thank God Kenneth isn’t a lunatic.”

“Dad, it’s the only thing I’m really interested in doing. I want to go to acting school right after graduation. Everyone says that’s what I should be, with my imagination—”

“Try eating your imagination when you’re hungry sometime.”

“I just don’t want to wear a suit every day and carry an attaché case and ride a subway. I want to be
me
. Just me. Not a phony in the crowd.”

“Who’s asking you to be a phony?”

“You are.”

“I’m asking you to try working for a change. At your age I was working hard, not floundering around in a fool’s dream world.”

“Do you both want whipped cream and nuts on your strawberry whirl?” The Old Lady stood at the kitchen door, wiping forks a mile a minute. I should have said nothing, but it was a conditioned reflex.

“Do you mean
real
whipped cream or that horrible, prepared-mix, fake whipped cream?”

“Don’t give the ingrate anything.”

“He’s only joking.”

The Hyper was off again.

There was a terrible pause.

“I apologize.”

“One of these days it’ll be too late to apologize. Your mother isn’t going to be around forever either, you know. When she’s dead, you’re going to wish to God you’d been nicer to her. Mark my words.” He sliced another piece of steak and groaned when the knife wouldn’t go through a bit of gristle.

“Oh Dad, can’t you see all I want to do is be individualistic?”

“Don’t worry about that.”

“I want to be
me
.”

“Who’s asking you not to be?”

“You are.”

“I am not. I don’t want you to go along with the crowd. I want you to be your own man. Stand out in your own way.”

“You
do
?”

“Of course I do. Take your plate out to the kitchen.”

“Just give me a little longer to find out who I am,” I said, heading for the kitchen door while the getting was good.

“Be yourself! Be individualistic!” he called after me. “But for God’s sake get your hair cut. You look like an oddball.”

“How nice of you to remember to bring your plate out,” the Old Lady said, squirting some whipped cream out of a can. “Are you going to have dessert?”