The Christmas Pig: A Very Kinky Christmas Read online

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  SIMON & SCHUSTER

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2006 by Kinky Friedman

  All rights reserved,

  including the right of reproduction

  in whole or in part in any form.

  SIMON & SCHUSTER and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  DESIGNED BY LAUREN SIMONETTI

  Library of Congress Control No.: 2006051200

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-4345-9

  ISBN-10: 1-4165-4345-7

  Visit us on the World Wide Web:

  http://www.SimonSays.com

  Acknowledgments

  The author would like to thank Elizabeth Coatsworth, Oscar Wilde, Anna Louise Drinkall, Issy Drinkall, Max Swafford, Jay Wise, David Rosenthal, David Vigliano, and, of course, Ben and Valerie.

  For Rita Jo

  Always my Miss Texas

  Chapter One

  Where Are Feinberg’s Shoes?

  HE WAS A GOOD king but he was in a bad mood. Christmas was only a month away and he still had not commissioned an artist to paint the traditional nativity scene to be unveiled at the conclusion of the midnight mass.

  “I’ve crushed whole armies for not celebrating Christmas,” complained the king to his chief advisor, Feinberg. “Now I can’t even properly celebrate it myself. Is there not an artist left in the kingdom? Have they all been burned at the stake?”

  “Nay, my liege,” said Feinberg. “They certainly have not all been burned at the stake. Some of them have merely starved to death.”

  “I see,” said the king, which, of course, was unlikely. That was because he was a king and not an artist.

  Still, he was a good king, as kings go. His name was Jonjo Mayo the First, and, as fate would have it, he would also be the last. As history marched inexorably by, his tiny kingdom would be gobbled up and spit out repeatedly by the Pagans, the Vandals, the Arabs, and eventually, that group that always had considered itself less savage than the other savages, the Christians. Today, sadly, the kingdom can no longer be found on any map. Its boundaries, its nooks and crannies, its very heart and soul have been incorporated by a large, gray, boring country. Indeed, the entire reign of King Jonjo Mayo the First might have been forgotten completely had it not been for the fortuitous intervention of a small silent boy and a pig.

  Feinberg, like practically all advisors to royalty, came from mysterious, humble origins. Thus it was that he was not particularly facile in his relations with the knights, noblemen, and other members of the court aristocracy. Indeed, he regarded them as useful idiots, which, indubitably, most of them were. They often mocked Feinberg’s eccentricities, of which there were many, and his social skills, of which there were few. Feinberg encouraged this by providing them with various odd behaviors such as occasionally appearing in formal court without his shoes. Whenever these supposed incidents of absentmindedness occurred, King Jonjo would invariably rush to the defense of his advisor like a mother duck to a wayward duckling.

  “Where are Feinberg’s shoes?” the king would thunder from the throne.

  The members of the court would then mutter dutifully amongst themselves for several moments until at last Feinberg himself would make a great show of looking down and pretending to suddenly realize that his feet were bare.

  “Whosoever has taken Feinberg’s shoes shall return them immediately!” shouted King Jonjo. “All of you! Out of my sight until Feinberg’s shoes have been found and reunited with Feinberg’s feet!”

  The entire court aristocracy would then scurry hither and thither around the castle under the stern displeasure of the king and, of course, the private enjoyment of Feinberg. Feinberg knew with a certainty that without King Jonjo there would be no Feinberg. On the other foot, the king realized that without Feinberg, there would probably be no one there to follow his orders to search for Feinberg’s shoes.

  By the time the disgruntled courtiers returned empty-handed, they were further chagrined to find that Feinberg’s feet were no longer bare. Not only had the advisor to the throne, mysteriously, perhaps magically, located his shoes, he’d also come up with another harebrained idea that was sure to please the king.

  “Your majesty,” said Feinberg, when the court had reassembled. “I know of an artist who may just be able to produce the nativity painting in time for the midnight mass.”

  The court mumbled and rumbled in reaction to this new brainstorm, particularly the small group of noblemen who had been discussing it within earshot of Feinberg, but had been afraid to set it forth themselves before the king.

  “Who is this man?” said the king.

  “He is not a man, your highness,” said Feinberg, as the court giggled and sniggled around him.

  “When is an artist not a man?” asked the king, somewhat rhetorically. Every time he asked a question, it had the effect of being rhetorical.

  “An artist is not a man,” said Feinberg, pausing for dramatic effect, “when the artist is a child.”

  The king gasped. The court gasped. The king looked at Feinberg. The court looked at Feinberg. Feinberg looked down at his shoes. They were nowhere to be seen, however. His feet once again were bare.

  “You are suggesting,” said King Jonjo rather incredulously, “that I commission a child to paint the nativity scene for the midnight mass on Christmas Eve?”

  “Who better than a child, your highness,” reasoned Feinberg, “to paint a child?”

  “It’s ridiculous, your majesty,” shouted a nobleman.

  “It’s blasphemous!” shouted another.

  “And so it is,” said the king. “But I admit to being rather taken with the idea. Just who is this child?”

  “A ten-year-old boy, my liege,” said Feinberg. “From a small village along the northern coastline. He’s considered to be a magical boy. Never spoken a word in his life, but paints like a dream.”

  “Bring him to me,” said the king.

  Chapter Two

  The Mermaid

  WITH A GREAT CLATTER of hooves and the blare of trumpets, three knights rode out of the castle that afternoon on commission from the king. The gravity of their task did not evade them. King Jonjo was a stickler on matters of tradition. If the magical boy did not exist, for example, or if they couldn’t find him and fetch him to the court in a timely fashion, there could be hell to pay.

  “I could strangle Feinberg with my own hands,” said the Black Knight,
as he rode through the drizzle toward the northern coastline.

  “He has the auditory prowess of a blind man,” said the White Knight. “He hears every whisper in the court.”

  “Aye,” said the Gray Knight, as he reined his horse away from another large puddle of muddy water. “But this grand experiment may yet come to be known as Feinberg’s Folly. Commissioning a mere child to create a work of such import and magnitude could well serve to humiliate the royal court. If ill-conceived or biblically inaccurate it could make King Jonjo the laughingstock of all Christendom.”

  “One never wishes ill to the king, of course,” said the White Knight, “but at least it would put an end to Feinberg and his bloody shoes.”

  “Hear! Hear!” shouted the Black Knight, as he inadvertently galloped through a large puddle, splashing all three well-turned-out riders with muddy, freezing water.

  The journey took the better part of the day and some of the night and it was pissing down rain by the time they arrived at their destination. The place was called Long Lama, a small, desolate farming and fishing community that had been slowly dying for more than a hundred years. Long Lama was quite off the beaten path and none of the three had ever been there before. Their fervent hope was that they would never be there again.

  They put up for the night at the only place they could find, a dreary-looking little affair named The Mermaid. Deep inside the storm and the darkness they could hear the fateful, foreboding sounds of the sea crashing, unfriendly and unbidden, close within the narrow crawl space of their aristocratic souls. They no longer looked like royal messengers for the king as they handed over the reins of their horses to a big fellow with an unkempt red beard who gave every appearance of being a Viking just off the ship.

  “We’re on commission from the king,” said the White Knight to the Viking.

  “Right ye are, my lord,” said the big man winking broadly. “And I was just having tea with the Duchess of Shitesbury.”

  “Ever hear of a magical boy who lives around here?” asked the Black Knight. “Some consider him to be quite the artist?”

  “Hear of him?” said the Viking indignantly. “Found the little bugger myself! Found him in a wee basket on me doorstep on a stormy night like this some ten years back it was. Some say a mermaid brought him in from the sea.”

  “And some say the boy has never spoken,” said the White Knight. “Is that correct?”

  “I have never heard him speak as you and I speak, my lord.”

  “So the boy is retarded?”

  The Viking laughed heartily as he finished putting the horses up for the night. He continued to chuckle to himself as he led the noblemen to their quarters.

  “There are two kinds of sailors,” said the Viking at last. “The sailor who fights the sea, and the sailor who loves the sea. The lad is retarded only to them who do not realize he is a genius.”

  “I see,” said the White Knight, which, of course, was unlikely. That was because he was a nobleman and not a Viking.

  The three travelers weathered a drafty, rather sleepless night, with the raw power of the sea pounding relentlessly into their waking and sleeping senses. During the long course of the night they each experienced strange and strikingly similar dreams, which, being bound by aristocratic bloodlines, they did not choose to share with one another in the morning. The dream was of a lighthouse-keeper and an extremely vivid, passionate union he once consummated with a mermaid.

  Chapter Three

  The Bridge

  BEING A KNIGHT is not all it’s sometimes cracked up to be. From cradle to grave they see nothing but the dank, barren insides of castle walls, empty suits of armor, the wrong end of catapults, and walk-in closets filled with uncomfortable, ridiculous wardrobes they are compelled to wear. Born into the aristocracy, they become the most culture-bound of all human beings and then suddenly, without merit or crime, real people in the real world are thrust with careless abandon upon their delicate sensitivities and misguided value systems. And, to add to that, no one had seen a dragon in several centuries.

  Thus it was that the three emissaries from the king, in all their mud-splattered royal finery, after a fine breakfast of kippers, rode out of The Mermaid the next morning in search of a child who could not speak. Conversing amongst themselves, they were beginning to wonder if the journey was going to be worth it. Accustomed as they were to doing the bidding of the king, they were, nonetheless, highly doubtful that this little adventure would ever, indeed, bring glory to the court or to themselves.

  “What balderdash!” muttered the Black Knight. “A child painting a child.”

  “Maybe that is the method in the madness,” reasoned the Gray Knight.

  “Of course, one hates to wish ill upon the king,” offered the White Knight.

  “That, my friend, is exactly what I fear shall happen,” said the Black Knight. “The king will be made to look the fool. Then he will seek vengeance upon those closest to his majesty.”

  “And that, unfortunately,” concluded the White Knight, “appears to be us.”

  With a sense of almost palpable foreboding hanging over their noble heads, a situation that was not alleviated by the gloomy and threatening heavens above, the three chanced upon a small wooden bridge over a shallow ravine. Crossing the bridge in single file, they came upon a dark, hooded figure standing in their path. The spectral being appeared to be that of an old man holding a scythe.

  “What riders are ye?” he shrieked in an eerie, birdlike voice.

  The noblemen glanced nervously at one another. This was a character they had never encountered in their fortunate and somewhat shallow lives.

  “We come from the king,” shouted the White Knight at last.

  “There is no king,” said the wizened old man. “There is only the imagination of a child.”

  “He is a blasphemous old fool,” said the Black Knight to the others. “Still, he may be able to help us.”

  But before he could address the old man further, the ghostly creature advanced upon them. He came very close indeed but they still could not discern his face.

  “What do you want with the magical boy?” said the man on the bridge.

  The riders exchanged startled glances. Could this faceless old codger read their minds?

  “We want to bring the magical boy to the king,” said the White Knight.

  “There is no king,” said the man on the bridge. “There is only the love of a friend.”

  “Maybe there is no magical boy,” said the Gray Knight.

  “The magical boy lives,” said the wraithlike figure.

  “He may live,” said the Black Knight, “but you will die now, old man.”

  With that, the three riders spurred their steeds directly toward the man on the bridge. Suddenly, the air became very cold and the daylight around them vanished into darkness. Oddly enough, the horse-men could not seem to make physical contact with the man on the bridge. They had seemingly ridden right through the ancient fellow, and yet, there he was, still standing on the bridge.

  “Why didn’t he die?” the Gray Knight asked aloud.

  “I am Death,” said the man on the bridge.

  Chapter Four

  The Magical Boy

  LIFE ALWAYS SEEMS full of promise after a brush with Death and so the three emissaries now redoubled their efforts to find the magical boy. Indeed, following the Viking’s simple directions, it was not long before they came upon the small, rather dilapidated farm they took to be their destination. They were greeted by a skinny farmhand and a skinny dog. The farmhand, who resembled a young Don Quixote, introduced himself as Will Wallace.

  “We are sent from the king,” said the White Knight, “to find the magical boy.”

  “You have come to the right place,” said Will Wallace. “Just now, unfortunately, the lad is eating his oatmeal and cannot be disturbed.”

  The knights exchanged quizzical glances as the farmhand then proceeded to usher them into a clean, if rather humble,
living room. They could hear the voices of a man and a woman murmuring in the nearby little kitchen.

  “Just what is so magical about this magical lad?” the Black Knight inquired of the farmhand.

  “He can paint your dreams,” said the farmhand.

  “I see,” said the Black Knight, but, of course, he did not.

  A few moments later, as the farmhand was bowing his way out, an elderly couple entered the room and introduced themselves. The farmer and his wife were understandably curious as to why three men garbed in such mud-splattered refinement were currently gracing their living room.

  “Welcome to our little farm,” said Uncle Floyd Welch, the farmer.

  “Is there anything we can get you?” asked his wife, Aunt Joan.

  “We have come to see the magical boy,” said the White Knight. “We are here to take him to the court of King Jonjo the First.”

  “Benjamin cannot travel, your lordships,” said the wife, casting a worried look into the kitchen and moving slightly closer to her husband. “We are not his true parents but we took him in as a babe and since then he has never set foot outside our little farm.”

  “Benjamin thinks of us as his Aunt Joan and Uncle Floyd,” said the farmer, “but the truth is he has no known blood relatives. He was a gift to us and, as you may know, he has a great gift as an artist. That, I presume, is how his majesty became aware of Benjamin.”

  “That is correct, sir,” said the Black Knight. “The king is desirous of paying Benjamin a very substantial commission to paint the traditional nativity scene to be formally unveiled at the conclusion of the midnight mass on Christmas Eve.”

  “Well,” said Uncle Floyd, “I won’t say we couldn’t use the money. We’re deeply in debt and could well run the risk of losing our little farm.”

  “Dear,” said Aunt Joan firmly to her husband, “I won’t allow this to happen. The boy is unable to travel and even if he could make the trip, he is unable to speak to the king.”