by Paul Griffin
Double nodded at the piglet. “And this little fella, he doesn’t get a name?”
“When you name somebody, he stays with you forever,” I said.
“All the more reason to name him, no?”
The pig lapped milk from my palm. He was watching me. People say the world is a blur to a piglet at two weeks, but he definitely seemed to be taking me in. His eyes were light brown. His name came in a whisper, or I imagined it did. “Marty.”
Double wiggled his hearing aid. “Marty, you said?”
“Double? Tell me something I don’t know about my dad.”
“Well, he had a smile on him, tell you what.”
“You told me that a million times,” I said.
“That smile though, Renz, it was just plain true. Like the way you’re smiling now. Caught you there, didn’t I?”
“I always feel like you’re not telling me everything about him,” I said. “You get this look, squinty, like you’re trying to see something far, far away.”
“I get to missing him is all,” Double said.
“I know,” I said, except really I didn’t. I only knew him from pictures and letters, from the neck of his guitar, where his fingers had worn the fret board just right. “Do you think he’d mind, my dad? That I named a pig after him?”
“Nothing wrong with a pig, Renz. They’re smarter than dogs even. I read it in a book, so there you go. Besides, anybody can see that the way you mean it, it’s to honor him, your pop. The proudest moment of my life? When you were named after me.” He messed up my already messed-up hair. “Boy, the way that piglet’s looking into you? I think he’s kind of imprinted on you, son.”
“Imprinted?”
“When I was a boy we raised chickens. There’s always the chick that looks different, the one who gets picked on or shunned. I’d hand-feed him, he’d look into my eyes as he ate. Forever after he’d shadow me. When a young one senses kindness, he’ll follow it to the end of time. He’ll pledge himself to it, because it feels—”
“Just plain true,” I said.
“That’s right, son. That’s how it is for little Marty here. Sure, he may remember you from last week when you were checking in on Reggie, but it’s different now. His family’s gone, and he’s a bit lost, trying to fit in. He’s looking for a best friend, and he’s chosen you—look at him there.”
Marty rested his head on my chest. His little tail flicked back and forth. It occurred to me, why I loved animals so much: They don’t know how to lie.
Already I knew how bad it would hurt, the day he’d take that last walk up the ramp into Mom’s truck for the auction.
“I’m not letting myself get attached to him, though,” I said. “I’m not. I swear it.”
“You swear what?” Pal said. She came in with her blanket tied over her shoulders into a cape, like a superhero.
5. DOOT-DOOT-DOO
Pal plunked down and stole Marty from me. “Oh, quit grumbling, Bella. I want him so bad, Renz, I might die.”
I’d have given him to her too, to save him from the butcher, but they didn’t let you keep farm animals where Pal lived, in The Tract, where the lots were small.
“I got a new song I want to try on him,” Pal said. “Look out, he’s nibbling the button off my shirt.”
I scratched behind his ears. “Easy now, Marty.”
“You named him Marty?” Pal said. “Does Mom know?” She’d been calling my mom hers since the day they met.
“Let’s hear this song you dreamed up,” Double said.
Pal handed me Marty and took up her guitar. She strummed a rockabilly pace and sang:
Lorenzo rides into the town
Somethin’ bad is goin’ down
Bom-ba-bom-ba-bom
Bom-ba-bom-ba-bom
Bom-ba-bom-ba-bom-bom
Doot-doot-doo
That John Mason unleashed Keeth
Old man laughs as we all flee
Bom-ba-bom-ba-bom
Bom-ba-bom-ba-bom
Bom-ba-bom-ba-bom-bom
Doot-doot-doo
Hey Renzo,
You’re our last hope now
Hey Renzo,
Please don’t say nope now
No, no, no-no no-no Renz don’t go!
Ha-ha-ha-ha-hee
Hee-he-ha-he-ho
Ho-ho-ho-he-ho-hey
Hey-hey-hey
Marty stared at her wide-eyed. He sniffed at her and made squeaky sounds. His tail flicked a little faster than Pal’s strumming.
Renzo always brings the sun
Oh Keeth and Mason better run
Double hooted and clapped and sang along, and finally I joined in.
Bom-ba-bom-ba-bom
Bom-ba-bom-ba-bom
Bom-ba-bom-ba-bom-bom
Doot-doot-doooooo . . .
Bella’s tail beat the straw, and little Marty stretched upward to lick my neck. Pal hummed the song to its finish, and I felt the vibration in Marty. He groaned happy as a dog lying in a sun slant, and you’re scratching that mutt’s belly, and everything’s all right.
6. YOU KNOW YOU’RE NOT KEEPING HIM
The next morning, Marty was my alarm clock. His oinking woke me.
Bella had been up all night with the pups bothering her for milk, and I wanted her to get some rest. I scooped Marty to my chest and carried him to the box fridge we kept in the barn. I poured some milk into a baby bottle and warmed it in the microwave we’d put out there.
Pal moped in. “I messed up,” she said.
“What now?” I said.
“What do you mean what now?”
“Well?”
“Mom read the letter you wrote to your dad.”
I’d tucked my notebook into the tool cubby. It wasn’t there, of course. “What were you doing spying on my homework anyway?”
“I thought it was your diary, duh. I couldn’t fall asleep. I needed something to read. All you people have in the house are those tractor mower catalogs. The midnight milk and cookies attack got me, and I forgot I left the notebook on the kitchen table, I guess. Mom said come get you.”
I headed out with Marty cradled to my chest. “You know she always checks my homework.”
“Then she would’ve seen it anyway. You ever think maybe you wanted her to see it? It was a beautiful letter, Renz, even if it is going to get you killed.”
“So you just had to name that pig Marty,” Mom said. She pecked at her beat-up laptop, and the kitchen table wobbled. She nodded at Marty, cradled to my chest. “You know that’s livestock, right? You know you’re not keeping him.”
Marty’s eyes were on me as he went at that milk bottle. He burped pretty loud for a little guy.
“Lorenzo?”
“I know, Ma.”
“Mom, please,” Pal said, “you can’t murder Marty, you just can’t.”
“Miss Paloma Lee, get a brush through that hair and another to your teeth while you’re at it.”
Pal rolled her eyes on her way out.
Mom tapped my notebook, opened to the letter I wrote my dad. “Renzo, how could you? The Army? That’s your plan? You?”
“What do you mean, me?”
“You’re not cut out for it. Not at all. You’ll drive me to my grave young.”
Double limped up the porch steps with a shopping bag. By the shape of it, he’d picked up a carton of eggs and a box of no-name pancake mix—half the cost, twice as delicious, he liked to say. One look at Mom’s frown then mine stopped him midstride. “Uh-oh,” he said.
“Now I’m running late to meet the accountant, and I’m not even dressed,” Mom said to Double, like it was his fault, and then she huffed out.
“Double, you think I’m tough enough to be in the Army?” I said.
“What’s this now?”
he said.
I explained it all to him, and he said, “Let’s see that letter.”
7. DEAR DAD,
Sorry I took so long to write you back. Even now this feels a little crazy. My friend Paloma says being a little crazy is good, especially if you want to be a rock star, which I do, I guess. But stuff like that, being famous and everything, that only happens to other people. So, unless there’s a miracle and I make the big time with Pal, here’s my plan.
After high school, I’m heading down to the recruiting station next to John Mason’s office there, and I’m signing up to be a medic. I’m going to serve my country, like you and Double and a lot of people around here did. I want to make you proud.
You said you weren’t sure you believed in angels, but I have to, or at least try to, because I can’t let myself think you don’t exist anymore, somehow, someway. Somebody as awesome as you can’t stop being. If you are watching over me, you saw I named my pig after you. Sorry about that. There’s something in him that makes me think of you. The just plain true part, like Double said.
Dad, you’re my hero because you were as brave as anybody could be. Plus, thank you for your guitar. I feel like I know you a little better when my fingertips are where yours were.
Sincerely, from your son,
Lorenzo Ventura
8. GUTS AND PANCAKES
It’s a fine letter,” Double said. “It’s a just plain true letter for sure.”
“But do you think I’ll have the guts for it someday, the Army?”
“Son, you have the guts to do anything. You’d be a wonderful medic. You’d have a great life in California too, doing the music with Pal. You got plenty of time to sort it all. Meanwhile, enjoy being eleven. Now, I’m out of milk. Grab me a quart from the barn fridge so we can get hopping on these pancakes.”
By the time I was out to the barn and back, Mom was in the kitchen, dressed for the accountant. She was crying on Double’s shoulder. I held up at the door and spied out her saying, “But how, Daddy? How could he do that to me?”
Did she mean me and my plan to join the Army? Or was she talking about my dad?
That night I huddled with Bella, Marty and the pups as I looked over my hero assignment.
I tore the letter from my notebook and started over with an essay about a Steelers Hall of Famer, Mean Joe Greene. Turns out he was nice when I met him on his autograph line. It was old-timers’ day, the father-son school trip. Double took me.
I strummed softly until the pups fell asleep. I turned my dad’s guitar over to the back. He’d written in blue marker across the belly:
You can strum me, sure,
You can pick me too.
But when you drum me, pure,
My heart comes through.
My heart is a drum.
I’d asked Mom what it meant, and I got the usual, she had no idea. Even the details of his death were fuzzy. All we knew was he’d been shot in a firefight. Not the one where he got the Bronze Star for saving Raj. It was ten weeks after that, a week before I was born.
Marty was staring at me. He wriggled out of the pack, into my lap.
Holding him was different than holding the other pups. He needed more protection. His mother had been taken from him, yes, but there was something else too, something that made me think he was going to be in for a hard time in his life, no matter how long it lasted, or how short.
9. THIS DREAM IS REAL
Friday three weeks later was warm enough to eat lunch outside. Pal tuned her guitar. “That fall festival they do in Juliette?” she said. “They’re opening the microphone to newcomers. We need to get up there. This isn’t any school concert where a few dead-tired parents straggle in. They get a thousand-plus serious music fans over there.”
“When is it?” I said.
“Next week.”
“You crazy? Playing in front of that many people? We’d need a month of rehearsals, more like two.”
Richie Calvo strutted up to us. If I was the biggest kid in the grade, he was the littlest. “’Sup Renz? Heard you got puppies.”
“Yup.”
“Heard they got Keeth blood,” he said.
“Could be.”
“Save like the meanest one for me, ’kay?”
Pal sighed. “You don’t have to act like you’re the type of boy who wants a mean dog, Richie. Now shoo. Renzo and I have to rehearse.” She nudged my knee with hers. “I need to know you’re committed. I’m talking about California, the music. This dream is real, no plan B for me. You with me or not?”
“Course I’m with you.”
“I’m not so sure, after reading that letter to your dad. Promise we’ll do the open mike in the spring then, at the cinco de mayo fair.”
“I swear.”
“All right then.” She strummed and sang, and a crowd gathered. This girl Loretta Frietas hummed along off-key. People made fun of her because she was six feet tall and because of her smile. Her front tooth was a little chipped. She was known to trip on occasion.
I liked that Loretta smiled big even though she had a messed-up tooth. She was cool.
By the time I got home Double had started the fuzz puppets on milk bottles to give poor Bella a break. We had them penned in my room now with a baby gate. “How we doing?” I said.
Double put his magic hand to my shoulder, heavier this time.
“We lost one,” I said. “Bobby, right?” He was the littlest.
“I’m sorry, son.” Double had wrapped the pup in a towel. The other pups shoved each other to get at the milk bottles, but Marty? He snuggled the pup who’d died.
“Tell you what, Double.”
“Tell me what.”
“This pig is special. He’s got soul, know what I mean?”
“I do,” he said.
I buried Bobby in the orchard. Mom was raking deadwood. When I finished she gave me her water bottle. She smoothed down my mess of hair. She was almost smiling. “You’re looking more and more like him.”
“Who?” I said. “Him?”
I was about to ask her how I looked like him, and why was she still so mad at him all these years later, but she turned away and got back to her deadwood.
10. GIVE ME YOUR PAW. I MEAN HOOF.
The first day of November the pups were romping in the kitchen when Mom came in. She’d gone down to the bank to beg for a loan to help us make it through to next year’s harvest.
“They give you the money?” I said.
Mom shook her head. “Must these animals roughhouse in my kitchen? That pig, ugh. He’ll eat the linoleum off the floor. I want you to feed him double rations. The sooner we fatten him up, the sooner we get rid of him. Will you look at him now? Rolling around like a dog.”
“He’s copying the other ones,” I said.
“He’s not another one. He’s a pig. I just don’t know about anything anymore. A pig puppy. It’s ludicrous. Surely we’re at the end of the world.”
The third week of November, Pal put Marty on the barn scale. “Forty-two and a half,” she said. “What’s slaughter weight?”
“At two fifty, Mom’ll start checking the auction schedule.” I scooted Marty off the scale, and he wiggled into the epic wrestling match the pups had going on.
Pal fiddled with her guitar. “I dreamed about her again last night.”
“Your mom?” I said.
“We sang to each other, in color too. She wore her red dress, yellow flowers in her hair. Sometimes I think she’s trying to talk to me from heaven. Isn’t that crazy?”
“Nope,” I said. “I bet she is.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes.” Some days I could convince myself that her mom and my dad were watching, still caring about us. Today wasn’t one of those days, but sometimes you have to lie a little to your best friend and maybe even yourself, because no
t lying hurts too much.
“Mrs. Nikita’s closing the salon,” Pal said. “The Bread & Better’s shutting down too, I hear.”
“Everybody’s leaving to look for jobs in the city,” I said.
“California, Renz.”
“California,” I said.
“It’s sunny all the time.”
“We can surf.”
“People will understand us out there,” Pal said. “Understand we were born to sing, to play.”
I threw a tennis ball to the far end of the barn. Maniac Eddie chased it down until a mouse skittered across the crumbly cement. Eddie went for the mouse, to heck with the ball.
“Almost,” Pal said.
“Wait,” I said. “Watch.”
Marty pounced on the ball and brought it to me. I gave him a cookie. Now all the dogs rushed me, Bella too.
“Sit,” I said.
Bella sat and Marty copied.
“Paw,” I said.
Bella put one up, and Marty put up a hoof.
“Marty,” I said, and he leaned into my leg and wagged his tail. “What, boy? Why you looking at me that way, Marty?”
“If you ever disappeared, that pig would die of heartbreak,” Pal said.
It felt good, the responsibility. He picked me to be the one who kept him safe, for a little while anyway.
“Renz, how are we going to save him?”
“We have time,” I said, but really we didn’t. Marty would weigh two fifty by summer, if not before. He cocked his head and leaned harder into me.
11. THE STRIPED ONES
On a sleety December day, Mom led two girls and their parents into the barn. Ray-Ray attacked the older girl with kisses.
“How come you got a pig mixed in with your puppies?” the younger girl said. “C’mere, piggy.”
Marty trotted over and offered his hoof.
“Mom, can we take this chunky monkey pig home too?”
“I don’t think he’d do so well in the apartment,” she said. “Lorenzo, which would be the best pup for us?”