The Christmas Pig: A Very Kinky Christmas (9 page)

I
T IS SAD BUT TRUE
that people and animals in real life rarely comport themselves as they are often portrayed in art. It would have been nice to believe that Jezebel the noble white steed might come galloping through the flames to the rescue. But she did not. She huddled in a far corner of the barn without giving forth with so much as a whinny to wake the boy. Nell the cow stood mute with her eyes in a dull glaze. The lamb was nowhere to be seen. The rooster did not crow. The dog was asleep. The cat had gotten out of the barn to save her own hide at the first sign of flames. There were no wise men standing at the door ready to come to the rescue. There was only a lantern that had fallen off an easel in an old barn in the dark before the dawn. And there was an extremely exhausted little boy with a quilt wrapped tightly around him, still sound asleep in his chair.

The story could have ended there and by all rights it probably should have. Dreams come to an end every moment of every day and night, and one way or another, dreamers always seem to awaken to a world unfortunately unpopulated by wise men and talking pigs.

As the smoke and flames billowed up in the middle of the barn floor, tongues of fire began eating through the scattered hay in multiple directions. One of those pathways of flame would very soon be blocking the doorway to the barn. It was at this fateful moment that the boy felt the quilt being suddenly pulled away from him. He tried to pull it back around him. He felt a sharp nudge in his ribs. He heard Valerie’s voice screaming. It would have been impossible for anyone who heard that sound not to wake up. And finally, because of the heroic actions of one brave pig, he did.

Benjamin attempted partially successfully to smother the genesis of the fire with the thick comforter his aunt had provided him. He ran to the water trough and started to throw buckets of water on the expanding flames. The animals, with the notable exception of Valerie, were now all wide awake and panicking in the smoky barn. The pig stood valiantly by the easel, as if preparing to make a last stand to protect the painting.

At this dire moment, Will Wallace, having risen early to do the farm chores, smelled the smoke and came bursting into the barn. For the next few moments Will and Benjamin fought a pitched battle with the flames while the animals raced around the barn in crazy circles like a frenzied carousel of death. The man and the boy repeatedly doused the smoldering flames with bucket after bucket of water from the trough. The fire was all but extinguished by the time Uncle Floyd and Aunt Joan came running into the barn.

The first thing that happened was something that no one there had expected to see. It was a unique occurrence that had never transpired before. It was Aunt Joan and Benjamin embracing each other. Valerie nodded her head approvingly, but in all the excitement and emotion, of course, nobody really paid much notice to the pig. But Valerie, being her usual modest self, fully realized what she’d done. She’d not only saved the boy’s life, but she’d done her part in helping to bring him out of that lonely, terrible shell in which he’d been living.

“Thank God you boys put out the fire before anyone was hurt,” said Uncle Floyd. “The painting appears to be undamaged. Very fine work, Benjamin. We’ve just been informed by special courier, however, that the piece must be ready to be picked up three full days before Christmas. The roads are uncertain at this time of year, and the king wants to take no chances on the painting arriving late to Eddystone Castle. That leaves but two days to complete the effort. You can do it, lad. I know you can.”

“Surely you’re not serious,” said Aunt Joan. “You can see the exhausted state Benjamin is in. He can barely hold his head up. And no more working alone in the barn late at night, young man.”

“Darling,” said Uncle Floyd. “You must not let your heart take dominance over your head. The lad is a lad but he’s also an artist! He has but two days remaining to complete his art. For the sake of us all, he may have to work day
and
night.”

“I don’t like it, Floyd. It’s too dangerous. I don’t want him working alone all night in this barn.”

“All right,” said Uncle Floyd. “Then I’ll stay here at the barn all night with him if necessary. The work must be finished on time.”

After that, things settled down a bit. Floyd and Will stayed around to clean up the debris caused by the fire. Aunt Joan went into the house with Benjamin to cook him his oatmeal. And Valerie? She trotted quietly back to her pen and, looking like any other pig in the world, she lay there alone in the mud.

Will Wallace, after he’d finished admiring his depiction as one of the three wise men, did not feel so wise just at the moment. What Floyd had said seemed right to him. The boy was an artist and his job was to complete the painting on time. Otherwise the farm would be lost. Yet what Joan had said also seemed right to Will Wallace. It was unhealthy and unwise to allow the boy to push himself so hard. He was already in a state of exhaustion. Let the kid rest.

Will Wallace wondered how it was possible that Floyd and Joan could hold such diametrically opposite opinions on the subject. Yet what the boy’s uncle had said was right. And yet what the boy’s aunt had said was also right. “How could they
both
be right?” he asked himself. He didn’t know it, but he was right, too.

And late that night in the deserted barn the easel stood alone in the cold, leftover moonlight. Valerie stood alone, too, wistfully gazing at the unfinished work of art. It no longer bothered her so much that the painting included every animal in the barn except herself. Life, she knew, was merely a series of disappointments, an accumulation of losses. Whether one was a pig or a person, sometimes there was nothing to do but wallow in the mud and the grime that were the brick and the mortar of the road that was the journey of life.

They’re all waiting for the Christ child,
Valerie thought to herself.

And, indeed, she was right. Every animal appeared to be watching the blank center of the canvas for the babe in the manger to appear. The wise men stood at the door waiting expectantly for the empty space in the middle to fill up with glory, and sweetness, and hope. And outside the barn, thought Valerie, it was just the same. Every living being was waiting for love.

Valerie suddenly felt very lonely. She’d heard what Benjamin’s uncle had said and what his aunt had said and she knew that she and the boy might never be alone in the barn again. Their nocturnal conversations had been a thing of joy to Valerie and now they may have come to an end. In truth, she missed Benjamin very much. She knew that he was a boy. She knew that she was a pig. But they’d been such good friends.

Benjamin did not return that day. And, though Valerie waited up for him, he did not come back that night. In fact, it wasn’t until the following morning that Benjamin, accompanied by his uncle, walked into the barn in a very brusque and businesslike fashion, sat down at the easel, and began mixing some paints for his final assault on the canvas. As far as Benjamin was concerned, his mind was now in rather of a jumble. All the pressure of a lifetime lived in silence, of having to be the family’s breadwinner at age ten, of a dream interrupted by a fire, almost made him wonder if the whole thing hadn’t been a dream. In the bright, cold light of the new day, that certainly seemed like a possibility. He almost didn’t want to find out. It would be like finding out that life was but a dream. And besides, right now he didn’t have the time.

Benjamin began painting like a boy with his hair on fire, which, indeed, had almost happened quite literally two nights before. To him, his uncle wasn’t there, none of the animals were there, nothing was there but the brush and the canvas. He’d never spoken before he’d met Valerie, he thought, and perhaps he might never speak again. Maybe the fire had caused a certain kind of damage that could not readily be seen or identified. Maybe it had destroyed a dream.

Uncle Floyd, though he’d become quite adept at carrying on one-way conversations with the lad, was somewhat reverential about interrupting his genius at work. As a farmer, he was not a big talker anyway. He maintained silence now as he went about preparing to milk the cow. Nor did Valerie even bother to come out of her pen. With the uncle there in the bright daylight, and the boy in a seeming daze of sorts, perhaps the magic was gone. Maybe Cuddles the cat had got her tongue, she thought. She realized that she and Benjamin were not, of course, star-crossed lovers like Romeo and Juliet. Maybe they were something even sadder. Maybe they were star-crossed friends.

To Benjamin, completing the canvas felt very much like chopping wood or performing some other mundane farm chore. He was quite possibly unaware of the fact but many great artists have described their work similarly. Flashes of brilliance are few and far between, and often they go unrecognized by the artist himself. They are only spotted many years later by the eye of the critic or the casual viewer.

In what seemed like an incredibly short period of time, the painting was complete and Benjamin had left the building. He was bound for his bowl of oatmeal by the time his uncle, carrying a bucket of milk, walked over to the easel to peruse the boy’s work. Predictably perhaps, the farmer and his wife had been pressed into action as Joseph and Mary. They seemed to look the part, the farmer thought, all things considered.

The Baby Jesus, he recognized, was identical to the long-ago-lost doll that he himself had once given the boy. The farmer was not a professor of psychic phenomena, but he appreciated the fact that most young boys would not have an eidetic memory of a doll that had disappeared before they were two. Though the farmer probably did not see things quite that way, it could be said that because of Benjamin’s unique affliction, his childhood had very possibly vanished not long after the doll.

As a certain pig had once observed, life was an accumulation of losses.

T
HAT NIGHT, ONCE AGAIN
, the boy felt like a dreamer who could not sleep. Was his life all a dream? he wondered. Valerie? Visiting the king? The royal commission? The fire in the barn? Would he ever wake up and be like other people? When he conducted magical conversations with a pig, was that a dream, too? Or was everything else a dream? He had no answers, only questions. And the final question was: What use were dreams if all they ever did was come true?

In an even larger sense, however, Benjamin was well aware that something strange was happening to him. For better or worse, he was slowly but surely awakening to the world around him. This could only be a bad thing if the world was bad, he thought. Part of him did not want to find out. But a far bigger, deeper part of him had felt oddly comforted when he’d embraced Aunt Joan after the fire. And talking to Valerie may all have been some kind of crazy dream, but at least it had been a happy one. With all his young heart he did not want it to be a dream but perhaps, like everything else, it was.

Now Benjamin comforted his troubled soul by listening to the murmurings of his aunt and uncle in their nearby room. They sounded like a waterfall in a peaceful garden. He loved to hear their murmurings.

“Will Wallace has told me an interesting story,” his uncle was saying. “He says that he’s been hearing strange voices in the barn late at night this past week.”

“Really, dear. That
is
strange.”

“Will Wallace says that one of the voices sounded very much like that of a young boy. He believes the voice was Benjamin’s.”

“Good Lord!”

“That’s what I said to Will Wallace.”

“Do you think we should have a doctor look at him?”

“Look at who?”

“Will Wallace, of course. Benjamin’s never spoken in his life. Why should Will Wallace be hearing him now?”

“I can’t answer that one,” said the uncle.

“If Will Wallace is hearing voices, this could be very serious. Joan of Arc heard voices and look what happened to her.”

Benjamin liked Joan of Arc. He did not like what had happened to her. But he was very excited to learn that Will Wallace had heard voices. So it hadn’t been a dream after all. The murmuring was silent for a while. Then the boy could hear it again.

“There has been a change in Benjamin,” said Aunt Joan thoughtfully. “One of the most precious moments in my life was when he came into my arms after the fire in the barn. That was a lovely experience.”

“The lad did a beautiful job completing the nativity scene, as well,” said his uncle. “Damn fine effort. You and I, perhaps you’d like to know, are officially presented as Mary and Joseph.”

“How thoughtful of Benjamin.”

“He’s a thoughtful lad. He’s a talented lad. If he could only just—”

“Don’t get into it now, Floyd. He is what he is. Benjamin is Benjamin and we’re very lucky to have him.”

“I couldn’t agree more, darling.”

Benjamin did not like the murmurings so much when they were murmurings about him. It made him a bit uncomfortable to be hearing about himself. He preferred to just be able to sit inside the waterfall and listen to the magical, musical messages murmuring all about him. At the moment, however, there was silence again. Silence and more silence. He tossed and turned in his bed, unable to sleep, unable to dream, unable to clear his head of odd thoughts. One of them was that the murmuring reminded him rather fondly of Valerie when she spoke to him. At long last, the sounds commenced again.

“Did I tell you,” his uncle was saying, “that I received word from Long Lama today that the courier from Eddystone Castle is scheduled to arrive in the morning? He is to deliver the painting to the court. In the event that I am in the barn or the field when he arrives, please alert me. I’d like to be on hand when the art is transferred into his custody.”

“Of course, darling. What does the babe in the manger look like?”

“It is the spitting image of that little doll I gave the lad back when he, too, was practically a babe in a manger.”

“That little doll of Benjamin’s,” said Aunt Joan dreamily. “I’d all but forgotten that little doll.”

“Yes, well that little bugger has now been resurrected as the Lamb of God.”

“Floyd!”

“Well, it’s true. And a fine-looking babe he is.”

“I think we should be very proud of Benjamin,” said Aunt Joan. “If the king’s commission is a generous one, the boy may well have saved the farm. Not only that, but if the unveiling of the painting at the midnight mass is successfully received, he might just become the most famous artist in the kingdom!”

“I don’t think Benjamin really wants fame, though.”

“I know what he really wants,” said his aunt. “He wants to be just like any other normal ten-year-old boy.”

“Well, he’s not,” said Uncle Floyd. “Let’s not discuss matters we have no control over. Right at the moment he’s the family breadwinner and that’s a lot to ask of even someone my age. It’s never an easy life trying to support a family as a farmer.”

“You’ve done fine, darling.”

“I’ve done fine except that without Benjamin we’d lose this farm.”

“Don’t be hard on yourself, Floyd. You’ve always worked hard and you’ve done your best and that’s all anybody can ask of anybody.”

“I suppose. There is one piece of good news, however, as far as our finances go. Do you remember Lord Myers of Keswick, the nice nobleman who escorted Benjamin and myself back home from the court?”

“Why, yes, dear. What about him?”

“You recall he took a stroll with me through the barnyard when he was here?”

“Yes.”

“Well, he wants a Christmas pig to roast for his family. He’s prepared to pay a fine price for our pig and he’s suggested that the royal couriers could pick her up tomorrow morning when they come to get the painting.”

“But, darling,” said Aunt Joan. “That pig is so small and so young.”

“In today’s market, small young pigs are considered the most succulent. I don’t feel good about getting rid of the pig either, but that’s what we raise them for.”

“I know we need the money, darling, but—”

“Don’t fret yourself,” said Uncle Floyd. “The animal will not be slaughtered here. The couriers will see that it is done before they reach the court. They’ll see that everything is taken care of.”

“Well—”

“Now, now, it’s all settled. They’ll be here in the morning to fetch the painting and the pig.”

“Good night, darling.”

“Good night, dear.”