The Christmas Pig: A Very Kinky Christmas (10 page)

T
HE BOY DID NOT SLEEP
. He could not sleep. He wanted to cry but he did not. He never cried. Besides, there was work to be done. All he required was an empty canvas. As empty as the whole world. He waited until he was sure his uncle and his aunt had gone to sleep. Then, under cover of darkness and grief, he slipped out of the house and crept over to the barn.

“Benjamin?” came a familiar voice in the blackness of the old building.

“Yes, Valerie,” said the boy. “It’s me.”

“Dear, dear Benjamin,” she said. “Why have you come here?”

“I cannot tell you, dear Valerie. But I will show you soon. There is very little time so just let me paint.”

“I thought your work was finished.”

“No, dear Valerie,” he said. “My work has just begun.”

With that, he moved determinedly to the easel, lit the lanterns very carefully this time, and lifted the canvas off the easel. It was a large canvas and he was a small boy, but he managed to quickly turn it around and place it back on the easel so the blank back of the canvas was facing him. He opened the paints, mixed them to his satisfaction, and then, using no subjects or models, began painting from memory, from the heights of genius, from the depths of his soul.

Outside the barn, the weather had taken a decided turn for the worse. The wind was blowing shrilly from the north and snow and ice had begun to blanket the little farm and the forest nearby. Benjamin wielded the brush with a power and determination equal to the elements outside. For inside his heart, another storm was raging.

At one point, standing now, darting back and forth and side to side, splashing colors and forms frenetically across the canvas with flying brush-strokes, Valerie had come into his little circle of light. When she looked at him she saw something in his eyes that she’d never seen before but always suspected was there, the fear and guts of true courage.

“Go back! Go back, Valerie, dear,” he said, without interrupting the rhythm of his work. “We have so little time. I’ll show you when I’m done.”

“Yes, dear Benjamin,” she said, as she walked back to her pen. “I will do as you say. For you have become the artist of my life.”

Benjamin may have heard words or he may not have, for he was in a world of his own, much the way he’d existed for most of his life, except now it was focused into a fleeting few hours, into a feverish fugue of finality and freedom. The back of the canvas was coming to life with a masterpiece in the making. The front of the canvas had taken him two or three weeks to paint. It was good. But the back of the canvas had taken him only a few hours to paint. It was not merely good; it was great. For it had been painted with colors that most artists never used. Colors like no time to lose, nowhere to run, and love is never lost. The empty canvas was now full of all the words that Benjamin had never spoken, all the emotions that Benjamin had never felt.

“Valerie!” he called. “Dear Valerie! The painting is finished. I want you to be the first one to see it.”

As Valerie trotted over to view the work, the boy pulled the quilt ever more tightly around his shoulders. It was, indeed, an extremely cold night. Soon, he knew, it would get even colder.

When Valerie saw the painting, she became almost as speechless as Benjamin had been before he’d met her. A small tear formed in the corner of her eye and fell to the floor.

“What do you think?” asked Benjamin.

“It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve seen in my life,” she said at last. “Except for your soul.”

It was sometime in the early hours of the morning when the boy completed the final preparations for the painting to be received by the royal couriers the next day. This involved painting over the original work, which was now on the back side of the canvas. This task Benjamin performed quickly, and seemingly with little regret. Lastly, he removed from a box the royal purple velvet curtain that had been sent from the castle along with the canvas and art supplies. He fitted the curtain onto the frame and attached it in such a way as to keep the contents of the painting a mystery until the time for it to be formally unveiled. This proved to be a rather meticulous process, not unlike the hooking up of a fancy ball gown.

Valerie watched from the cold dirt floor of the barn, her eyes sparkling in the candlelight cast by the lanterns. Indeed, she appeared almost to radiate a joy of spirit and a peace of mind she had never before experienced in her brief young life. That the boy would risk the commission and the king’s displeasure by including her in the painting, meant the world to her. For it had taken worldsful of courage, she knew. Worldsful of courage and perhaps something even harder to find, true friendship.

Finally, the painting was veiled with the velvet curtain, wrapped once again for travel, and, on that lonely easel in that creaky old barn, stood waiting for destiny. Benjamin blew out the lanterns and, with the warm quilt around his body, walked to the door of the barn. As he opened the door he noticed that the weather had gone from bad to worse. The snow was piling up on the ground in large drifts and in many places seemed to be turning to ice. And still it kept falling from the gray, oblivious sky.

“Good night, dear Benjamin,” said Valerie.

“You’re coming with me,” he said.

D
AWN NEVER CAME
that morning. Instead, the canvas of the world was permeated with an aching off-whiteness that smothered the senses and dulled the spirit. It was a rather unique and isolated weather pattern, however. The four royal couriers from Eddystone Castle did not encounter the icy weather until they’d crossed the little wooden bridge on the way to the farm.

When the king’s men reached the Welches’ farmhouse that morning, Aunt Joan was waiting with hot tea for them all. Afterward, Uncle Floyd went with them to the barn and formally turned over to them the painting, which they promptly loaded onto the covered cart.

When the men returned to the barn to collect the pig, they were rather surprised to find that the pen was empty. With Uncle Floyd and Will Wallace leading the way, every nook and cranny of the old building was searched and scrutinized but the pig was not found. Uncle Floyd was baffled and a bit disappointed by the experience, but when he told his wife about the disappearance later that morning, she said, “Good for the pig.” Benjamin, it was assumed, was still asleep in his bedroom. He was not.

As the artist’s rendering of the babe in the manger rolled inexorably toward Eddystone Castle, the couriers remarked on how the weather had improved. This was not the case, however, in the northern portion of the kingdom. Here, the wind shrieked, the snow kept coming, and everything on the ground turned almost instantly to ice. Some would later claim that it was the worst blizzard to hit the north in over a hundred years.

In the middle of this terrible storm, a small boy and a pig walked blameless into a snowbound forest primeval where day was night and night was cold and the angry wind whistled through the branches in the dense canopy of trees that hid the gray cathedral sky. Benjamin liked the dark and gray colors all around him but he had not been prepared for a storm of this magnitude. Valerie, who was better suited for the cold than the boy, worried about him with nothing but the quilt and the clothes on his back. It had been the boy’s plan to get as far away from the farm as possible, but soon they were lost amidst the drifts of swirling snow.

They walked for many hours through the forest with wolves howling in the distance, and then seemingly closer and closer. Predatory fingers of ice dripped from branches and pointed in every direction but home. That was fine with Benjamin. He was not going home.

After several more hours of wandering, they stopped in a small clearing and Benjamin tried to build a fire with some matches he’d brought. This was not an easy task in the cold and wet forest, but at last he succeeded. The two of them talked quietly and tried to warm themselves by the small campfire.

Other voices, by now, were calling as well. Uncle Floyd and Aunt Joan and Will Wallace had been scouring the woods, calling for Benjamin. These cries, however, had been deadened by the deep, still falling snow, and the wind and the wolves. The boy, both freezing and exhausted, began to shiver violently.

“Oh, dear Benjamin,” said Valerie at last, “we must go back.”

“If we go back, dear Valerie,” he said, “they will kill you.”

“But you’ve already saved me,” she said. “You’ve put me in the painting. For that, I will be eternally grateful. Eternally grateful, oh, dear, dear Benjamin.”

Hearing her words, Benjamin did something he’d never done in his life. He began to cry.

“I don’t want to lose you, dear Valerie,” he sobbed. “You’re my only friend.”

“No friend is worth your tears,” she said, “except the one who never makes you cry.”

No one knows how long they remained there, how long the fire lasted. It could have been a day or a lifetime. The temperature dropped steadily. The snow and ice kept falling from a sky they could no longer see. The boy at last fell asleep and Valerie curled up next to him to try to keep him warm. But she could not keep him warm enough.

They say that pigs are smarter than dogs and just as loyal, though, of course, they have a lot less reason to be. This having been said, a pig can survive in the cold and wild for far longer than a small boy. That is, if the pig wants to. In this case, the pig chose to remain next to the boy’s still warm body, and if necessary, die by his side. Which is exactly what she did.

Thus it was that snowflakes soon covered Valerie’s delicate eyelashes. Thus it was that on the day Jesus was born, Benjamin died.

F
EINBERG WAS NERVOUS.
The midnight mass was winding to a close in the great hall of Eddystone Castle and Feinberg was pacing briskly back and forth behind the biggest crowd he’d ever seen in his life. It seemed the whole kingdom had turned out to watch the velvet draperies drop from Benjamin’s painting, which was now situated high on the castle wall behind the priest. Rumors had coursed through the populace, apparently, that this nativity scene was the work of a child painting a child. Not only that, but this particular child was a ten-year-old idiot savant from the north country.

Feinberg remembered with a shudder the childlike, primitive, grotesque monstrosity the kid had painted for him when the boy had spent the night at Eddystone Castle. Another performance like that, thought Feinberg, and we’ll all be out of business. In keeping with the traditions of the midnight mass, no human eye had seen the painting except the artist himself. Not the king. Not Feinberg. No one could say for sure what was behind that velvet curtain. It was one tradition, thought Feinberg, that he could do without.

Feinberg had a plan, of course. He always had a plan. If things went terribly wrong and the crowd hated the painting, he would leap to prominence in the room, jump in front of the parade, and take a leadership position in reviling the work. There was at least a fair chance, in that event, that King Jonjo might not remember Feinberg’s instrumental role in granting the royal commission to the kid in the first place.

Suddenly, the church bells were ringing and the Christmas Eve midnight mass was over and, for the first time in his life, Feinberg found himself praying. Dear God, he prayed, let the king love the painting! Let the people love the painting! Let the world not blame Feinberg!

The prayer appeared to be just in time, for King Jonjo was now making his way from his royal throne to the pulpit. The king was decked out in a very royal purple robe, his crown flashing in the torchlight, and his scepter seemingly covered with, well, fireflies. The king’s taking the proscenium made a very pretty picture, indeed. Feinberg hoped with all his heart that there was also a very pretty picture lurking inside the velvet drapery on the wall behind the king.

And then the king waved his scepter, and the trumpets blew, and two knights stepped to either side of the painting and, with great ceremonial flourish, removed the curtain. The crowd stared in stunned silence. For the painting included no Joseph, no Mary, no shepherds, and no wise men. It was comprised entirely of a distant circle of animals and two beautifully drawn centerpieces that dominated the work. One of these was the Baby Jesus on a bale of hay. The other centerpiece, with its hooves up on the hay and its head pressed perilously close to the future Savior of the world, was a pig. If that were not enough, one of the Christ child’s little hands extended lovingly to touch the pig’s adoring face.

It did not take long for the catcalls and the heckling to start. Soon the entire multitude was openly mocking the painting and calling for the head of the artist. As the mood of the crowd grew uglier, Feinberg leapt to the fore, vigorously employing plan B.

“It’s blasphemous!” he shouted. “It’s sacrilege! It’s not kosher!”

Meanwhile, King Jonjo stepped to the front of the stage and violently wielded his scepter. The crowd quieted rapidly, then hushed to total silence. Then the king, in possibly his finest hour, spoke thusly to the crowd:

“My people,” he said. “Do you not see what this artist is trying to tell us? He is providing us an indication of the kind of man this babe would grow up to be. A man who would love and embrace lepers and prisoners and prostitutes and, yes, pigs. Can you not see that this young man’s work is worthy of the loving spirit of the King of Kings? This is a great painting, I tell you. It is a work of art that shall forever be cherished in the hearts of men.”

The crowd began applauding rather tentatively, then swelled into hearty cheers and newfound adulation for the painting. Feinberg, again, was quite prominent in leading the worshipful response.

“It’s brilliant!” shouted Feinberg. “It’s a masterpiece! What was I thinking? I must have had a nail in my head.”

“Now you see,” said the king to the crowd. “Now you know.”