Pigs In Paradise. Roger Maxson

our survival or our demise. Listen closely, we will pray on this, but we will follow the great boar, who art our Lord and Savior.”

      “All right, Julius,” Dave said from the olive tree the next day. “What is this all about?”

      “Remember our hero, Bruce, and the 12 Israeli Holsteins? Well, look,” Julius said and pointed an expansive blue-and-gold wing. In the meadow, the Holsteins were dropping calves, one calf after the other. “Bruce knew them all,” Julius explained. “As fetuses fall from the backsides of cows, the 12th Imam, as per our neighbors on the Arabian Peninsula or the Gaza Strip to the north, will appear or reappear depending on which family member they follow. Not only that, but we’ll also see the return of Big J himself. Few people realize just how close they were. That’s right, Jesus will accompany his friend the 12th Imam, the Mahdi, when he climbs out of a well. We’ll know the difference between the two because although they’ll both have prominent noses, Jesus will be the guy with blonde hair, blue eyes, and sporting a tan (the American Christians have landed, wink, wink).” The Israeli Holsteins were in clear view of the rejoicing Muslims on the Egyptian border, and the Americans, standing in the road on the Israeli farm. “When fetuses fall from the backsides of cows,” Julius continued his cautious tale, “in this fairy story as in the one about the red calf, it will bring about the end of the earth. The problem, though, for the Muslims anyway, these fetuses are breathing and kicking.”

      The American evangelicals, two of them anyway, had arrived on the scene in time to witness the spectacle of fetuses falling from the backsides of cows, then the rejoicing and chants emitted from the foreigners on a hill. The younger of the two was lean and fit at 27 and had blonde hair, blue eyes. The other minister was 50, with dry, wiry Grecian Formula brown hair, and dry, gray eyes. About 5’ 9”, and stocky, he had never known hunger. Both men wore long-sleeve white shirts, opened at the collar, dark slacks, and black shoes. The Israelis who escorted the two ministers explained that it was supposed to be a sign for the arrival, or the return, of the 12th Imam, the Mahdi, depending on whose camp they belonged. However, these fetuses were alive, and the Americans witnessed the sudden end of rejoicing only to be replaced by monotonous chants before the foreigners on the hill disappeared into their village.

      “Oh, well, better luck next time, I always say,” Julius said. “The good news is we live another day–whew!”

      “I don’t understand,” Ezekiel said. “Fetuses are dropping. Why isn’t this omen a good sign?”

      “Oh, it’s an omen all right, and a very good sign for those of us of the living. The fetuses that fall from the backsides of cows are supposed to be dead when they hit the ground. When 12 of them do, by the way, 12 of them fall dead; thus, cometh the Lord, hand in hand with the Mahdi to kick infidel butt like the supernatural superheroes that they are. Unfortunately, for our Muslim faithful, those fetuses hit the ground running. Way to go Bruce! Cigars all around!”

      Before the crestfallen Muslims turned away, they witnessed the Christian infidels, as if on the road to Damascus, experiencing convulsions, rolling on the ground from laughter. The Muslims cursed the ground on which the infidels convulsed.

      Once all the fun was over, and the Americans regained their composure, they saw two orthodox Jews heading toward them outside the farm for what would be a brief first encounter among friends with common interests.

      “Shalom Rabbis, we come in peace.”

      “We’re not rabbis,” Levy said, with the iPod and earbuds.

      “I’m Reverend Hershel Beam,” said the older minister. “This is my young protégé and youth minister of our megachurch in America, Reverend Randy Lynn. We’re Christians.”

      “Hi, I’m Randy. Whaddya listenin’ to, ‘The Yahweh Hill Song’? It’s about Jesus, you know?”

      Levy’s friend Ed looked at his friend Levy.

      Levy took out the earbuds. “Chopin,” he said. “‘Polonaise op. 53 in A-flat major, Heroic.’ A work he composed at the height of his creative powers, and during his love affair with the French novelist George Sand.”

      “Nice to have made your acquaintance,” Ed said. He and Levy nodded, tipped their hats, and bid farewell. They turned back into the road and continued along their way.

      “Did he say George Sand?” a confused youth minister said. “Chopin was gay?”

      “No, no,” laughed Reverend Beam. “Don’t start biting your hand, Randy. George Sand was a woman.”

      “Whew, I hope so,” Reverend Randy Lynn said. “Funny name for a woman, though. But wait, I thought he said George Sand was a novelist?”

      “She was, Randy, a French novelist.”

      “Oh, right, one of them people. Let me see if I have this right. He’s listening to Chopin, a Polish piano player who was in love with a French novelist, a woman named George?”

      “So far, so good,” Reverend Hershel Beam said. Welcome to Israel.”

      I would have thought ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ maybe, something closer to home.”

      “Yes, you would think,” Reverend Beam agreed.

      5

      Rules to Live by

      The Fourteen Pillars of Wisdom

      With the advent of modern farm machinery and no longer enslaved to the yoke and forced to pull the plow or the thresher, the animals down in the valley on this sliver of land pushed against the Egyptian border lived peacefully for as long as any could remember, even comfortably as any animal could, considering their circumstances. They did what most domesticated animals had always done, which was to wait. While waiting one day, because they remained feedstock for humans, and fearful of the unknown and the dark, and of lightning flashing mysteriously across an otherwise dark sky, when thunder cracked and shook the ground on which they stood frozen in fear, the animals started to ask questions. “Where do we come from?” “Where do we go when we die?” “What’s it all about?” To which one animal or another, always of higher intelligence, would attempt to explain the origins of life, of how they had come to be where they were now and where they were going. It was an unfolding story with rules to live by if an animal was to be rewarded an afterlife in a field of clover, a garden as it were. So, through the years several elders, usually the pigs among them, took it upon themselves in an attempt to answer these questions, began to tell stories and make rules that they passed down to the animals that came after them, creating laws for all to follow.

      One such collection of animal wisdom handed down through the generations was Rules to Live By, the Thirteen Pillars of Wisdom. Mel entered the barn, which was the sanctuary, with the two Rottweilers, Spotter and Trooper from the farmhouse. Mel announced, “I bring you good news. Play, frolic, and lounge along the banks of the pond, the same pond from which we drink. Especially the pigs among us, for this is your land, and Muhammad is our friend.”

      “He might be your friend, but he’s not our friend,” said Billy St. Cyr, the Angora goat.

      “If the pigs weren’t held in such high regard, maybe less attention would be paid to the rest of us by the Prophet and his followers,” said Billy Kidd, the lean brown and tan Boer goat.

      “This is the Lord’s plan, and our Messiah, Boris, who is resting, has come out of the mountains of the Sinai to deliver us from our present state of existence.”

      “But isn’t man great for he is made in God’s image?”

      “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder; therefore, man is beautiful, made in God’s image. Thus, man is godly.”

      “Then why are we to be delivered from our present state?”

      “We are held by those who are not in God’s favor or made in His image.”

      Julius called out from the rafters, “I beg to differ and find the premise of your argument flawed. What is God’s image? What empirical