Pigs In Paradise

“You forget, friend, I am He who was sent by my Father to save all domesticated farm animals from sin and a life spent in captivity.”

“Where do you plan to lead your sinners, messiah?”

“To freedom, paradise found among the mountains of the Sinai and away from this place, the corruption of civilization.”

“Oh, of course, the garden,” Howard said incredulously. “Stay here with me under the stars. Do not follow the mule or the hermit monk, for it is they who will lead you down the path of destruction.”

“It is because of them that I am here,” Boris said, “to deliver us from evil.”

“Who will deliver you from evil?”

As Mel approached the pond, Boris took his position next to him. “You are good and pure,” Mel said, “beyond sin. You will do your charges well.” Mel looked at the Baptist. Then turned away to join the others.

“And your daddy’s will,” Howard snorted.

* * *

The other animals, including Mel by this time, stood under the branches of the great olive tree out of the sun and watched in amazement as the two boars rammed each other, shoved, butted heads, pushing against one another until finally the newly baptized had had enough, and retreated from the pond and wandered off.

That night for reasons known only to the moshavnik Perelman, he separated the Jersey from the others and placed her in the stall with the newly arrived boar. Between the laborers, though, rumor had it that Perelman may have wanted the two, the Jersey and the Berkshire boar, to mate even though she was a cow already freshened with a calf, and he was a pig, something about wanting the reddish-coated hide rubbing off on her.

“Oh, I don’t like being called a pig. I mean, I am what I am, and I like who I am. I’m Boris the Boar, the Great Wild Boar, Savior of all animals, great and small. Or at least I shall be. For now, though, I’ll settle for the Great Wild Boar of the West. It’s the name pig, though, and as far as pigs go, we are loathed by so many of the human species. We have humans to blame for this, of course, and one man in particular for all this name-calling business. Oh, how I’d love for our species across the earth to go by another name, like buffalo. I’ve always liked the name buffalo or bison. I can imagine life for us would be very different if we were buffalo. Or gazelle! Doesn’t that have a lovely ring to it, gazelle? Gazelle pigs, lean and muscular and strong, of course, and able to go out into the world proud, not afraid to hold their heads up.”

“Then Muhammad would no longer be a friend to the pig.”

“Yes, there’d be tradeoffs. I shouldn’t complain, really. Call us what they may, we’d still be pigs in the eyes of many and loathed no matter what we’re called. It could have been worse, I suppose. He could have been called cockroaches.”

“Why were you and Howard fighting?” Blaise said. “Not long after he baptized you, you both were fighting, butting heads?”

“He said he was perfect, and the bigger pig, but I, being who I am, pushed back, because I am the greater boar.”

Had she not already fallen asleep Blaise would have agreed.

4

When Fetuses Fall from the Backsides of Cows

Mel walked along the fence, keeping within earshot of Levy and his friend Ed, the two orthodox Jews from before. Levy was listening to an iPod with wireless earbuds as they passed through the moshav.

“The Americans are coming!” Ed said.

“We’re saved!” Levy replied with the iPod and earbuds in his ear.

“It appears Perelman might be.”

“What does that mean?” Levy removed the iPod.

“He’s looking to sell the moshav.”

“Sell the moshav? He can’t do that.”

“The livestock, I mean,” Ed said. “He’s looking to sell off the livestock, the pigs, goats, chickens anyway.”

“Americans are coming to Israel to buy pigs?”

“They are in the market, yes, but their real interest is the red calf. So, while they’re here, for one thing, they might as well be here for the other.”

“I see. Evangelicals again on their way to save us from ourselves.”

“They’re good country people,” Ed said.

“Of course,” Levy said, “Christian fundamentalists. Why else would they be interested in the red calf?”

“Good eatin’?” Ed said.

“Perelman is selling the Jersey and her calf?”

“I believe so. They’re interested in its outcome for us and them.”

Levy placed the earbuds back in his ears. Those people, or as they say, ‘them people.’”

Mel stopped at the end of the property line where the two fences came to a point at fence-post corners. The two Jews continued on their way past the farm, following the road north.

That night Mel shared with the rest a vision he had had from a dream and it was prophecy. “I see men arriving at the farm. They will offer us salvation and paradise on earth, but what they want is to enslave us once again to the yoke and worse. Therefore, we must follow our newly arrived savior, Boris the Boar. He offers a different course of action, a new future, and a direction for us to go in. We must listen to Boris for it will mean the difference between our survival or our demise. Listen closely, we will pray on this, but we will follow the great boar, who art our Lord and Savior.”

“All right, Julius,” Dave said from the olive tree the next day. “What is this all about?”

“Remember our hero, Bruce, and the 12 Israeli Holsteins? Well, look,” Julius said and pointed an expansive blue-and-gold wing. In the meadow, the Holsteins were dropping calves, one calf after the other. “Bruce knew them all,” Julius explained. “As fetuses fall from the backsides of cows, the 12th Imam, as per our neighbors on the Arabian Peninsula or the Gaza Strip to the north, will appear or reappear depending on which family member they follow. Not only that, but we’ll also see the return of Big J himself. Few people realize just how close they were. That’s right, Jesus will accompany his friend the 12th Imam, the Mahdi, when he climbs out of a well. We’ll know the difference between the two because although they’ll both have prominent noses, Jesus will be the guy with blonde hair, blue eyes, and sporting a tan (the American Christians have landed, wink, wink).” The Israeli Holsteins were in clear view of the rejoicing Muslims on the Egyptian border, and the Americans, standing in the road on the Israeli farm. “When fetuses fall from the backsides of cows,” Julius continued his cautious tale, “in this fairy story as in the one about the red calf, it will bring about the end of the earth. The problem, though, for the Muslims anyway, these fetuses are breathing and kicking.”

The American evangelicals, two of them anyway, had arrived on the scene in time to witness the spectacle of fetuses falling from the backsides of cows, then the rejoicing and chants emitted from the foreigners on a hill. The younger of the two was lean and fit at 27 and had blonde hair, blue eyes. The other minister was 50, with dry, wiry Grecian Formula brown hair, and dry, gray eyes. About 5’ 9”, and stocky, he had never known hunger. Both men wore long-sleeve white shirts, opened at the collar, dark slacks, and black shoes. The Israelis who escorted the two ministers explained that it was supposed to be a sign for the arrival, or the return, of the 12th Imam, the Mahdi, depending on whose camp they belonged. However, these fetuses were alive, and the Americans witnessed the sudden end of rejoicing only to be replaced by monotonous chants before the foreigners on the hill disappeared into their village.

“Oh, well, better luck next time, I always say,” Julius said. “The good news is we live another day–whew!”

“I don’t understand,” Ezekiel said. “Fetuses are dropping. Why isn’t this omen a good sign?”

“Oh, it’s an omen all right, and a very good sign for those of us of the living. The fetuses that fall from the backsides of cows are supposed to be dead when they hit the ground. When 12 of them do, by the way, 12 of them fall dead; thus, cometh the Lord, hand in hand with the Mahdi to kick infidel butt like the supernatural superheroes that they are. Unfortunately, for our Muslim faithful, those fetuses hit the ground running. Way to go Bruce! Cigars all around!”

Before the crestfallen Muslims turned away, they witnessed the Christian infidels, as if on the road to Damascus, experiencing convulsions, rolling on the ground from laughter. The Muslims cursed the ground on which the infidels convulsed.

Once all the fun was over, and the Americans regained their composure, they saw two orthodox Jews heading toward them outside the farm for what would be a brief first encounter among friends with common interests.

“Shalom Rabbis, we come in peace.”

“We’re not rabbis,” Levy said, with the iPod and earbuds.

“I’m Reverend Hershel Beam,” said the older minister. “This is my young protégé and youth minister of our megachurch in America, Reverend Randy Lynn. We’re Christians.”

“Hi, I’m Randy. Whaddya listenin’ to, ‘The Yahweh Hill Song’? It’s about Jesus, you know?”

Levy’s friend Ed looked at his friend Levy.

Levy took out the earbuds. “Chopin,” he said. “‘Polonaise op. 53 in A-flat major, Heroic.’ A work he composed at the height of his creative powers, and during his love affair with the French novelist George Sand.”

“Nice to have made your acquaintance,” Ed said. He and Levy nodded, tipped their hats, and bid farewell. They turned back into the road and continued along their way.

“Did he say George Sand?” a confused youth minister said. “Chopin was gay?”

“No, no,” laughed Reverend Beam. “Don’t start biting your hand, Randy. George Sand was a woman.”

“Whew, I hope so,” Reverend Randy Lynn said. “Funny name for a woman, though. But wait, I thought he said George Sand was a novelist?”

“She was, Randy, a French novelist.”

“Oh, right, one of them people. Let me see if I have this right. He’s listening to Chopin, a Polish piano player who was in love with a French novelist, a woman named George?”

“So far, so good,” Reverend Hershel Beam said. Welcome to Israel.”

I would have thought ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ maybe, something closer to home.”

“Yes, you would think,” Reverend Beam agreed.

5

Rules to Live by

The Fourteen Pillars of Wisdom

With the advent of modern farm machinery and no longer enslaved to the yoke and forced to pull the plow or the thresher, the animals down in the valley on this sliver of land pushed against the Egyptian border lived peacefully for as long as any could remember, even comfortably as any animal could, considering their circumstances. They did what most domesticated animals had always done, which was to wait. While waiting one day, because they remained feedstock for humans, and fearful of the unknown and the dark, and of lightning flashing mysteriously across an otherwise dark sky, when thunder cracked and shook the ground on which they stood frozen in fear, the animals started to ask questions. “Where do we come from?” “Where do we go when we die?” “What’s it all about?” To which one animal or another, always of higher intelligence, would attempt to explain the origins of life, of how they had come to be where they were now and where they were going. It was an unfolding story with rules to live by if an animal was to be rewarded an afterlife in a field of clover, a garden as it were. So, through the years several elders, usually the pigs among them, took it upon themselves in an attempt to answer these questions, began to tell stories and make rules that they passed down to the animals that came after them, creating laws for all to follow.

One such collection of animal wisdom handed down through the generations was Rules to Live By, the Thirteen Pillars of Wisdom. Mel entered the barn, which was the sanctuary, with the two Rottweilers, Spotter and Trooper from the farmhouse. Mel announced, “I bring you good news. Play, frolic, and lounge along the banks of the pond, the same pond from which we drink. Especially the pigs among us, for this is your land, and Muhammad is our friend.”

“He might be your friend, but he’s not our friend,” said Billy St. Cyr, the Angora goat.

“If the pigs weren’t held in such high regard, maybe less attention would be paid to the rest of us by the Prophet and his followers,” said Billy Kidd, the lean brown and tan Boer goat.

“This is the Lord’s plan, and our Messiah, Boris, who is resting, has come out of the mountains of the Sinai to deliver us from our present state of existence.”

“But isn’t man great for he is made in God’s image?”

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder; therefore, man is beautiful, made in God’s image. Thus, man is godly.”

“Then why are we to be delivered from our present state?”

“We are held by those who are not in God’s favor or made in His image.”

Julius called out from the rafters, “I beg to differ and find the premise of your argument flawed. What is God’s image? What empirical proof do we have that God isn’t made in man’s image? No man or beast among us would recognize the elusive God of heaven and earth if he were standing next to you or in a lineup.”

“The earth’s flat and that’s that,” sang a gaggle of geese.

“Hey,” Julius said, “who let those dogs in here?” Spotter and Trooper growled, baring teeth. Julius glared at them with his black eyes. “And that mingy mule?”

“We are animals. Every day we are tempted by Satan to abandon our relationship to man, and thus, with God. It is not for us to question the way of the Lord. In doing so, you must be a mouthpiece of despair, possessed by evil delivered on behalf of Satan,” thus spoke Mel.

“That’s convenient,” replied Julius.

“You are evil personified,” Mel said.

“I know,” Julius said, modestly. “I get that a lot.”

“You are not one of us,” Mel said for the benefit of the other animals gathered for evening prayer. “You are a house pet released from a den of sin, set loose upon the innocent to haunt and taunt them into despair, but they will not listen or follow.”

“Aw, shucks, I had no idea I held such sway over you.”

“You cannot make us, for we are cloaked in righteousness, protected from the evils of Satan, and from you, so help us, God.”

“I can’t take all the credit. I mean, where would I be without you, you with your fear and loathing, and me, me with my sunny disposition?”

“You will not corrupt or mislead us,” Mel said. “We are not sheep, after all. No offense.”

“None taken,” bleated three sheep in unison.

“Well, aren’t you on a tear? Don’t let me stop you.”

Mel told the gathering that the pigs among them were seen as holy by their Muslim neighbors, and to remember, and he repeated, that Muhammad was their friend. Scrawled in chalk across planks of boards against the back wall, and running down the length of the wall, were Rules to Live By, the Thirteen Pillars of Wisdom. Mel led the recital of the Thirteen Pillars of Wisdom as he did every night as the other animals followed.

“1: Man is made in God’s image; therefore, man is holy, Godly.

“There is no disputing this fact,” Mel stated.

The animals present all seemed to agree.

Stanley said as he did every night, “Humans only have 10, but we have 13? I can’t remember that many. I can’t even count that high.”

Mel, as he did every night, ignored the horse.

Julius said, “Unfortunately, this mule did not spook and drop a tablet or three on his way down from the mountain. Not even when a burning bush spoke his name, what nerve!”

Mel ignored the parrot, too, and resumed.

“2: We shall humble ourselves before man.”

Stanley snorted and stamped his feet. He raised his tail to dump a mound of manure. Some were aghast, but because it had occurred in his stall, and not the sanctuary, it was not a sin. The next day the Thai and Chinese laborers, being that it was the Sabbath, would clean out the stalls anyway, and put the manure on the compost pile behind the barn. Regardless of what day it was, mostly foreign laborers took care of the surrounding moshavim and farm animals, as they did with the animals on this moshav.

“3: The barn is hallowed ground, a sanctuary, wherein no animal urinates or defecates; wherein all is sacred;

4: Man is our creator and our salvation. Man is good.”

“I think we know who wrote his material,” Julius said, removing a paintbrush from his beak while holding another brush in his left talon.

“5: We shall not eat where we defecate;

6: We shall not defecate where we pray;

7: We shall not eat our feces or our young.”

A hen clucked to her sister hens, “These rules are impossible.”

“8: We serve man gladly for our survival.”

“Yes, we do,” quacked three ducks.

“He slops us,” said a pig, “so what?”

“Sounds like a lot of shit to me,” said another pig, and the young pigs laughed.

“9: For without man, we are lost.” Mel glared at the troublemaker. Mel knew him and his family, a bunch of pigs.

Mel continued,

“10: Thank God for man; we thank man for the animal, great and small, higher and lower of us;

“11: No animal shall eat the flesh of another animal, great or small, higher or lower among us.”

“No pig can live on slop alone,” said a sow.

Mel looked at the sow. He did not wish to stop the recital. She was a sow.

“Precious man eats animal flesh,” said another pig, a porker, and not long for this place, but soon for a one-way ticket for Cypress.

Mel stopped the recital. “You are a prophet, my friend.” He reminded the congregation that grain was added to supplement the already vitamin-enriched nutritious slop the moshavnik Perelman fed the pigs and that it contained enough proteins to suffice the animals’ needs. “You are well fed, much better than any other pigs in the region.”

“We are the only pigs in the region.”

“Therefore, you are a privileged few, and Muhammad is your friend.”

“What a wonderful life we lead,” said the sow.

“Right,” said the porker, “just like paradise.”

“What about us?” Trooper and Spotter whined.

“Are you not taken care of and fed handsomely?”

“Yes, Father,” they said and bowed.

“To everything, there is a season. To every dog a bone. So, turn, turn, and do tricks for your bone.”

The dogs turned, turned, and did tricks for a bone.

“Do not question me or my motivations.” Mel did not give the dogs a bone. Instead, Mel resumed the recital with,

“12: We shall not allow ourselves to be covered in mud.

The yellow-feathered chicken clucked and hid behind the other hens among the sheep.

“13: We shall honor our saints and martyrs.”

Mel ended the recital; however, he continued with his sermon.

“When we are outside, it is put upon us,” he sermonized, “to cover our waste, so as not to carry excrement into our house of worship. It is left to us to nourish the earth that grows the grain, and the grass that in turn nourishes us.”

The animals agreed, yes, yes, of course, that made sense.

“We shall mark our small, short lives on this earth, and respect, and honor those who lead us through the darkness of this world, and the animal kingdom at large, beyond our farm, so that we shall enter the kingdom of God to be shepherded by Him.”

“Yes, yes,” the animals sang out gleefully.

Mel continued his sermon, “And those who wallow in mud shall die in it.”

The chicken raised her head, “Bog.” She hid in the warm wool of the sheep. The young pigs didn’t seem to care.

“Any animal seen covered by mud shall be deemed a heretic.”

“He’s so mulish,” Julius said, “what a racket.”

“Do not be seen with the heretic pig of the great heresy or allow the beast to pour mud and water over your head or you, too, will be a heretic. I bring you the good news that we are all chosen as God’s children in the company of humans who protect and nurture us. Then feed on us, for this is the way of the Lord, the way of life, our life, as it is written and handed down through the ages. In a vision, I saw us led from our present condition to freedom.”

“Yes, it’s the part where they feed on us that scares up all the farm animals to flock to the great Mel, the Mule,” Julius said. “Works every time.”

“You will burn in hell.”

“Thus, sayeth the mule.”

“Atheist anarchist,” Mel said.

“Anarchy malarkey,” Julius said and addressed the animals below in the sanctuary of the barn. “Use your brains. Think for yourselves. Yes, we’re animals, but please, surely, we can think for ourselves, and forge a way through life.”

“You are not among us.”

“Listen,” Julius said, “the mule preaches fear, loathing, and superstition.”

“What does, loathing mean?” One of the animals said.

“You are not one of us.”

“Yes, you are domesticated animals, but that doesn’t mean you have to be a herd.”

Mel said, “Is there nothing sacred?”

“Yes, nothing,” Julius stated. “There is nothing sacred.”

Here came Mousey Tongue, scurrying over one of the beams above the sanctuary of the barn with the capitalist pig, Mousetrap in close pursuit. Mousey Tongue was a communist who thought everything should be distributed evenly as long as everything first came through him. He had a high-pitched, squeaky voice, and no one could understand anything he ever said. The capitalist pig, Mousetrap couldn’t care less what Mousey Tongue’s political philosophy on economics was. He just wanted to eat the little bastard.

“Scram you little rat,” Julius said as he and the ravens perched along another beam.

“I am not a rat,” cried Mousey Tongue. “I am a mouse.”

“What did he say?” Dave said.

“Squeak, squeak, something like that,” Ezekiel said. “I don’t know rat.”

“I am not a rat,” Mousey Tongue squeaked past them.

“Well,” Ezekiel said, nodding toward the mouse, “before the cat gets his tongue?”

“Oh, no, thank you,” Dave said. “I couldn’t eat another thing.”

Mousey Tongue was also an atheist who, when not being pursued through the rafters by the capitalist pig, on occasion, defecated on the beams and took pleasure rolling his little turds over the edge, letting them fall where they may on the consecrated ground below where no one was the wiser, except the chickens who weren’t telling anyone. They were happy to clean house. As far as Mel knew, they were following rules number 5: “We shall not eat where we defecate;” and number 6: “We shall not defecate where we pray.”

When Mel called everyone to prayer, the chickens and ducks fell into position with the sheep falling in behind them. The pigs scattered about the sanctuary, and fell prostrate on the straw, many of them falling asleep where they lay.

“Well, at least those little piggies aren’t a herd,” Julius said.

Blaise and Beatrice watched quietly from the safety of their stalls, as did Stanley, chewing his cud. The sheep pressed their muzzles into each other, and from side to side, front to rear, they fanned out behind the chickens and ducks in the sanctuary. As Mel led the congregation in prayer, the Luzein and Border Leicester folded their front legs and kneeled, but their hind legs remained upright as they prayed to God for deliverance from evil.

“Know what I’m thinking?” Julius said to Ezekiel and Dave.

“Bedtime?” Ezekiel said.

“Shepherd’s pie,” Julius said as the sheep’s little white tails wagged happily. “I don’t know why. It’s been such a long time since I’ve been blessed with Shepherd’s pie. Have you ever had Shepherd’s pie?”

“We’ve had mince pie,” Dave said.

“Yes,” Ezekiel said, “and plum pudding.”

“Mm, the corn, the mashed potatoes, were my favorites, mashed potatoes you can suck thru a straw. Sometimes peas and carrots were added, and those little pearl onions. I was never fond of lamb or ground cow, though. I have friends.”

“May the Lord be with you,” Mel concluded.