By C. Ross
News spread across the county, across barnyards and dinner tables – McGil’s pig liked to sit in his chair. Then they started saying the pig liked to smoke McGil’s pipe while it sat in his chair and that sometimes it read from women’s magazines. Wasn’t long before ears beyond the shadow of their mountain were soon begging to hear more, so naturally, the papers sent their best to find the truth to this hogwash. It was Dixie Dartmouth, whose mouth runs almost as fast as she does, who arrived first on the scene.
“About time,” was all McGil said and led her out to the pig.
“Now she’s a mite bashful so-“
“Why the pink light?” asked Dixie.
“To bring out her purty little eyes, but she’s kind of nervous so-“
“Why the pink bow on her head?”
“To show off her purty pink ears, but like I be saying-“
“She’s shy.”
McGil grinned,”You ain’t too slow for a townie. We’ll wait behind the door and watch through the hole.”
Dixie took a look through the keyhole, which was profoundly low for the profoundly short folk of that particular mountain.
“I can only see the chair’s legs through this.”
“Listen, I don’t have the eagle eyes of my youth like you but there’s no confusing the sight of a pig sitting in a chair, lighting a match, smoking a pipe-“
“And reading women’s magazines?”
“Don’t be silly.”
So they waited. Dixie was all the time tapping her feet, biting her fingernails, and sighing due to never having waited for anything ever, despite McGil, who had all but waited his whole life for a small taste of fame, trying to shush her. To which she snapped in reply, “Are you sure you were wearing your glasses the last time, gramps?”
McGil wrung his hat. They waited, and they waited, and even McGil started to doubt what he had once been sure of. Eventually, like all storms named after womenfolk – Hurricane Dixie blew out. The rest of the reporters, creeping out of the woods onto McGil’s property, howled in dismay when Dixie told them that it was all baloney.
But McGil was a pig farmer, as his father had been and his father before him, and knew the taste of what was baloney and of what wasn’t, no matter his age or eyesight. So he stuck by til the stars were shining bright. Up in the mountains, you are a little closer so they shine a little brighter, but the night sky could only console McGil for so long.
“Old fool…” he said and decided to turn in, but stopped at the sound of a match strike. One last look, he thought. McGil grinned at one, then at two – would you look at that – two purty pink feet dangling off a chair.
More of C. Ross’s work can be found at: www.deathtofanatics.wordpress.com
