Ace
Page 7
Bravely the lady grasped it.
“Good-bye, Ace,” she said. “I do hope you’ve enjoyed yourself. Have you?”
And the pig grunted twice.
A Very Important Pig
AS SOON AS the BBC staff car dropped them back at the farm on Monday morning Ted Tubbs hurried to change into his greasy old overalls and his dungy old boots to go around and make sure that his animals had not suffered any harm while in the care of a stranger.
Ace made his way to the living room, where he found Megan alone.
“Hello, Megan!” he cried. “We’re back! Did you enjoy the program?”
“Indeed to goodness, no!” said Megan.
“Why not?”
“Never saw it, see. Clarence must have pressed the wrong knob. Sat there for ages waiting for you to appear, we did, and all they showed was a lot of cowboys and Indians.”
Later, when the cat appeared, he favored the pig with a rather cold green-and-yellow stare, as though daring him to mention the matter, so Ace didn’t.
But Fortune decreed that nothing was lost. When Farmer Tubbs came in for his lunch, he turned on the one o’clock news, and farmer, pig, dog, and cat sat and watched as at the end of it the newscaster said, “Finally, for those who say the news is all doom and gloom nowadays, here is a clip from last night’s edition of That’s the Way It Goes.” And there was Ace having his trotter shaken by Hester Jantzen.
“A nationally known celebrity,” said the newscaster, “greets a brand-new one.”
—
In the days and weeks that followed, it became apparent just what a celebrity Ace had become. Only once, many years before, had a pig appeared on TV and attracted anywhere near as much publicity, and that was when Ace’s great-grandfather had defeated all the best dogs in the land to win the Grand Challenge Sheepdog Trials.
Farmer Tubbs was bombarded with letters and phone calls. Fan letters made up much of the mail, addressed to:
The Ace of Clubs
c/o Mr. T. Tubbs
The mail brought invitations to Ace to open festivals as well, or even new supermarkets, or to appear at functions as a VIP (Very Important Pig). And there were many offers to buy him for large sums of money from farmers everywhere and from more than one circus proprietor. There was also an offer of marriage (for Mr. T. Tubbs) from a lady in Weston-super-mare.
But Farmer Tubbs refused all these things.
The thought of parting with his pig never crossed his mind.
“You got your health and strength, Ted Tubbs,” he told himself as he finished the afternoon milking one day, “and you got your livestock to see to, and your pets—old Nanny and Megan and Clarence and, above all, that there Ace of Clubs. What good would any amount of money be to you if you had to part with him? Why, you wouldn’t have no one to watch West Country Farming with. You wouldn’t have no one to keep you company in the old pickup. You wouldn’t have no one to enjoy a drink with at the Bull.”
He turned off the milking machine, and almost at once he heard, from the direction of the box stall, a short but piercing squeal, a squeal that he well knew was not of fury or fear but of hunger, and he hurried away obediently to prepare a bucket of pig swill.
As for Ace, success did not spoil him. He had his friends, his favorite television programs both educational and entertaining, his occasional pint, his comfortable bed. After supper that evening he lay thankfully down in it, ready for a good twelve hours of sleep. It was odd, but he always slept on his right side, as though to show to all whom it might concern that mark emblazoned on his left.
“ ’Night, Nanny,” he said, yawning.
Dimly he heard the old goat reply as she always did: “Sleep tight. Mind the fleas don’t bite.” And then, with a last couple of grunts, the Ace of Clubs drifted happily into dreamland.
DICK KING-SMITH was born and raised in Gloucestershire, England. After twenty years as a farmer, he turned to teaching and then to writing the children’s books that have earned him critical acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic. Mr. King-Smith is the author of numerous books for children, including Babe: The Gallant Pig, which was made into an award-winning major motion picture.
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