Roger Maxson - Pigs In Paradise

“Thank goodness. Anything’s got to be better than a cold, sterile instrument.”

“We only need one bull, my dear, and there’s only one Bruce, and he’s ours.”

The two heifers shared a laugh and rubbed shoulders as they sauntered off down inside the road to the meadow past the lemon grove. The Israeli Holsteins were head and shoulders larger than Blaise. They were close in stature to Bruce, nearly all of them 12 hundred pounds. A mixture of black and white, with black being the dominant color; each of the 12 cows had a large, full, low-hanging udder and big teats, and all of them white. Although similar in design, each cow had her own, unique personality. Bruce loved them all and would know each one after the other intimately before the night was over. He caught their scent wafting on the night air and it was nice.

He walked along the fence to the gate that opened onto the road that separated the two main pastures. He breathed deeply and snorted through his nostrils. It had four wooden planks. Bruce raised a hoof and kicked out the second rung from the bottom of the gate. Then he kicked and broke in half the third plank. He used his massive head and pushed through the upper rung to get to the other side. Not wanting to rush things or hurt himself, he stepped over the fourth rung one hoof at a time, careful not to scrape his low-hanging scrotum against the bottom rail. Once he cleared the bottom rung, he crossed the road toward the opposite pasture. One more gate stood between him and earthly bliss. At the fence, he looked over the barbed wire (which was in place as much to keep the Muslims out as it was to keep the heifers in), but couldn’t see the dairy cows because of the row of lemon trees. He knew they were there. The Holsteins were hidden from view by the lemon grove along the fence line in the meadow in the back of what was the dairy operation of the farm. He could hear them and smell them down in the meadow. Bruce kicked the lower rung and raised a hoof and broke in half the middle one. He then used his horns to push through the upper rail. He stepped into the pasture and looked up and down the fence line. To his liking, he saw no one. He ambled along the field road down past the lemon grove into the meadow on the trail of 12 big beautiful cows in waiting.

When Bruce approached the heifers, it was dark under a clear sky with the same moon as the night before. They startled and scattered about, but none of them moved too far away lest she missed something important.

“Here I am, girls. Here I am,” he said.

“Hey, look girls. It’s Brucee! I told you he’d come.”

“Oh, my Bruce!” mooed a mature Holstein, happy to see him.

“Shalom you, naughty devil,” said another Israeli Holstein, obviously an old friend.

“Come here you, old dawg,” said another as she slid up against him.

“Shush,” he said. “Now quiet down, girls. We wouldn’t want to be found out, not yet anyway. I just got here.”

“Right, heavens no, we wouldn’t want that,” they mooed gleefully, rubbing their muzzles and bodies against him in the moonlight.

“Besides, this is not according to plan. All hell would break loose if we woke the neighbors.”

On Perelman’s moshav, it was mayhem and chaos. The bull had somehow gotten into the pasture with the Holsteins and all of Juan Perelman’s animal husbandry and planning had been shot in one night with each shot fired by the bull. Bruce was famished.

“Harah,” the moshavnik Juan Perelman said.

“Shit,” one of the Chinese laborers translated.

“Benzona,” Perelman said. It was his moshav.

“Son of a bitch.”

“Beitsim,” Perelman said.

“Balls.”

“Mamzer.”

“Goddamn bastard,” said the Chinese laborer.

“Excuse me,” said his countryman, and a gentleman. “He did not say Goddamn.”

“I’m a Taoist. What do I care?” His countryman, and a gentleman, was also a Buddhist, as was the Thai laborer. Even though they were Buddhists, there was no friendly ground shared between the two men because one’s Buddha was bigger than the other’s Buddha.

Juan Perelman said, “I’ll bet the Egyptians had something to do with this.”

“What are you going to do?” Isabella Perelman said as she walked up to join her husband at the fence.

“I’m thinking.”

“Get rid of them,” she said. “Other moshavim have their issues, like us with land and water. Sale them off, all of them.” She was attractive, with dark eyes, and long dark hair.

“I don’t know?”

“Ship them off then, or give them away if you have to, but let’s finally turn the soil over on this farm and into crops and fruit trees, fig, date, olive trees, and fields of grain, wheat, and hayfields. Feed the people something. They don’t eat pig.”

The Chinese and Thai laborers exchanged looks. Wait a minute, they thought, we’re people too.

“That’s not the issue here, Isabella. It’s the dairy operation that’s in question.”

“Well, how do you know he impregnated them anyway? I mean, seriously 12 Holsteins and the Jersey only a day before.”

“Look at him. He’s famished. I imagine he’s lost a hundred pounds in two days.” Bruce covered a lot of ground, gnawing away at the grass under hoof where he went. “Look how his balls hang. He got to them all and something’s got to be done about it.”

“Still, Juan, don’t we want the cows producing milk?”

“We can only handle four freshened cows at a time, maybe five, but not twelve–thirteen! We don’t have the resources to handle all of them, and the pigs, and all the other animals.”

“Why can’t we just sell or move cows to other moshavim?”

“I don’t want to. Besides, they have issues already and can’t add ours to theirs. Water is an issue for everyone, as is the land.”

Vengeance was theirs — his, or so said Juan Perelman, the moshavnik, whose moshav the bull had just ruined.

“I want this bull to be taught a lesson,” he said.

“What then, abort the calves?”

“No, call Rabbi Ratzinger.”

“A rabbi,” she said, “why a rabbi?”

“This is who we are. I’ll show him to mess with me. Curse this bull anyway. We need a rabbi at a time like this.”

“Yes, I suppose so. Won’t stand for this.”

The Chinese and Thai farm laborers corralled the bull and drove him back into the feedlot behind the barn and away from the other animals. They waited for the arrival of the rabbi.

Juan Perelman said, “This bull shall suffer the wrath of God and then some.” Isabella headed for the farmhouse. Juan called after her, “He will pay for what he has done.”

“Whatever,” she said, waving him off with her hand.

“This is an abomination.”

Rabbi Ratzinger arrived with his entourage, male members of his congregation. They followed him in lock-step, all moving as one from the car to the field and the lot behind the barn. The rabbi had a gray beard and wore a black fedora, a black frock coat, a white shirt, and Bermuda shorts. It was a hot day under the sun, a gift from G-d. The shorts were modest, and the rabbi’s legs very white and thin, also a gift from G-d. The members of the congregation wore fedoras with dark clothes, pants, and coats with white shirts. Their beards and curls were of various lengths and shades of black to brown to gray. They wore un-shined black shoes and white socks.

The rabbi said, “He shall suffer from here to eternity for what he has done without our permission or blessing. This is an abomination against G-d and shall not go unpunished. This is a lesson to be learned by animals of this moshav and by animals of all moshavim.” He continued then to deliver his curse of curses to condemn this bull of this moshav for all eternity.