The Story Until Now: A Great Big Book of Stories

Piggy

8 8 8 8 8 Theron swore it. A great winged figure swooped out of the sky one night and threw itself on Duchess, the old Percheron. Theron ran in the house as soon as it happened and tried to tell his Daddy, but his Daddy just pushed him aside and said “Don’t talk dirty,” and that was the end of it until the mare foaled the next year. The colt was pink, plastic pink, like the thumb-sized baby dolls in the ten-cent store, and Theron’s Daddy had to look close to see the light planting of white hair. The mare’s pink baby was round as a couple of barrels, and when he finally got up he teetered on legs too spindly to support a puppy dog. Right off the Pinckneys named him Piggy. Mostly, Piggy was Theron’s pet. Before Piggy came, Theron didn’t have anybody in the crumbling old house. There was nobody to talk to but his mother and nobody to play with but the twins, who were too small even to sit up alone, so he just naturally took to Piggy, and pretty soon he was keeping Piggy right outside his bedroom window, in a stall made by the caved-in part of the porch. Theron stuffed hay between the carved railings so Piggy could eat lying down, and he hung a grain bucket from one of the marble pillars, where Piggy could poke it with his nose. His mother gave him a big flowered bowl her granddaddy had used to make punch in, so when Piggy wanted water he wouldn’t have to go all the way down to the trough. Cold nights, when winter was frosting the marsh grass, Mrs. Pinckney would look out the window at Piggy shivering, and she’d get a quilt or Mr. Pinckney’s Navy parka and throw it over Piggy in his stall. Sometimes she’d let Theron go outside and sit with him, and Theron would light a little fire right under Piggy’s nose. The night of the hurricane, Mrs. Pinckney made Theron bring Piggy inside the big double doors to take shelter in the living room, and after that Piggy used to spend a lot of time inside. Mrs. Pinckney would send Theron after him whenever Mr. Pinckney was shrimping out of Port Royal or spending his money in Beaufort, the nearest big town. He had clean habits when he was indoors, and he’d fold his legs under him by the fire with his head in Theron’s lap, and blow little noises through his nose at Luvver and Fester, the twins. Mrs. Pinckney would sit in the chair that Theron’s great-great-great-great had Piggy 102 k i t r e e d brought with him all the way from England, watching Theron tying knots in Piggy’s yellowed mane, and she’d think how nice it was for Theron to have a pet. Daytimes, when Theron was gone, Piggy used to call to her, and many’s the time when she sat on the porch rail, just looking at him. He even tried to follow her a couple of times, getting unsteadily to his feet, but she made him keep to his stall and wait for Theron, because he belonged to the boy. Theron’s Daddy felt differently about things. He never went near the stall when he could help it, and the very mention of Piggy made him mad. He had a right to be galled. He’d been pouring grain into Piggy for years, hoping he’d get strong enough to pull a plow, or at least to take the twins out in a basket cart, but Piggy went all shivery every time Mr. Pinckney brought the cart around and his legs buckled every time Mr. Pinckney tried to put the harness on. Mr. Pinckney would swear at him and then Piggy would have to eat some more so he could get his strength up again. Even Theron couldn’t get him to move. At first Mr. Pinckney put up with it because Piggy was just a colt and the rest of the family liked him a lot. But by the time Theron was fifteen Piggy was five years old and Mr. Pinckney had had just about enough. He was eating more grain than Duchess and Rollo put together and he hadn’t done a lick of work in his whole pink...