Читать книгу Pigs In Paradise - Roger Maxson - Страница 17

Two months after Blaise gave birth to the red calf, Beatrice lay in the middle of the pasture struggling, kicking in an attempt to give birth herself as a silver Mercedes tour bus stopped outside the fence. A Catholic priest leading a group of teenage boys and girls stepped off the bus. They were there to witness the miracle of the red calf that would soon alter the course of human history once and for all. As it happened, they also arrived in time to witness the miracle of birth as the bay mare rolled on the ground in the pasture.

In the barn, Boris ministered to the yellow hen. He promised her everlasting life and coaxed her into prayer with him. This she gladly did. “Trust me,” he said, his tusks bleached white from the sun. “I am the way, the truth, and the light.”

“Bog, Bog!” She scattered to the rafters as the Thai laborer came rushing through the barn wearing a leather apron, carrying a blanket, and a bucket of splashing water. The hen thought that had been a close call as she came down from the rafters.

“Through me, you shall enter life eternal in the animal kingdom, which art in heaven. I am the door: by me, if any chicken enters in, she shall be saved.”

She clucked happily.

“I am the Shepherd you shalt not want.”

In the middle of the pasture, Beatrice continued with the struggle of giving birth. The Reverends Hershel Beam and Randy Lynn had returned to the farm in time to witness the birthing process. They watched from the road as the Thai laborer, his arm buried to his elbow in her birth canal, dislodged the umbilical cord from around the unborn foal’s neck.

“I don’t know about you, Randy, but I’m getting hungry,” Reverend Beam said. “Do you like Chinese?”

“Do I like Chinese? Yes, of course. I dated a girl in Tulsa once, and we used to go to this Chinese buffet all the time, but it wasn’t going to work. She was a Methodist and had it all wrong. I never went back to that Chinese restaurant, though, after we broke up. Call me sentimental, but I still miss her and dim sum.”

Reverend Beam laughed, “Yes, well, pray we find a buffet nearby.”

“Look,” shouted one of the teenage boys. In the pasture, the mare was on her side as the Thai laborer pulled the foal’s front legs and head out of her birthing canal.

“No, children,” the priest cried, “turn away!” His efforts to protect the children from the horrors of childbirth were in vain. They weren’t going anywhere just as the placenta burst and splashed against the laborer’s apron and he slipped and fell as the colt plopped out onto the ground beside him. The teenagers, usually a cool and indifferent group, applauded and cheered the sight of the newborn colt. He stood at first uneasily, but once he found his footing, he was snorting and kicking up dirt in the field and went to his mother to nurse. It had been an ordeal for all involved. Stanley came out of the barn, snorted, and galloped straight to the colt. He did not like his progeny. He did not like the colt suckling from Beatrice’s teats as he did. Stanley was not warm or paternal toward the colt. The colt was competition for the affection and attention of the other mares even though there were no other mares on the moshav. In a matter of weeks, though, his attitude toward the colt would change once the laborers rendered the strapping young colt a gelding.

“Look,” one of the kids shouted. The red calf appeared alongside her mother from the barn as cheers went up from all quarters. These children in the care of the church were impressed.

Blaise and Lizzy came out to see how Beatrice was doing and to meet the new arrival. Beatrice’s strapping young colt was prancing about in the full sunshine of day. Also, out in the full sunshine of the day, life went on for Molly, the Border Leicester, and her twin lambs as they played in the pasture alongside Praline, the Luzein, and her young lamb. As Praline grazed or tried to, her young lamb Boo chased after her, wanting to nurse from her.

“Oh,” said one young girl, “the lambs are so cute.”

“Yes, they are,” said the father, “but they are sheep, neither divine nor a gift from God.”

“I thought all animals were a gift from God,” said another.

“Well, yes, they are,” the priest agreed, “but unlike the red calf, they are not divine.” He wore a black cassock with a white cord around the waist and tied in a knot at the front. The reverend father continued, “No one saw the two mate. Therefore, it is believed the red calf may have been conceived through the miracle of Immaculate Conception.”

The teenagers were suspicious of conspicuous consumption or anything any adult told them. They were skeptical and questioned authority, their parents, and especially priests who promised a glorious afterlife next to Jesus in heaven. These children, as with children anywhere, wanted to live life now.

“That’s the consensus anyway,” the priest added. “After all, the red calf is a gift from God.”

“Father,” a young boy asked, “What’s the difference between mating and Immaculate Conception?”

The older kids laughed. The father smiled and said to the boy, “I’ll show you later.”

“Hello, Beatrice, how are you?” Blaise said.

“I don’t know, Blaise. If not for the farmhand, I don’t think he would have survived?” Beatrice licked her colt.

“But he did, Beatrice, and he’s a beautiful boy.”

“Yes, but without the fanfare you received with Lizzy.”

“Oh, please, Beatrice, honestly. Do you think I want any of this?”

Besides the priest and his dozen charges, the multitudes had come out of trailers and buses and tents to once again witness the red calf.

“They come in droves to see Lizzy, but no one seems interested in Stefon.” Beatrice led her newborn colt to the pond to wash off the afterbirth, and to receive Howard’s blessing. Lizzy followed them to the pond, and Blaise followed Lizzy. When Howard saw the red calf, he was joyous to see her and wanted to baptize the young heifer.

“What about mine?” Beatrice stamped her hooves and splashed water on the sunbaked clay that surrounded the pond.

“Yes, of course,” Howard said. He poured water over the young colt’s head and body, washing off the dried blood and after-birth that covered the colt. When Howard was done, he looked toward Blaise and her calf.

Blaise said, “Go on then, baptize away if you must.”

And Lizzy entered the pond, splashing alongside the newly baptized colt. Howard poured mud and water over the calf’s head and the red around her ears and head and nose came off into the water and a dark brown appeared around the ears and eyes. She waded out to the middle of the pond to her neck, and when Lizzy came out the other side, the red fur had washed away into the water, revealing the chocolate brown under-tone along her body as that of her mother’s, with only the slightest hint of red from her father the former Simbrah bull, Bruce.

“Look,” shouted the kids, and they saw another example of why they should not believe what any adult told them. The red calf of legend or wish-fulfillment was now gone and, in her place, a rather nice-looking, normal brown-toned, mostly dark chocolate, half-Jersey calf.

“She’s brown,” Beatrice reveled with pleasure.

“Yes, she is,” Blaise sighed. “Isn’t she beautiful.”

Cries went up from the multitudes as people fell to their knees to mourn, to moan, and to pray.

Cheers went up on the Muslim side of the border and rifle fire was heard in the distance, followed by calls to prayer.

Blaise’s darling little red heifer had waded into the pond, was baptized, and had come out the other side a lovely brown as herself. Blaise could not have been happier as all the fanfare began to wane and people drove off in billows of dust clouds to points unknown, and where she couldn’t care less.

As it happened, the American ministers also witnessed the promise of the end come to an end. Reverend Beam said, “Son, this is all the proof you need to know the Jews are cursed.”

“What do we do now, Hershel? Take it to Pastor Tim?”

“It’s nonsense in the first place. Jesus will return before these Jews ever get their red calf anyway. Besides, we just want it to happen so they’ll see once and for all the one true Messiah is Jesus, and it’ll be too late for them.”

“Should we pray on it?”

“We should be rejoicing. The Jews are cursed. It’s as simple as that and God has spoken and the world has heard. The Lord is upon us and his will shall be done. Yes, take it to Pastor Tim Hayward, gentleman farmer, and pray on it.”

Boris stood under the barn, hidden in the shadows of the pilings. Mel, along with the Rottweilers Spotter and Trooper, approached the boar from behind and startled him.

“Something must be done about the Large White.”

Boris choked and coughed. A yellow feather shot from his jaws. Mel and Boris watched as the feather twirled in the air and floated to the ground. Boris belched, “As the messiah, it cannot be expected of me to live on our daily bread alone.”

“You shall not go hungry doing the Lord’s work.”

“It is never-ending, tiresome work.” He spat.

“Thank you for your keen observation in stamping out meddling witches from our midst. You have done us a good service by ridding us of a nuisance.”

“It was nothing really,” Boris said, “mostly bone and feathers.”

“Never mind her,” Mel said. “Another reason to eliminate the Yorkshire Baptist as the heretic that he is. Why has the red calf turned brown after he’s baptized her? Ample proof he is a heretic, and as such must be dealt with.”

“He preaches abstinence, so why can’t we just allow him to fade away?”

“He needs to be made an example of, a warning of what will happen to anyone if he goes against the teachings of our Lord and Father in Heaven. As long as he remains standing, breathing, preaching against you, and your reign from the shade of the fig tree, you’ll neither have the animals under your control nor be recognized as their one true savior and messiah. He has to be dealt with or you’ll never bring all the animals to your ministry, or into the fold of our one true church.”

“We preach at opposite ends of the same pasture.”

“Bring your sermons into the barn, our church.”

“Thought the barn was your domain.”

“As far as you can see and beyond,” Mel said as he stepped out of the barn, “all is my domain and you are here out of my good graces.” He stood before Boris the boar, the savior of the animals.

“I’ll go to the monk.”

“You, foolish pig,” Mel said. “Go to the monk. He’ll live high on the hog and you’ll enter heaven through his backsides.”

The two dogs growled.

“At ease, you’ll have your day in the sun.” Mel turned to the boar, “Go and minister to your flock.”

“I will after my nap.”

The priest, indignant, led the children away. “Come on,” he said, “get back on the bus. The Jews are cursed. Fuck, we’re all cursed. We’re all going to hell in a handbasket. Oh, dear Lord, when will it ever end?” The priest and the kids got on the bus, and all the pilgrims left, disheartened, sad that they’d have to wait a little while longer for the return of Jesus and the end of the earth.

When the Chinese and Thai laborers saw the newly brown young heifer, they went to get the moshavnik.

“El hijo de puta,” Juan Perelman cursed, not wanting God to hear him, or at any rate not wanting God to understand.

The Chinese laborer who was also a gentleman asked his countryman and Taoist what Perelman had said.

“I’m not Filipino,” he replied. “I don’t know Spanish.”