Roger Maxson - Pigs In Paradise

“What?” said one of the piglets, “100 balls of shit? Did he say you could roll up 100 balls of shit? What are you talking about, you crazy old boar?”

“Angels, my dear boy, angels,” breathed the elder. “Little angel-piglets fly around the head of a pin as hundreds, even thousands, alight on the head of the pin. This is heaven.”

“No, this is crazy,” said another young pig. “You are a crazy old boar.” He and his friends laughed and shuffled away. Mel’s ears twitched. He did not appreciate the tone the young pigs had taken with Joseph, the elder.

The next day there were Fourteen Pillars of Wisdom, with the following scrawled in chalk across the bottom of the wooden planks,

“14: Honor thy elders for they have struggled long and hard to survive the dinner plate into old age.”

Boris was something of a novelty, a curiosity, and anywhere Boris went the other animals were sure to follow. One day they followed him out to the feedlot behind the barn where Bruce stood, leaning against a fence post near the water tank.

Howard the Baptist stood in the shade of the fig tree beside the pond and warned the animals to be vigilant against the possibility of marauders in the night.

“Ignore the blasphemer,” Mel said from the sanctuary of the barn. “He is the heretic of the great heresy. Follow him and you shall surely follow him straight to hell.”

The yellow chicken came running from the barn flapping her yellow feathers. She ran into the barnyard crying, “The end is near! The end is near! Better have your houses in order. Good day, rabbi,” she sang past Boris at the compost pile on the other side of the fence. She would soon be followed by a mass exodus from the barn.

It was the Sabbath, and no Jews were to be seen, not even the moshavnik Perelman. Juan and Isabella Perelman didn’t always observe the Sabbath, but instead usually traveled or at least never came out to work on the farm. The laborers usually took advantage of the peace and tranquility of the Sabbath, but they knew regardless of the occasion, when there was work to be done, it was left to them to do it. Today was no exception. Rambunctious as always, a dozen ten-month-old porkers were separated, held in a pen with a loading ramp next to the barn. More anxious and nervous than usual, considering it was the Sabbath, the porkers rutted under the fence, squealing all the while that something was terribly wrong, that something awful was about to happen, but what or when they didn’t know. The laborers were not to be seen either and this, too, frightened the corralled pigs, and all the farm animals for that matter. Afraid, they flocked to Boris, the Berkshire boar, and Messiah.

When Boris saw the multitudes come rushing toward him, he sat down next to the compost pile and knew where his next meal was coming from. They gathered around him in a semi-circle. Separated as he was from the masses by a lot fence, the masses could not kiss his pig feet. Instead, they cried, “Oh, dear Lord! What does it all mean, Rabbi? Teach us!”

As the others gathered around, the piglets, and there were many, with three recent litters joining the general pig population, because pigs every three months, three weeks, and three days produced new offspring, fell at the great boar’s even-knuckled feet. Next were the little kids, the Angora and Boer goats, falling in behind. Many of the newborn little lambs were either with their mothers while they grazed along the slopes in the shade of the olive trees or in the barn where most of the fowl spent the afternoons away from the pigs and other animals of the farm. Except for Stanley. He was in the barn eating grain from the trough in his stall.

Boris opened his mouth to teach, and this was what the wise one taught, “Blessed are the farm animals, high and low, great and small, for they are poor, and the poor shall be rewarded in heaven.” Sally, the Sow, appeared from the throngs of animals with her broad of new piglets under hoof from her most recent litter to speak to her son, Boris, the runt of her seventh litter.

“You, my son, have done well to survive and thrive. For this, I am grateful. At first, I did not want you to be taken away, so far away as that, and in that direction.”

“I am the son of He who you do not see or know but that I do. She is merely a sow,” he said to the gathered animals. “I am the son of heaven. Be gone, sow, and litter no more.”

Ezekiel and Dave alighted in the branches of the fig tree that shaded Howard near the pond. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted, for in paradise, which art in heaven, no animal’s flesh is ever cut from the bone for the nourishment of heavenly creatures.”

Cheers went up among all the animals and they were happy.

Not so the Muslims, who perched on the ridge of the village overlooking the Israeli farm and the animals below. “For this is God’s gift to those who suffer for righteousness,” Boris said. “Remember, no one eats in heaven; thus, no one defecates.”

“Rabbi, must we wait for heaven before we are rewarded?”

“It is not for us to question the way of the Lord,” reproached another.

“And until that time that the poor shall enter the kingdom of heaven, they shall first inherit the earth.”

“Nor do they, say you, Rabbi, fornicate? I mean, procreate in heaven?”

“There is no sin of the flesh in heaven. In the kingdom of heaven, we live in peace, the lamb alongside the lion, the goat beside the wolf.”

“What?” said Billy St Cyr, the Angora goat, who was due for a shearing soon, especially now, the height of summer.

“And the bird shall nestle with the alligator.”

The animals ran to Howard the Baptist.

“Well, there you have it,” Dave said. “I guess we’re blessed because he mentioned animals of the wild.”

“Do you want to lie down next to the crocodile?”

“No, thank you. I don’t want to cuddle with a snake either,” Dave said.

“No, thank you, Boris,” Ezekiel said. “I don’t want to lie down with the boar either, lest he snore.”

“Rumor has it he does, as per Blaise.”

Howard said, “This is nothing. Nothing but evil, owned and operated by Satan, and our lives on this evil plane should come to an end as fast as possible, so that we may enter God’s world. God’s world is the true world and the domain of our Creator God. All else belongs to Satan, including the barn in which so many of you worship.”

Boris said, “As surely as you walk on four legs, I am the way. In my father’s house, there are many pigsties. Through me, you shall enter heaven, for I am the way, the light, the truth.”

The Baptist said, “A truth.”

Boris said, “The Truth.”

The Baptist said, “Semantics.”

Boris said, “The only truth you’ll ever need. Just as the rivers bleed in the spring, I am the calm in the storm, the beacon to light your way through the darkness of this world.”

“You mean bacon, don’t you?” said a sow and smiled.

Boris ignored her.

At the pond, Howard the Baptist poured water over the snout of a sow. He said to those in attendance, “You are animals. You are innocent. You do not need a barn to worship in. You carry the true religion within you. It is not in this world or place or within the walls of the barn. The only structure worthy to house the knowledge of the true religion is yourself, for it is found within you. The truth is your buttress against this other nonsense and the evils of this world that enslave us for the slaughter and nourishment of the slave master. The true religion is in your heart. It prepares you to enter through me, your Prefect, into the realm of heaven that which was made by our one true God for us, the good.” Howard the Perfect of the one true religion then recited the Lord’s Prayer. When he said, “Thank you Lord for our daily bread,” the pigs, omnivores every one, darted, and started a stampede back to Boris, their one true Messiah, as per Mel, their spiritual leader on earth or this farm, and away from Howard the heretic, as per Mel. Mel, standing in the shadows of the awning of the barn, was pleased.