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Livestock: Baby Potbellied Pigs. Wonderful pets. Registered. $150.00 &
up. The number has a desert area code. I dial it and a teenage
boy answers.
Yeah, he says.
I saw your ad in the paper, I say. About the potbellied
pigs.
Hang on, he says. Then I hear him holler, Mom, you
got any pigs left? I can t make out her answer, the TV in the
background is too loud, but a few seconds later he returns to
the phone. Yeah, he says, we got one female left.
Can you hold it for me?
First come, first serve, he says. You want to know how
to get here?
Let me grab a pen, I say.
Nature furnishes all of its creatures with a special ability
to defend themselves against their predators. The deer, like
the rabbit, boasts swiftness of foot and highly sensitive hear-
ing. The bird possesses the gift of flight. The turtle has its
bone-hard shell, the skunk a foul-smelling oily liquid. And
the Vietnamese potbellied pig, a stout, short-legged mammal
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with bristly coarse hair, is blessed with a bloodcurdling, ear-
piercing cry that paralyzes its enemies dead in their tracks. To
the baby Vietnamese potbellied pig I purchase that afternoon
for the outrageous sum of two hundred and fifty dollars, I am
that enemy. I am that predator. The first time the teenage boy
places that pig in my arms it lets out such a painfully high-
pitched squeal that my ears ring for several minutes afterward.
I am stunned. I am dazed. That at this point it is no bigger
than a puppy, weighing no more than ten or twelve pounds,
makes its powers all the more impressive. Imagine, I think,
what it will sound like when it s all grown-up. This omen, how-
ever, doesn t stop me from buying the little piglet, nor does the
fact that I have yet to consider where we will keep it.
How big do these things get? I ask.
The boy shrugs.
Hard to tell. All depends. We butcher the ones we don t
sell at about eighty, ninety pounds. But this is the runt of the
litter, he says. I don t see her getting past sixty, tops.
To me the pig is a highly unattractive animal with beady
eyes and chubby jowls and short bony legs far too thin to sup-
port its enormous weight. It s a freak of nature. A bad joke
from God. But the features I abhor in the Vietnamese potbel-
lied pig, or any pig for that matter, are the very ones that my
wife finds so appealing.
Oh, how cute, she says, when I bring it home that
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evening in a flimsy cardboard box. I set it on the living room
floor. Her face softens, and I think I m in the clear.
Upstairs, in the boys bedroom, I hear the beeping and fake
explosions of the Nintendo game they re playing. My wife
kneels beside the box. She reaches in for the little pig.
Better put cotton in your ears, I say. That thing has one
mean squeal.
In her arms, however, it doesn t let out a peep. Instead it
burrows its snout into the warm flesh of her stomach and
closes its beady eyes.
You probably scared her, she says. She s so sweet. Aren t
you? she says to the pig. You re just a sweet little thing.
I m pleased she likes it. Pleased that I did something good,
something special to make up for the night before.
Let me shower, I say, and then I ll take you out to Pa-
paguyo s. Have a couple margaritas. A good dinner.
Why?
Why not?
Her face hardens again. You re an asshole, that s why not.
You come home drunk at three in the morning, no calls, no
nothing, and you expect me to be nice. I don t think so. She
looks away from me in disgust and cuddles the pig. Daisy,
she says, cooing in its hairy little ear. I think I ll name you
Daisy.
When I think of a daisy I picture a flower with a yellow
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center and white rays. I don t, by any stretch, see a pig with
bristly black hair and stubby legs. But when I think of myself,
I see her point. And part of me wants to change. To right my
ways. The alcoholic, however, like the pig, is created with cer-
tain defense mechanisms and mine are denial and rage. They
make for the better part of me, too, and I explode.
Fuck it, I tell her. Stay home with your stupid pig. I
don t give a shit. But I m going out. I m getting wasted.
So what s new?
Nothing, I say. Nothing s ever new with us.
She holds the pig closer and it makes a soothing, grunting
noise in her arms.
Daisy, she says. My sweet little Daisy.
I don t think anyone ever really knows why they get di-
vorced or have affairs or regularly drink and drug themselves
into a stupor. My memories of our last days together are splin-
tered, lost in a haze of booze and dope, yet one thing remains
absolutely clear. And that thing is Daisy. The measure of her
growth is the final measure of my marriage: The fatter she gets,
the worse my marriage seems to become.
I mean this literally.
Pound for pound. Blow for blow.
I am sitting on the floor in the basement. This is where I write.
It is night and my wife and children have gone to bed. Daisy is
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asleep in her box in the kitchen above me and the house is
quiet. Surrounding me are five neat piles of handwritten man-
uscript. I am struggling to get another novel off the ground. In
fact, I am struggling to get five novels off the ground all at the
same time and that s the problem. I can t focus. I can t make up
my mind. This has been going on for months, long before
Daisy s arrival, and I have sixty pages of one book, forty some-
thing of another. The others are shorter but they all have one
thing in common: Each peters out, coincidentally, when the
drugs wear off and I see them for what they are, these awful
things I ve written under the influence of methamphetamine
and alcohol.
Tonight I am relatively sober. I ve only drunk a few beers,
and in terms of narcotics I haven t touched a thing in two mis-
erable days. But trace amounts of meth are still coursing
through my veins, and as I read over the first sentence of one of
the five manuscripts I am far from clearheaded. On a notepad,
in long hand only I can decipher, I write and rewrite that open-
ing sentence nine different ways. I excogitate on a single word. I
contemplate its deep symbolic meanings in relation to the pro-
found themes of my work. I am brilliant. I am divinely inspired.
Then I apply this divine inspiration to the opening lines of my
other four manuscripts, believing that if I only concentrate long
enough, hard enough, that some grand truth will soon reveal it-
self to me and I ll know, once and for all, which story most de-
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serves the full attention of my genius. Only there s a short cir-
cuit somewhere in my brain. The traffic of ideas runs in circles,
round and round, and then shoots off down a thousand differ-
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