Jim Thompson, �Wild Town�
(Ed Note: I submitted this story for a memorial for special �zine that was going to be printed for Matty's funeral. It didn�t get in. Since this book was your standard Jim Thompson book (meaning it was great, or as great as it could be given the circumstances surrounding me while I read this), I�ll just give you the story I submitted. Lucky you.)
I had a pig once.
I bought it on a whim at the flea market. I had spent the entire day there with $40 burning a hole in my pocket, back when you could actually get something cool for $40. But I couldn�t find anything that day. No thrift store clothes, no video games for my antiquated Nintendo (all the cool kids had moved onto Sega Genesis by this time, so that should give you an idea of what decade this was), no old B-movies that you can only find at places like this. In fact, I can safely say that there was nothing of any value at the flea market that day, and this comes from a guy who is not choosy.
Now, I�m not a particularly consumerist type of guy, but for some reason on that day, I felt I had to get something. Maybe it was because it was the first in a long time that I not only had a day off, but I actually had a little money as well.
I like flea markets because you get to see all sorts of useless crap, and that usually means you�ll find something that is absolutely priceless, if only to you. But the flea market gods were against us that day, and the heat bearing down on the homemade jerky stands were driving the crowds out in droves. We were ready to call it quits.
I�m not sure how it happened, but for some reason as we walked back to the entrance, I happened to glance between the stands selling Diol [sic] soap and fake Nike sweats. There was an old Mexican family selling live animals, all of which were crammed into tiny cages. In the middle of all the pens full of roosters, rabbits, and ducks, there was one small pen no bigger than a medium-sized cat carrier occupied by a lone pot-bellied pig staring forlornly at me. I called the proprietor over.
�What kind of pig is this?� I asked.
�Pot-bellied pig,� he answered in a thick Tex-Mex drawl. �Good as pet, or as meat.�
�How big do they get?�
�Not so big. No bigger than this.� He held his hand about eight inches from the ground. �But belly gets very big, so good for food. Weigh 40, 50 pounds.�
After a few minutes of haggling, the pig was ours.
We brought him home in an apple box, carrying him up to our second-story apartment. I opened the lid and pointed at our new pet.
�You are hereby named Johnny Law,� I said.
The pig took off running and squealing.
Johnny obviously wasn�t treated well by his former owners, and it took a while before he began to warm up to us. But just like the pug-faced children of E.T. knew, a well-placed trail of food will gain a newcomer�s trust. It wasn�t long before he was following us everywhere, grunting softly and smiling in his odd way.
The stereotypes you hear about pigs being filthy animals are simply not true. In fact, they are cleaner than most pets, and many of my personal friends. They are the only domesticated animals that will not eat near where they use the bathroom. They roll in mud simply because they spend most of their time outdoors in the hot sun and they lack the sweat glands to keep them cool. It is the water they are after, not the dirt. Pigs are affectionate, playful, and are smart enough to learn simple tricks.
But I don�t recommend owning one when you live in an apartment that has wall-to-wall carpeting.
Pigs go to the bathroom about every 45 minutes, and that�s for bowel movements. They only piss every three hours or so, but when they do decide to go; it�s a fucking river. You can train pigs to use a litter box, but it needs to be a BIG litter box. You also have to be patient � after all, it�s not a cat, and it has no instincts to go in a certain area. It only wants to keep the crap away from the food.
After two weeks, we had narrowed down his bathroom space to underneath the pool table, but after working a ten hour shift at a brutal job, the last thing you want to do is pick up 14 piles of crap, mixed with the very strong smell of urine. We were losing the battle of the bathroom.
Worse, Johnny got bored while we were away at our jobs, so to keep his mind and body active he would run laps around the house. This would inevitably mean he would knock over everything and send the newspapers in his �litter box� flying to all corners of the room. After a month he was starting to wear me out.
In addition, he was getting bigger. A lot bigger. His capacity to knock over nearly anything in the house was now much more real. He started to try the patience of my roommates and vice versa.
Pigs have instant memory recollection, so if you�re mean to them once, they will never forget it. One roommate discovered this after kicking at him in a moment of frustration � after that, no matter what peace offering she brought, the end result was the same, meaning Johnny would chase her down the hall, biting at her ankles. I thought it was funny myself, but she failed to see the humor in it.
An ultimatum was made, and since Johnny didn�t pay rent, my girlfriend and I started to look for new places where he could reside.
Surprisingly, not many people are eager to welcome a pig into their home. Worse, despite our roommates� opinion of Johnny, I loved him, and wanted him to have a good home. Not just any home either, but people whose lifestyle I approved of. Thus I (probably foolishly) refused to hand him over to a suburban family simply because they stated they would change his name to �Porky.�
�His name isn�t Porky, goddamn it, it�s Johnny Law!� I said. �And if you forget it, I�ll send him after your legs for some serious ankle biting!�
Johnny wasn�t helping either. He didn�t like to travel, and trips to prospective homes made him antsy. So antsy in fact, that when we did find a place that seemed ideal, his first action was to shit on their carpet, which effectively canceled the deal. Things looked grim.
Finally, one day I was at home, pondering what to do with Johnny as he lay on my lap looking at me with his beady, yet thoughtful eyes, when the phone rang.
�I hear you�ve got a pig that you need to get rid of,� said the voice on the other line.
It was Matty Luv. We had known each other from our bands playing several of the same shows. I couldn�t believe the luck. I had hoped I could keep Johnny in a punk rock environment � after all, it was The Man who had been in charge of the formative months in his life, and those few months of cruel treatment had taken a long time to undue. I wanted to insure that he was treated with respect. I felt Matty would do that.
Matty explained that he had just returned from Reno with his new bride, who was named Arrianna, or Aryan, or Air � some sort of hippie name anyway. The point is she had once mentioned that she would like to own a pig, and Matty, being the hopeless romantic that he was, went right out and found her one. But the place he described where he would move to sounded ideal for Johnny � a large fenced-in yard in Half Moon Bay with plenty of farm feed supply stores around for food and, well, supplies. After some initial questioning, we made arrangements to deliver him the next week.
Two hours before we were ready to leave, however, Matty called us again. �Plans have changed,� he said. �We�re not going to move into the place in Half Moon Bay, but we still want to take Johnny.� I was skeptical as I wrote the new address down but was told the new place would serve him just as well.
�Are you nuts?� my girlfriend asked me as I gave her the new directions. �That�s in the Tenderloin! I don�t think they have any grass in that area!�
The ride up to San Francisco was not fun. For the first half of the drive Johnny laid peacefully on my lap, but twenty minutes passed and he became restless. He wanted to explore the car and when I attempted to stop him, he�d squeal.
Now, for comparison�s sake, the decibel level on a jet plane is 115 points. A frightened pig can reach 117 decibels.
An eternity later, we arrived at Matty�s house.
Did I say house? I meant apartment. His second story apartment. We carried Johnny up the stairs in his apple box and set him down on the linoleum floor in the kitchen. I quickly lifted him out of his box and set him on the floor � whereupon he proceeded to immediately fall flat on his face.
Looking surprised, he hoisted himself up back onto his feet. Two seconds later, all four legs slowly slid apart in the strangest version of the splits I have ever seen. Johnny�s eyes got wider as his legs slid further and further apart, until he was ultimately resting on his oversized belly.
�It�s the floors,� I explained. �He can�t get any footing with his hooves.�
Johnny meanwhile, had apparently had enough of his chin hitting the floor and decided to make a break for it. His legs pumped faster and faster, yet he remained in the same place, doing the old Tex Avery run-in-place gag, like he had rehearsed it all his life. It culminated with his chin once again hitting the floor.
Slowly he pushed his entire mass inch-by-inch across the kitchen until he reached his blanket and lay down, not willing to get up again, probably from fear of embarrassment.
�Don�t worry about it,� Matty assured us. �We were planning to convert the hallway into a miniature golf strip, so he�ll have Astroturf to walk around on.�
Astroturf? My girlfriend and I looked at each other, wondering what to do. Meanwhile, Johnny let out a high-pitched squeal as he fell flat on his face trying to rearrange his favorite blanket. That squeal sealed his fate � the two of us were too frazzled and there was no way either of us could handle an attempt to bring the pig back that night.
We agreed to let Johnny try out his new digs, and made plans to check on him in a week. If he didn�t seem happy, we would bring him home. We said our good-byes, and Johnny once again fell on the floor as he tried to rise to greet us.
My girlfriend cried most of the way home.
When we returned a week later, Johnny seemed fine. He hadn�t quite mastered the floor and therefore walked slowly and carefully, but at least he didn�t fall down anymore. Though he seemed to recognize us, he seemed to prefer to play with Matty and Aaliya, paying little attention to anything else.
Matty still hadn�t put any Astroturf down, but it didn�t seem like it mattered any more. As I said, pigs are intelligent creatures, and Johnny wasn�t going to lose any battle with a stupid linoleum floor. Satisfied, we left Johnny to his new home.
Three weeks passed. Matty finally called again, informing us that he and Alibaba had split, and Johnny had ultimately moved on to a friend in Half Moon Bay. He finally had the yard we always wanted for him. After a few initial questions about his safekeeping I was satisfied and thanked him for his help. I was about to hang up when he stopped me.
�By the way,� he said, �Before I brought him to the new place, I took him to the vet to see about getting him fixed, because he was trying to fuck everything and everybody in the house.�
�Yeah?� I said, not sure where this was going.
�Yeah, well you saw how big he was getting,� Matty said. �It�s because he wasn�t a pot-bellied pig. He�s a boar. You know, 300 lbs, three-foot high, run of the mill boar.�
That fucking flea market guy hasn�t been back there since.
