Robert J. Gregg

The Feeling of Pig

Personal Aesthetic Statement

In "The Feeling Of Pig," the irreality of the threat of war seems no more than a nightmare from which one wakes and shakes off. But then there are times when one doesn't wake.

The story begins with gashes of light in the sky, ugly slashes across the heavens, remonstrance of hell. Thunder rumbled at the front door seeking entrance; a fearful nightmare. This was war. I knew this was war. The air was saturated with ugliness; stench settled among the trees. I fought for balance. My head pounded. My hands shook. War intruded with its pig's face and relieved itself in the slime around me. I could feel it shitting.

I awoke to TV news seeping into the room, the usual catastrophe superlatives, scenic junk shocks, all dead, wiped out, went wrong, why me, the last man. Unperturbed the morning sun swished in through the windows and brushed coquettishly against the wall. A tree threw leaf designs across my bed and sang of springtime on the floor, up the wall, all my years repudiated, waking feeling joy, dancing in me. The wallpaper was glorious white in the sun, newly repainted, my April habit, a meaningless chore now that the children had decided their age warranted more adultlike demeanor. There were no more daredevil giant jumps from the bed, no impatient cries early Sunday with tottering greeting, no strawberry jelly sticky fingers to trace silhouettes on the wall, less intense, blurring now. Light exists if it shines on something, otherwise its mere energy wandering around in emptiness, wasted perhaps, unless one should happen to look up into its source, eye to eye, so to speak, an eye for an eye for a fraction of a second, with His image, but then in essence its the viewer who's lighted. In spring the whole world upstages itself in spotlight repercussion, screams of joy. Good morning. A we-want-waffles chorus at the foot of the bed. Eventually we wiggle a welcome with the covers corner and both children slip in beside us, iceberg feet and big eyes that laugh back and forget momentarily the waffles that later we learn signify for them Sunday morning, not the bed, not the wrestling and giggles, not the capitulation and the feigned exhaustion, the waffles, all four of us snuggled together under the covers watching the sunlight wave leaves on the wall, clear pools of the past reawakening in us. We bask in each other's world, lost later as adolescence spun its cocoon between us. The TV droned on.

Long ago wars were far-off, literary, stereotyped campfire skirmishes that confirmed something manly in us like character and history, that lifted peace from banality; adventure, thrills, a boys-will-be-boys sort of thing, undefinable until it hurts, exciting three-car collisions, house on fire, sweet damsels distressed. Wars were technical progress, epic stance, bronze horse statues, cleansing front page news. Wars were the philosophic conclusion to economic plight, the social dead end of a perfect sand castle. They're nearer now, commonplace. Each little war is potentially catastrophic, a friend to whose aid we might have to rush, a domino piece falling our way, a neighbor's distress call with refugees. The world is "Our Town" on both sides of the tracks. Worse, wars may be lost, victor and defeated alike shamed, all humanity, red-faced. The earthly all-soul bubble bursts. The morning news stinks so of rubble. OK, OK. We file it away and absorb our truths from the weather report. Superpowers are storm clouds in a Chinese teakettle. The Third World plays the latest war games; nuclear deterrents are only for the big series at the end of the season. Pray for rain. The spirit of war wanders the earth dressed to kill. To sleep, to dream, perchance to wake up dead.

We breakfasted at seven thirty; the schools were nearby, and last minute activity was a happy hectic organized routine. Trouble came one morning in the form of a police car loudspeaker driven slowly through the streets. The children, grown now tall and straight and reasonably mature, ran to the windows. The words were cold and efficient, the message a joke, "Evacuation by twelve noon. This is an earthquake emergency practice drill." I turned on the radio, "No earthquake, we repeat, an earthquake practice drill." The media's greatest hour had come, a one hundred percent uninterrupted announcement, no program, no station break, nothing serious, just evacuation. Naturally they were lying to us to prevent hysteria. Who the hell are they kidding? The strange heaviness in the air told me clearly otherwise. We had pricked our Mother Earth's dear dragon hide once too often, here on the West Coast especially, right between the legs. Don't wake the dragon. This is a practice drill, I repeated to myself. Each continent is a sleeping dragon, a millennium measured in terms of his good night's sleep, or nowadays probably a bad night's, tossing and turning and scratching his crotch where those pestilent little humans always seem to nest. Why should he wake now? Sleep on, dragon! Don't let our innocent palaver disturb you. Cannon shot, grenades, smoke signals, our fights and our peace pipes are all merely outgrowths, the semen you planted in us, no more than that, well raped in Eden. Don't get mad at what we've become. Close your eyes and go back to sleep like a sweet little dragon. There was no earthquake, the signs had fooled me and the evacuation drill was a great picnic in the country. A good time was had by all.

In the back yard I plant sunflower seeds every spring, willing one specimen. In the fall I plant tulip bulbs. Sunflowers don't bloom here, but tulips do, beautifully, so do roses, especially in the section next to the cement driveway, unfortunately there where tire tracks tend to wander off as the children pass sixteen and take to driving, a bit of a hazard, but so what; winter snow camouflages the damage. There are peonies next to the steps up to the back porch door, the door that is never locked except during summer vacations to Cedar Point. No one has keys. There is always someone home. But that was long ago when wars were far-off, even those wars we fought. Perhaps I was too young to know. Enough! I've somehow double exposed my childhood in overlap. I remember a photo of Dad entering the back door, suit, tie, overcoat, returning home from Saturday at the office, the car loaded with the once existent downtown central market groceries we rushed to carry into the house, hoping he had forgotten to buy endive, which he hadn't. Of late his tire tracks were sometimes in the rose garden. He loved roses, too, as does my grown daughter now, and he secretly renewed those he drove over, not realizing the tracks were ours.

The earth shook. I rushed to the window expecting the worst and tripped over a chair. There was nothing except again the feeling of ugliness, the feeling of pig. A strong vibration rattled the lighting fixture over the bed. The commode table mirror fell from the wall and broke into a thousand pieces scattering glass around my bare feet. It was only the city garbage truck, thank God, swallowing the hard pill I had slipped into my neighbor's garbage can last night, lawn mower parts that had cluttered our basement too long. I laughed. I imagine ugliness often to the point of paranoia. Its in the air, a negative atmosphere that penetrates my calm at will when it will, an atmosphere that permeates my guts with dull fear. I whistle and laugh to ward off what I can. To laugh is a sigh of strength; strength or possibly simply idiocy. I am an idiot whose subconscious goal is the destruction of whoever and whatever laughs longer than I. Napoleon laughed long. To hell with Napoleon, he's a pig sty. I pulled him down from his pedestal some time ago and smeared his face in the void he left in the history books. I'm the hero. There shall be no one beside me. Frank Sinatra? OK. Done! I tore down JFK, too, because I loved him. Mohammed Ali, he's tough; I deny his existence. Sweet moonlight laughs at me in the pond where my dreams of romance are mirrored; I piss in the pond, down the river to the ocean. The ocean is full of piss. Everyone does. Spring smiles loud on the countryside and in the suburb I grew up in. The poor moved in, and we moved out. Piss on the countryside, piss on the poor and on old memories. You'd never guess who's living in our old house now. Everyone moved, the school, too. Piss on the school. The same to ozone ultraviolet rays, the melting pot and the melting poles, higher taxes and the dead in Africa. To hell with all those up front and all those who follow. Sleep on, Dragon, for what is written on the walls is a four-letter hieroglyphic formulation that no longer embarrasses anyone. Screw you, friend. There's nothing left to look up to to be shocked by, and the mirrors nature holds up to us we keep at a distance. Idiot! I almost forgot the broken glass, and I was barefoot. The garbage truck hiccuped and shook the mirror from the wall, cause and effect, the spirit of indigestion, not ghosts, not ancestry and not a metaphysical state of unrest, just the garbage truck. We've rationalized a mystical undercurrent into our lives to explain away simplicity. Our greatest desire is inner understanding, garbage, a sort of porno awareness, all the things we keep from the children. I'm not sure I'd like to hear what the children would say should I try to explain what makes me tick.

Heaven forbid they laugh too long. What makes Daddy run? Weak kidneys. What do I do now? Normally, need be, I can stand perfectly still hours on end, but this was different. The slightest sidestep here meant blood, my blood, embarrassing, messy, an imposition possibly, for to bleed nowadays offends. Blood is a very special thing, says Mephistopheles to Faust, a genetical totem pole, scientists tell us, the family closet, a vendetta, of late a lethal weapon and in due course perhaps nature's feared biological declaration of war. Who are we to understand? I took off my pajama tops and used them to brush to the side the glass in front of me, each step forward a real test of courage, a wrong step, real trouble. Just then my granddaughter dashed into the room heading for my arms. Grandpa, Grandpa. She's my first and I love her more than anything else in the world. Grandma says, come to breakfast. I was confused. When we last moved we had disposed of my wife's old bedroom mirror. I looked at my feet; there were no glass splinters. I grabbed my grandchild and held her close just in case. She smiled at me and kissed my cheek. You scratch, she said. With her in my arms I walked out of the bedroom. Outside the window I could still see stench clouds settled in the trees, ugliness in the sky. I was cold without my pajama tops.

We moved out when the times were bad. A lot of people were unemployed, unemployed even though the need to rebuild meant work for everyone. The streets were insecure and after dark, dangerous. After the last quake, a sense of hopelessness smothered us all. Life did not normalize; like an anthill stepped on, it kept on crumbling. The earth warred, and we were in the middle, innocent and bleary eyed. The rains came and washed away our traces, and the mountainsides slid into the valleys. We buried the dead. The roots we planted were too shallow to hold, and the land slipped away from us. Communities, where tradition begins and ends with their Spanish names, gave up their spirit and disappeared. We had the children to think of, their safety and their future. Off we went to Chicago to find Uncle John, who'd moved there from Cleveland recently. He accepted us with open arms. Before long, we found a home in the suburbs, a job and, of utmost importance, decent schools for the children free enough from the problems of inner city social conditions and the raw violence that festers there. Some years later we were forced to move further out maintaining distance, but this disturbed us little. The suburbs were continually on the move, housing, schools, services, and of late even the work place with them. My daughters joined the girl scouts, the school choir, a sewing club, surprise, surprise, and the school dramatic society. They were still very young, and old values became the new rage.

The TV droned on from the living room. I dug deeper into my pillow and dozed off in beautiful late Saturday morning irreverence. Rose petals showered down on me and covered the blanket with smooth, fresh, sweet smelling softness. Deep red satin gathered under my head; tender longing kissed my cheek, drew me deeper and deeper into its arms, deeper and deeper, dreams of red, overwhelming red, abstraction, its rising passion, a dance, the tingling sensation of nearness when the body awakens to love's caress. Fetters fall; we lie in each other's arms; her finger tips send shocks through me, deeper and deeper until satiety lulls me into wonderful dull complacency. I see khaki-colored men march over the hill, mere shadows at first, then clearly an array of helmets, clubs, pitch forks, bayonets and heavy weaponry, the methodical movement of an army nearing. The beat of drums, thunder and lightning pierce my dreams, piston boots, pulsating beats moving toward me through the fields, trampling, nearer now. At the town's edge the first homes fall. They march over a dying dog, slow motion as in a nightmare, no sound but the beat of their feet and the whimpering of the dying dog as each pair of boots tramples over him one after the other. A flagpole falls, the flag disappears under their feet, moving closer, the streets they pass over, flat rubble behind them, there where people we know live, the school totters and falls, the cries of children smothered, survivors cut down by blunt blades and clubs, nearer. They swamp us, flow around us, by some strange miracle we are unscathed. Onward they march towards the next town. I rush outside and see our house in the midst of devastation, horrible devastation, the neighborhood razed to the ground. I can't bear to look. My house totters and falls, and I stand alone in what used to be my garden. Thank God, my family would not have to witness this. But no, I rush to the rubble and dig madly. I hear a muffled cry below and heave rafters aside and brick, long glass splinters from the terrace window. I pull a flattened radiator free. Underneath there is a jagged passageway large enough to squeeze into. The cries are nearer. A solid wall of beams, concrete and brick block the way. I edge backwards out of the hole. Think. Think. I force myself to look around. From the street side I pull away what is left of the front door. The crushed body of our next door neighbor blocks the way, visiting my wife perhaps as she often does Saturday morning. I throw her body aside and go on, screaming now. The cries from below weaken. Suddenly it's silent. I increase my efforts, tearing away at the rubble. Each hole I make fills again. The sun is now high in the sky. Hold on, I shout. Hold on, my love. Hold on. I wipe the blood from my eyes and scream into each hole, Hold on. A hand touches my shoulder. I look up into deep blue eyes and sink to my knees. Hold on. A fireman helps me out of the hole. The pajamas I'm wearing are in tatters. My hands are bloody and squashed. A deep gash on my cheek throbs. Hold on, the fireman says. There's nothing more you can do. Help is coming.

Robert J. Gregg was born in Cleveland, Ohio. He received his BA (English) at Dartmouth College and an MBA from NYU. He went on to head the U.S. consultant's European office; do market research and licensing work and is now the author of several novels, unpublished—as yet. A short story appeared in Bartleby Snopes online in July; another is forthcoming in October in Danse Macabre.

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