Wedding Bell Blues - [36]

Lily shuddered. Knowledge of animals’ insides was definitely not required in order to draw themfor a picture book. “I was having a hard enough time just feeding her this apple.”

“It’s either you try to do it or I kill this piglet so the others can get out.”

Lily rose and scrubbed her hands. She was squeamish as hell about getting so intimate with ahoofed creature, but as a vegetarian, she was supposedly devoted to protecting animal life.

Jack gestured toward the pig’s orifice. “Now if you can just wedge your hand in so you can get agood grip around the piglet’s middle, you can pull it right out.”

“Sorry, Minnie,” Lily mumbled as she shoved her hand into the sow’s vagina. “Usually I at leastbuy a girl dinner before we get to this part.”

As Lily groped around in the darkness, she suddenly felt the warmth and movement of a livingcreature. The piglet was wedged in tight, but she slowly worked her hand alongside it, and thenpainstakingly turned her wrist until she was gripping the animal just behind what felt like its back legs.

“Got it ... I think.”

“Okay,” Jack said. “Now pull, but go easy.”

Gripping the tiny animal firmly, Lily brought her arm back in a slow, steady pull. The piglet’scurly tail was visible first, then finally its wet pink ears and snout. “It’s breathing!” Lily cried, overcomewith the emotion of the moment. “Is it a boy or a girl?”

Jack glanced under the pig’s tail. “Looks like a girl.”

Ed looked at Lily and laughed. He apparently wasn’t used to seeing someone get so worked upover livestock.

“Well, it sure is,” Jack said. “Ed, I reckon you’ll have to name this piglet Lily ... after hermidwife.”

Ed grinned. “You’re plum crazy, Doc ... not changed a lick since you was a little girl.”

Jack grinned back. “Why don’t you get us some more hot water so we can wash up? I’ll stay tillall the piglets are born, but my guess is the rest of the delivery will go normally.”

It did go normally. Minnie lay on her side and squeezed out piglet after piglet, until the littertotaled seven. Lily sketched the pigs while Jack kept the apple slices coming.

“How they doing?” Ed asked when he returned with fresh water.

“They look great,” Jack said.

“Well, Vina’s got some breakfast cooked, if y’all wanna eat before you go.”

“You know me,” Jack said, scrubbing her hands. “I wouldn’t miss one of Vina’s breakfasts.

They’re this job’s number-one fringe benefit.”

Lily sat with Jack at the table in Ed and Vina’s spotless kitchen, with the morning sun shiningthrough the red-and-white gingham curtains. The table was spread with an artery-clogging breakfastbuffet: hot biscuits, red-eye gravy, cooked apples, fried eggs, grits, ham, bacon, and sausage.

“Now you girls eat all the biscuits you want,” Vina, a smiling, plump woman said, filling theirmugs with coffee. “I just put another pan in the oven.”

“Thanks, but I’m sure one pan will be plenty,” Lily said. But after she saw the way Jack wasfilling up her plate, she wasn’t so sure anymore. She bit into a biscuit and surveyed the numerous pigproducts on the table uneasily. “So,” she said, “what’s gonna happen to my piggy namesake after shegrows up?”

“Same thing that happens to most pigs, I reckon,” Ed said, spearing a sausage patty.

“Oh.” The thought of the little piglet surviving a difficult birth only to wind up on someone’sbreakfast table depressed Lily. The piglet’s plight seemed similar to Mimi’s. Lily mourned for smallcreatures who had no control over their destinies. She was embarrassed to feel a tear sliding down hercheek.

“You city girls get softhearted about animals, don’tcha?” Ed asked, pouring gravy over a splitbiscuit.

“Sorry,” Lily said, feeling foolish. “It just struck me as sad, is all.”

“Well, shoot,” Jack said, helping herself to a third fried egg. “If you’re gonna get that upset aboutit, I reckon Ed and Vina can just bring Lily the pig out to me after she gets weaned. I’ll pay as good aprice for her as they will at the meat market, and I reckon I’ve got room on my farm for a pig.”

“You and your farm,” Vina laughed, emptying the second pan of biscuits into the bread basket.

“Ed and Vina always make fun of my farm,” Jack began. “Of course, I reckon they’ve got a rightto. It’s more of a petting zoo than a farm. I’ve got half a dozen dogs — some I found on the side of theroad, some I took away from people that was mistreating ’em; five cats; an old swaybacked horse I savedfrom getting shot; and a goat with just one horn. You oughta bring your little girl out to see ’em.”

Lily smiled. “I’ll have to do that.”

“Anyway,” Jack said as she spooned up another serving of grits, “I reckon I got room for a pig inmy collection, if you and Mimi promise to come visit her.”

“I promise.”

“It sure takes a lot of money to feed all them animals without you making any profit off ’em,” Edsaid, pushing his plate away.

“Aah, it’s not that expensive,” Jack said. “Besides, I gotta spend my money on somethin’. It’s notlike I go out and blow it on new dresses.”

Ed and Vina laughed. Lily was amazed at how comfortable they were with Jack’s masculinity.