My cousin Jerry had this pet pig. Don't know if you've ever had a pet like that. Get up every morning, fog on the ground and you go out to feed him. Gets to where you sit there telling him your life's secrets. God, I had a pet chicken once—wound up on the dinner table and I didn't eat chicken for months; thought they still might have some frozen they might try and sneak in on me. Well, Jerry had this pig.
Jerry got the pig as part of a Future Farmers project or some such thing back in the eighth grade but he never got around to doing whatever he was supposed to do with a pig so the pig just set around eating and eating until one day—years later you understand—the pig was big enough to occupy an entire couch which is what he was doing the morning Jerry left some furniture on the porch while he painted the living room ceiling.
To be truthful about the matter, I believe the pig was originally supposed to be slaughtered but Jerry is a kindly soul and, well, I suppose he just sort of took pity on him and adopted him as his own faithful companion—like a dog would be to some people. Anyway, this pig—which he never did name—had pretty much free reign of the place most of the time except when he took to chasing chickens around in the yard in which case he wound up in the pen. This pen, now, was only designed for a pig about so big but by the time Jerry graduated from high school, you could have saddled that pig and rode him into town.
Well, on this particular morning, Jerry was not pleased to find his pig lying there that way. Not that the pig wasn't usually on the porch. See, Jerry used to lie up there with him talking about tractors and life and I wouldn't be surprised but what that pig just sort of assumed Jerry had left that couch out there as a birthday present or something so of course he was indignant himself when Jerry came out yelling and swinging and took the couch back and then had the nerve to try and lock him in the pen which was really just a mutual understanding of sorts since the pig could have gotten out any time and being as Jerry was not being understanding, that was mutual with the pig.
From what I gather, the pig chased Jerry off the porch and through the house before charging out the back and into the briers with Jerry's shotgun raising Caine behind. The pig being low and blessed with momentum, well, he shot through those briers like a Jap torpedo and old Jerry seeing red and beyond any reasoning was down on all fours screaming hateful things at the top of his lungs, crawling through as best he could and suddenly realized he’d lost him. Then all of sudden there's this loud thundering and before he could raise to shoot, that pig come blazing through there all nine hundred pounds and run over him with every one of them.
When he finally got up, the pig was sitting in his pen rooting on a corn cob and Elbert Ramey was over wondering what the fuss was all about. He calmed down some and Elbert got him to put the gun down, afraid it might go off any second. But the more Jerry looked at that pig lying there chewing that corn cob and all and just watching him with those beady little eyes, the more he thought about why he had gotten him in the first place.
Well, next thing you know, he and Randy Jones are hauling his pet to town in a horse trailer, which is the only thing they could find big enough to hold it. The big boy must have known what was coming cause he hollered and grunted an' squealed all the way there, kicking at the rail the whole time. Now Jerry may have had a second thought or two about what he was doing but he's funny about things and when he all of a sudden makes up his mind about something, well, that's that.
They had to take him around back to the cattle shut cause he was so big and come to find that the way he was turned around in there, they couldn't hardly get him out. So they're up on the rail juicing him with this cattle prod and that pig screaming “WEEE!…WEEE!…” when up come two fellas and one carrying this pig in his arms and his friend says, "Lem, are you sure it's time ta kill this thing?" and right then that big boy wheel over backwards and fell on the chute and smashed it to smitherinies. Before you could spit, that pig was coming round the corner of the Piggly Wiggly on the other side and chasing some old black lady screaming, “Call the PO-lice! Call the PO-lice!”
By the time Jerry got there, everybody inside seems like was out and cornered the pig by the bank. Well, Randy Jones figures they could line everybody up like a wall and scare him back around the other side so they opened up the ware house where they keep the empty lard cans and wet the floor down real good and opened the other door to the yard. Everybody yelled and that pig jumped and come shooting round there and right through that door. Well, sir, the pig hit that wet floor spinning like a top an' slip smack into all them lard cans stacked up so nice and neat an' burst out the other side, cans flying everywhere. Man alive, sounded like all Hartselle coming down!
I never saw so much pork come off of one pig before in all my life. Jerry never did take another pet but he finally managed to get married to some girl from Wren. As for the pig, I wonder sometimes if he hadn't felt misjudged somehow.
