Roger Maxson
Pigs In Paradise
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.
“And with you,” responded the domesticated animals.
All the little lambs and piglets, the ducklings and chicks, gathered at Mel’s feet. They wanted to hear the story of how they came to be where they were in the world. “In the Beginning man stood upright in the Garden of Eden. He awoke to find himself in a mound of dung and sprang forth to greet the day. His name was Adam. As time went on, he grew increasingly bored, lonely in paradise. He asked God to send him a friend, a companion, someone he could play with. Thus, God, being the generous benevolent loving Father of all creatures, great and small, cut from Adam’s rib cage, a woman whose name was Eve. Once upon her feet, mud and dung were applied to Adam’s open wound to stop the bleeding. Since Adam was older, the first-born, and weighed more, he ruled all of Eden. Adam was a good man, a wise man, the father of us all who one day when asked by God, named each one of us as we were prodded and paraded by.”
“Wow, that’s amazing! The zebra?”
“Yes, the zebra.”
“And the beetle too?”
“Well, the beetle is an insect, but yes.”
“What about the weasel?”
“You must be referring to the parrot,” Mel said, but no one laughed.
“And the Australian dingo?” snorted one of the younger pigs.
Mel knew this was malicious intent. He would remember this porker.
“And the sheep?” said a Border Leicester.
“And he named the sheep too?” said her friend from Switzerland, a Luzein, and something of a rare breed.
“Yes,” Mel said with what was as close to a smile as he could make, considering he was a mule. “And Adam named the sheep too.” Mel knew this was good, with all good intentions for these were sheep.
They were of different breeds, though, the two dominant breeds on the moshav were the Luzein and the Border Leicester. The Border Leicester had a smooth hairless pink head with erect ears and a long roman nose with long, curly lustrous wool that was a much sought-after commodity used mostly for hand-spinning and other crafts. Although the Border Leicester were a long-wool breed with a long heavy fleece, the flock fared well in the arid environment and surrounding rugged terraced landscape. Although similar in size, the Luzein, named after the small town where the breed originated in Switzerland, their ears although pointed, dangled on either side of the long head. The Luzein stood high on their legs and were very vivacious. They, too, had fine features with a long un-fleeced head and fleece-free belly. Luzein were well regarded for their strong maternal instinct, an important mothering quality in nurturing and protecting their offspring.
Mel continued the story of man’s fall from grace when he was tempted by the sorceress Eve who fed him the apple from the Tree of Knowledge, which they were not allowed to know about. But God knew, knowing that she was a female, that she would not take no for an answer. Thus, she led Adam, and they ate the delicious apples from the tree of Knowledge. God called to them and made them answer for their indiscretions by banning them forever from the garden.
“At that moment they were made to hide their shame in animal skins and no longer solely able to live from the fruits and nuts and plants. Now they were made to kill or be killed and feed on the flesh of animals.”
“Oh, how terrible,” the animals cried and hid their heads.
“This is the wisdom of God for he is wise,” Mel said. “This has led animal-kind of all kinds to flourish and live among humankind across the face of the earth. Where humans are, so we are. Our relationship to man and how it has come to pass that man feeds us and feeds on us is that which makes the world go round. It is God’s plan, and we are in his hands.”
“Why?” asked a little whippersnapper, a piglet.
“The earth’s flat and that’s that!” gaggled the geese.
“It was to see if man could be trusted and kept from temptation, but he failed. Thus, man and woman were cast out of paradise and made to bleed and feel pain and hunger, and from that day to this one, ever since to hunt and eat animal flesh.”
The younger animals ran and hid as the chickens flew to the rafters.
“Oh, but we thank man for his fall from grace for it has allowed us to flourish and multiply and to be cared for and kept safe and nourished by man made in God’s image. So ends the word of God. Go forth now and multiply for it is your duty to serve God and man.”
“If he doesn’t sound like someone’s parrot, I don’t know who does?” Julius said to the ravens, but they did not answer. They were asleep.
By the time the service was over, both Blaise and Beatrice were asleep on their feet with Beatrice snoring ever so lightly. In a nearby pen, Molly, and her friend Praline, both leaders of their respective flocks, and not prone to such religious fervor, were also asleep, curled up warmly together in their part of the barn, where, once the euphoria wore off to allow them to sleep, the other sheep would eventually find their way. Praline was curious about most things around her. At certain moments like this, when she was in attendance, she often had questions, but would always think otherwise and not ask. If Adam named the sheep, did he not also name every breed for which she knew of at least four, including the Boer and Angora goats on the farm? The question was a simple one and she assumed the answer was just as simple. Did Adam name all the different breeds of animals? Someday she knew she would know the answer. Someday she knew she would ask the question.
Joseph, the elderly barn boar, 12-years-old, and 900 pounds, lay prostrate in one corner of the sanctuary with a small group of young piglets. “And 100 little angel-piglets fly around and land on the head of a pin.”
“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.”