Mr. Webbers

It was bright and sunny on the day of June 15th, 1859.

The storm clouds rolled in quick.

Lighting struck me…

The clouds were gone in seconds.

I had been eating slop out of my troff when it hit.

It knocked me off my feet. The slop splattered everywhere.

I was winded.

New thoughts had entered my mind. Thoughts of art, the beauty of life, the ugliness of death.

Thoughts about the speech patterns of the Siberian Lynx and how their vocalizations might change if they were to swim underwater.

Thoughts about the meaning of life, and the human who claimed to own me, John.

And I knew how to speak English.

I remembered the farmer speaking to me, and I finally understood what’d he’d been telling me all these years in captivity.

I got up, shook it off, then walked back to my troff.

I tried eating more slop. It tasted disgusting.

I walked up to farmer John.

“How can I help you today, Mr. Webbers,” John asked and chuckled.

“Do you have anything other then slop to eat. It’s disgusting,” I said.

He stared at me for a full minute.

“Did you hear me? John, you alright?” I asked.

John fainted.

Were pigs not supposed to talk? Was I not supposed to answer his question?

I used my mouth to drag a bucket of dirty water over to John and hoofed the bucket with my back legs, splashing his face with the viscous brown liquid inside.

He woke up with wide eyes. He asked me if I had really just spoke or if he was having a fever dream.

“I spoke. And I want something other than slop,” I said.

“S-s-sure!” John stuttered. He ran inside the house.

John came back with a charcuterie board full of meats and cheese’s.

“There better not be any pork or ham on that,” I said.

He turned around and threw a few pieces of meat into the bushes.

“Not anymore,” John said and tried to smile.

He put the plate on the ground, and I devoured twelve pounds of food in just under a minute.

“Impressive,” John said.

“I’ve been told I eat like a pig,” I said, then burped.

“I can’t believe you can talk. I’m taking you to the county fair tomorrow,” John said and smiled.

I didn’t mind going with John to the fair. He was one of the few farmers in town that didn’t kill his pigs for food. He kept us alive to sell our pig milk.

His primary product, though, was chicken feather down-pillows.

But pig milk porridge came in a close second.

****

A day had passed.

John kept asking me questions but wasn’t giving me time to answer.

We arrived at the fair. John got off his horse then picked me up and put me on the ground.

John got on a soapbox.

Using a loud, booming voice unbecoming of such a thin, fragile looking man with short, thinly layered stubble on his face, oily hair and wearing overalls, dirty jeans and a red and black striped plaid shirt, John stuck his thumbs in his overall straps, stuck out his belly and made an announcement.

“Welcome one, welcome all. Come and see Mr. Webbers, the amazing talking pig. He talks to me, he’ll talk to you. Don’t believe me, come and see. You’ll leave with a feeling of glee.”

People started gathering around.

A young girl in a blue bonnet raised her hand.

“Yes, you, young lady,” John said and pointed to the girl.

“I just wanted to know if I could get a kiss from the pig,” she said and got chuckles from the crowd.

“It’s Mr. Webbers to you, young lady. And sure, if you put one right here,” I said and turned my cheek to the side.

The crowd was awestruck. I could not only speak, but I had an attitude.

The girl came up to me and kissed my cheek. Then I snorted on hers.

The girl giggled, curtsied and walked away.

The audience ate it up, oohs and awe’s coming from them.

An older man in a top hat, gray mustache and a dark brown cane raised his hand.

“You there, the man in the stove pipe hat,” John pointed.

“Who taught you to speak? Was it Satan? Krampus? Or Baba Yaga?” The man asked.

“No, sir. I was struck by lighting and my brain just burst with intelligence. It’s a gift from god,” I said.

“Incredible,” the old man said and tapped his cane on the ground.

A man in dirty cloths and a bowler hat raised his hand.

“You there, final question,” John said.

“What do you think of bacon?” The man asked.

“What do you think of eating your cousin?” I replied. The crowd laughed.

We won a blue ribbon for the strangest display at the fair.

We walked around the fair for a short while after.

We tried all the pies and voted for blueberry.

Bobs big apple pie won first prize.

The old, well dressed man with the cane who was asking about Satan had fallen over.

I ran over to him and pounded my hooves on his chest again and again.

He started breathing .

“You saved his life. You’re a hero,” John said.

Oohs and ahh’s came from the crowd as they applauded.

“How did you know what to do?” The old man asked, still catching his breath.

“I know the human cardiopulmonary system is responsible for heart stuff, and when you stopped breathing I figured I needed to do cardiopulmonary resuscitation in order to get your heart pumping again,” I said.

“Nobody’s ever tried that before. We should remember this… cardiopulmonary resuscitation for the future,” the old man said.

“Sure, and you can even call it CPR for short,” I said.

Someone took a daguerreotype photograph of me and I was written up in the newspaper as ‘the hero pig who saved the day.’

***

Weeks had passed. John was now courting the neighbors daughter.

I sat with them during dinner. They talked, and all I got was a few table scraps thrown my way.

“How about a real meal over here,” I said.

“I’ll cook something up for you soon,” John said.

Darla laughed.

“You’re talking pig is so cute,” Darla said. John smiled.

“I’m full. Here you go, take the rest of my food,” Darla said and scraped her plate onto the floor.

“John, marry this woman immediately,” I said, snorted, and wagged my curly tail before sprinting over to the floor food and gobbling it all down.

Darla and John stared deeply into each others eyes and talked well into the night.

The grandfather clock by the stairs struck midnight with twelve loud gongs.

“I can’t believe how late it is. My father will be mad. He wanted me home no later than nine,” Darla said frantically.

“I’ll walk you home in case your fathers still up. I’ll do my best to quell his anger if he is, my love,” John said.

“I’ll go with you to, just for kicks,” I said and squealed.

As we got to the front door, the handle started moving.

Someone tried pushing on the door and John ran to grab his rifle.

The door wouldn’t budge so the person on the other end kicked in the door. He was wearing a domino mask and a bandana, had a thin twisty mustache, a cowboy hat on and a pistol in each hand. He shot his guns into the air and the bullets hit the ceiling.

“Nobody move…” he said as pieces of the ceiling he emptied his rounds into fell to the floor.

Then there was a loud bang. John shot the intruder right in the head. The man fell to the floor, face first.

A pool of the man’s blood was leaking out. I ran over to lick it up.

“Gross, Mr. Webbers. What are you doing? What’s wrong with you,” John asked.

“It’s not bad, actually. You should try it,” I said.

“What? Just stop. It’s gross. Even for a pig, it’s gross,” John said.

“Hold on. Mr. Webbers might be on to something,” Darla said.

Darla peeled a piece of skin off the man’s face and tried it.

“This tastes a little like pork. It would probably be great if it was heated up,” Darla said.

“You guys are so disgusting. I’ll put some on the stove. It’ll probably take a long time to cook, but I’ll try. Anything for you, Darla,” John said.

He dragged the corpse to the stove, gagging the whole time.

“A long time to cook the human pork, you say? We’ll call it long pig,” Darla explained as John cut up the body with a butcher knife and placed the pieces into a pot of water. He lit the wood stove to start the water boiling.

John spent the next two in a half hours cooking the dead trespasser.

He finally finished heating it up.

“Finally. Let’s eat,” I said and snorted.

He plated three big and juicy slices of freshly cut human ribeye when he finished slicing and dicing it. Then the three of us tried the meat.

“You’re right, Darla. This does taste like pork,” John said and laughed.

“You guys really think it tastes like me?” I asked.

They just smiled awkwardly and kept eating.

Darla and John were married within the week and moved in together.

We spent the next few weeks setting up traps to entice intruders to break into our house. Then we shot them dead, cooked them up, packaged them and sold them to our many loyal customers.

Our new product became more popular than John’s Chicken feather down pillows.

And that was the beginning of Darla, John and Mr. Webbers heart healthy Long Pig meat company.

Eventually, the farm would be inherited by his great grandson, John Arable, who had a daughter named Fern.

The same lighting that hit me, hit a spider named Charolette, who lived with the pigs and learned to write things in her web.

My great Grandson Wilbur also lived on the farm.

He was about to be slaughtered in place of an intruder that John, Jr had befriended. Charolette used her web words to save my Great Grandsons life.

There was even a story written about them.

But nobody ever mentions that, to this day, the farms most popular product is still it’s long pig.