Swine Not? Read online

  The Moonwalkers featured an all-American goalie whom our local soccer world called Spiderwoman. Six feet tall, with arms that could reach across the goal, she had gone seven games without allowing a score. But that day her record had been broken — by me. The furious Moonwalkers coach began screaming on the sidelines, and his team responded. They came roaring down the field with a vengeance, sending Moccasin defenders flying. They had taken out Connie, our goalie, in the process of tying the game. Now we were headed for a tiebreaker with the “Goonwalkers,” as we called them.

  Our pet pig trotted all the way to the end of the field, sporting a custom-made face mask to protect her tender snout. My sister had designed it. Rumpy took her place in front of the net as the opposing team continued to laugh their heads off. Like everyone else, they underestimated her abilities, and it would cost them.

  Spiderwoman was back in form and made four dazzling saves, but Rumpy was just as brilliant. She knocked every shot astray of the net. The last striker for the Moonwalkers approached the ball as if he were going to kick it into low earth orbit, but at the last minute, he lobbed a high, arching shot. A collective gasp came from the Moccasin players and fans. They watched in horror, knowing that our goalie (who stood all of two feet, eight inches high) was far beneath the rainbow-shaped path of the final ball.

  Agony turned instantly to ecstasy as Rumpy somehow bounded skyward and put her front shoulder between the net and the ball. It bounced harmlessly out-of-bounds.

  Seconds later, I put a nasty spin on the final shot and collected my second goal against Spiderwoman. We won the game and were crowned champions of the Alabama / Tennessee Coed Soccer League. Next thing I knew, I was on the shoulders of my teammates, and Mom and Maple were dancing in a circle with Rumpy and the rest of our fans. Manny Brown, the owner of Manny’s Moccasins Shoe Store, accepted the trophy, and we shook hands with the Goonwalkers as they shrugged by us, mumbling, “Good game.”

  The coaches were at the end of the line. My mom extended her hand to the opposing coach, but he walked by as if she didn’t exist. I knew Mom, and I knew something was going to happen. You did not insult her or her pig and expect to walk away unscathed.

  She waited for the man to put some distance between them. Then she dropped the ball she was carrying. “Hey, Adolf!” she yelled, and as the man turned toward her, she let go with a wicked shot that sailed just above the ground. Steadily it rose until it hit him, as the TV announcers say, “directly in the groin.”

  “That’s for the bloody cheap shot at our goalie,” she said as she watched the man rolling on the ground in pain.

  “Vait until next year,” the man gasped. “I’ll get you for zis.”

  “I doubt that you’ll have the chance,” Mom said.

  That night, after the party in the pizza parlor, I asked Coach Mom what she meant by her last words to the Moonwalkers coach.

  “Oh, nothing,” she replied casually. “Just another one of my wild ideas.”

  In that synchronistic blink only twins know, Maple and I were instantly on the same wavelength, thinking collectively that when Mom said “nothing,” she really meant “something” — and we smiled.

  CHAPTER 3

  Learning to Play the Angles

  BARLEY

  I REALLY HATE voice mail. That’s what I get when I call my dad to tell him about a game. He calls back, of course, and he always promises that one day he is going to take me to see my favorite player, Darryl Meacham, who plays for Real Madrid in Spain. But by the time he calls, it is past both my bedtime and the initial moment of glory that I wanted to share with him. Dad is usually several time zones away from Tennessee.

  As usual, I left him a detailed message about the game and the goals. I also told him about Mom’s little postgame stunt. I knew it would make him laugh.

  I used to get real mad about Dad leaving, but that is how I became such a good soccer player. At first, I took my anger out on the ball. I would kick and kick and kick until I thought my leg would fall off. Then I started getting good and began kicking with both feet, and then I started to figure out the angles and how to make the ball go where I wanted it to go. It all helped me deal with the feelings I had about my dad.

  Another good thing I learned is that soccer is not a one-man sport. It is a team sport, and you have to depend on, and get help from, strangers. After you help them or they help you, they become your friends. Along the way, you also figure out the angles to the goal, which aren’t that far from the angles of life — even in a town named Vertigo.

  The New York Red Bulls are my favorite team, and I hope to play for them when I’m old enough. I was born in New York, although I don’t remember much about living there. I was only three when I left. So how did a future striker for the New York Red Bulls end up in Tennessee? To quote the title of a country song by Tammy Wynette, it was “D-I-V-O-R-C-E.” Back in the ancient days of the 1970s, when the song was popular, a family with just a mother and kids was called a “broken home.” Today it is referred to as a “single-parent family.” Either way you slice it, it is still only half a loaf.

  My dad, Oliver McBride, was an English teacher from Boston. He moved to New York, where he met my mom, Ellie Dean. She was a former beauty queen from Clarksdale, Mississippi, who was in culinary school. Though my dad was a fine teacher, he had this pipe dream to be in the movie business. One summer, he got a job as a script consultant on a gangster movie that was filming in Greenwich Village. That was it for the academic world. He quit teaching and started hanging out with other would-be actors and directors, drinking lots of coffee and talking about what they would all do when they got famous.

  He and my mom dated for about a year while he wrote his first movie script. They were part of a wild crowd back then. After a party, they ran off to Haiti and got married, and it was only upon their return to New York that my dad learned that not only did my mother come with a steamer trunk full of handed-down Southern family recipes and a closetful of debutante gowns, but she also carried the barnyard gene. This manifested itself in her immediate acquisition of a mean dog, a dozen chickens, a cat, and a baby potbellied pig, whom she scooped up one Thanksgiving back in Mississippi. She somehow managed to stuff all of them into a rental apartment in Greenwich Village. My dad thought he was marrying a Southern belle–turned–city girl, but what he really wound up with was a circus act.

  After we were born, we were celebrated at many a party. The champagne flowed, and once our parents actually left us in the restaurant under a table. We were quiet babies; the adults made most of the noise. Space was the first problem, and then the issue was money. The mean dog went to the police-dog program, the chickens went to live on a farm on Long Island, and my dad made his first — and last — sale of a movie script.

  The movie business doesn’t appear to have a lot of financial security. That didn’t seem to matter to Dad. He went from being a writer to a producer, but not much was produced. Meanwhile, Rumpy and the cat stayed, and they seemed to get more of my mother’s attention than my dad did. That is when he took off for Hollywood, promising to become rich and famous. Then he planned to return to New York and lather us with luxury.

  That didn’t happen. Even at three years old, my sister and I could pick up on it with that “twin thing.” My earliest recollection that our lives were changing was when my sister and I had to start sharing our desserts with our pig. I love my pig, but food is a big deal to a three-year-old, especially dessert.

  Somehow my mom managed for a year, baking pies and pastries at a fancy diner, but living in New York ain’t cheap when you’re a petting zoo. One day, a registered letter arrived at her door telling her that her old aunt Margaret had just died and willed her a farmhouse in Tennessee. A week later, she found a job at the famous Opryland Hotel, and we went south, where we have been ever since.

  My dad actually did kind of make it in Hollywood — not as a filmmaker but as a copywriter for commercials. Plagued by Catholic guilt, he tried to make up for
his lack of availability by helping to fix up the farm in Tennessee.

  Dad is presently in Alaska doing a dog-food commercial and working on his sixty-seventh screenplay. All but his first have been rejected. Still, he keeps trying. I guess that once the movie-business bug bites you, you live with the sting. I love my dad, but his accidental fall through the looking glass of Hollywood has warped him. Dad loves us, and he gets along with Mom as long as we all fit into his pattern. I think he sees us, and all other humans for that matter, as bit players in his imaginary films. It never occurs to him that other people might see him as a stand-in in their own movies.

  CHAPTER 4

  Raising Humans Is Hard

  RUMPY

  MY NAME IS Rumpy. As you can see, I did not go over the icy ledge, and it’s a good thing because you wouldn’t have gotten my side of the story. Living with humans is not easy. They have quite an opinion of themselves, but few of them seem to be playing the game of life with a full deck. How about that “ham sandwich” crack by the Moonwalkers coach? Well, Ellie made him pay for that one. It’s a lot different in the animal world. We don’t come with emotional baggage. I’m simply Rumpy, the pig who saved the game. It’s not the first time I have been called from the sidelines.

  Since you have heard Barley, the soccer jock, give his version of the family, now I will give you mine. Despite all their human weaknesses, I adore them, and they adore me. At bedtime, the twins argue over whose room I’ll sleep in. Maple arranges my coat with a brush while Barley rounds off my hooves and gives me tummy rubs. Then Maple braids my tail. They bathe me once a month, dab me dry with towels, and cover me with rose oil to keep my skin soft. They love me so much.

  I came into their lives as a baby and really don’t know any other home. I have a twin brother who — you may find this hard to believe — is even smarter than I am. He now lives a thousand miles away in New York. It has been many years since I have seen or heard from him, but something about being twins keeps us connected. His name is Lukie, and I have missed him terribly ever since we were separated.

  To remove another stereotype, I am not a barnyard animal. I prefer the comfort of the farmhouse to the farm. My favorite place is Maple’s closet, where I go for afternoon naps. Unfortunately, Barley is a neat freak. The first thing he does after a game is wash his uniform! Maple and Ellie . . . well . . . I really hate to use this term, but it does apply here. They are such pigs. Barley’s bedroom always looks as if he is prepared for a surprise inspection by a drill sergeant. Though I respect Barley’s neatness, I love Maple’s closet. Her corner of the world is filled with piles of books, CDs, fashion magazines, and an abundance of outfits she creates for her dolls, her friends, and herself. That girl is into fashion, and if she isn’t studying designers on the Internet, she is cutting, stitching, and sewing, which makes for quite the mess. It never feels lonely with all the outfits and pieces of clothing dangling over my head — long and short, dressy and plain. Those twins are a huge responsibility for me, but it’s gotten easier since they turned twelve. We are just about the same age, but in pig years, I am the adult around here. In one more year — maybe two — I’ll have them fully trained. Next come the teenage years, and what happens then is anybody’s guess.

  That brings us to Ellie Dean McBride. Now let me start off by saying that the math in this family has pretty much been minus one in the man department during and after her only marriage. She is the poster image for single mothers of the world, raising two kids, coaching soccer, working at the Opryland Hotel, caring for a farm full of four-legged creatures — and then there is the catering business that she created and runs out of an old smokehouse behind the barn. I don’t see how she does it all, but she does.

  The only real problem any of us ever seem to have with Ellie is her rare, quick flare of temper that sometimes has long-lasting effects. Take, for example, her well-aimed soccer-ball shot at Coach Goonwalker. But, I guess, when you think of all Ellie has had to put up with, she deserves to give life a kick in the butt every now and then.

  To her credit, with all the literal and figurative plates that she has spinning in the air, her kids have turned out pretty well so far. Not having a full-time dad around is not an easy way to grow up. The twins seem to think of him more as an older brother away at boarding school than as their father. They have accepted the fact that his e-mails, cell-phone messages, and occasional souvenirs from far-off lands qualify as sufficient parental participation here in the twenty-first century.

  CHAPTER 5

  Instant Replay

  BARLEY

  “MOM’S GOT a date!” Maple beamed. “Maybe she was just warming up for a male encounter at the soccer game.”

  This was big news around our house. With the exception of Dad’s unpredictable and unscheduled “pop ins,” there hadn’t been a lot of eligible bachelors “comin’ a courtin’ ” around the farm.

  “She met him on the Internet!” Maple added.

  “Oh my God!” I was shocked.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “The Internet . . .”

  Maple rolled her eyes. “Would you rather she was looking for Mr. Right in a Hooters outfit, pushing hot wings? Women do it all the time, Barley.”

  “I just thought she was done with dating,” I said.

  “Her married girlfriends talk about it all the time, and the Internet is easier and safer than a singles bar.”

  “When is this big date supposed to happen?” I asked.

  “Tomorrow night,” Maple told me. “In fact, we are going out this evening to buy a dress. I’m planning on making her spend some money on herself and buy an outfit by Karen Wu. You want to come with us?”

  Maple was obsessed with Karen Wu, one of the top fashion designers in New York. Her picture and photos of her creations were taped all over Maple’s room.

  “Let’s see. I think I have a root canal scheduled after supper.”

  Maple threw a pillow at me.

  Rumpy and I watched from the porch as Mom and Maple drove away. Mom looked very excited. I had grown accustomed to only seeing her in jeans and checkered chef pants and soccer shorts for as long as I could remember. I was happy for her.

  LATER THAT EVENING, Rumpy and I were half asleep on the couch, and in the background I could hear the voice of Mario Batali coming from the TV as he explained the ingredients in a tartar sauce dip he was mixing on the Iron Chef.

  “Wake up and read this,” a voice whispered loudly into my ear. I felt a nudge and opened one eye. Maple was standing over me with our cat, Syrup, draped around her shoulders. She was holding a handful of printed pages. There was no mistaking her seriousness.

  I sat up, pushed Rumpy off my leg, and rubbed my eyes.

  “I Googled Mom’s blind date. He’s not so blind anymore. You better check it out.”

  Maple disappeared into her room, and I looked at the color photo on top. The headlines made my jaw drop. My mom was going out with a football coach.

  CHAPTER 6

  Men Are Not Pigs

  RUMPY

  OINK! WELL, Syrup the Cat isn’t the only four-legged creature around here with a streak of curiosity. I, too, was awakened by Maple’s loud whisper, and I subtly opened one eye. Then I read the pages Barley was spreading out, one by one, on the couch between us.

  They say a picture is worth a thousand words. The first page had a large photograph of a smiling man with a preacher-politician grin. It spoke loads about cosmetic dentistry and plastic surgery. One could only wonder what was really behind that huge, reconstructed smile. I read on. Oh yeah, in case you didn’t know, some of us pigs do read.

  The second page was composed of clippings from the Nashville paper, hailing Coach B. A. Boykin as some kind of messiah. He was a local ballplayer who had made the big time in the NFL and was now joining the Titans, our Tennessee pro team, as its new head coach, heralded by headlines, photo ops, and muffler commercials.

  Like Barley, I am not a football fan. I had been exposed to the
game far too many times in Pancake Park. Soccer is an afterthought in Vertigo, and Pancake Park had been groomed, manicured, and designed primarily for football, which is still looked upon as religion in Tennessee. When fall comes, battalions of leagues, from peewees to tiny mites to midgets to players from elementary schools and Vertigo High, take over the park and do battle. I think there would be a league for babies in diapers if some fans around here had their way. We soccer nerds take a very distant backseat to this kind of football madness.

  The next page dropped in front of my snout. “Oh no,” Barley gasped. It was a story Maple had downloaded from a feminist Web site. The title of the article was “Women Beware: The Twenty Worst Eligible Bachelors in America and Why You Want to Avoid Them.” The story led off with Coach B. A. Boykin and his years as a pro quarterback with the Arizona Cardinals, his born-again experience, and his run for Congress. There were pictures of him deer hunting and playing golf with George Bush. Barley and Maple went off to search the Internet for more, so when I had read enough, I ate the pages, climbed off the couch, and went outside for a walk. Then I curled up on the rug by the porch swing for a nap.

  I dreamed about Lukie and the time he rescued a little boy from a flash flood. I could sense that something big was in the air, and it had to do with Lukie. I could feel it.