PIGLET

The Hamilton farm was quiet when young Edward Hamilton rose to feed the chickens before dawn. Edward was a lad of fifteen and rather portly for his age. Combined with a waddling gait, he had come to be called "Piglet" in his youth, and the name stuck. Edward was a rather melancholy soul at the best of times, and since his father had died, he'd grown worse. His mother remarried shortly after, and to his despicable Uncle Claude of all people. Edward brooded about that as well. In fact, Edward brooded about everything, save for the visits of his friend Ray from the neighboring farm. On this particular morning, Ray was already waiting at the chicken coop for his friend and warmly greeted him upon his arrival.

"Mornin', Piglet! Up late, I see."

Piglet yawned, barely awake. "Sorry, Ray. Didn't feel like getting up."

"You've got to snap out of this," Ray said. "So what if Uncle Claude married your mother. There's nothing you can do about it."

"He's not my father!" Piglet shouted.

This was not going to be a conversation Ray was going to win, so he wisely let the matter drop and mumbled something about checking on breakfast. Ray enjoyed breakfast at the Hamilton house, as his own parents had a great fondness for eating cornmeal mush and goat's milk every morning. A little of that went a very long way in one's life. Poor Piglet, Ray thought to himself. He was already the butt of jokes in Elsinore Valley, and now to have a marriage between family members added to his plight could not be an easy cross to bear.

Piglet gathered his eggs in silence. His father had been a very kind and caring person, although his eccentricities distanced himself from the rest of his neighbors. Edward Senior had been a passionate believer in reincarnation and practiced an odd mix of mystic beliefs not normally found in the backcountry of West Virginia. Piglet had heard him say many times that he would come back after death. When Piglet heard his voice that morning in the chicken coop, he was still very surprised--so much so that he stood up sharply and hit his head on the metal roof of the coop, knocking himself out. When he came to, he was lying on the floor with a mouse perched on his nose, eyeing him curiously.

"Edward, is that you?" the mouse seemed to say.

"Who---who said that?" Piglet said groggily.

"Don't you recognize my voice?"

"Y-y-your supposed to b-b-be d-d-dead," Piglet stammered. "Where are you?"

"Standing on your nose. I'm a mouse!"

"Why a mouse? I thought you were supposed to progress upward?"

"I cheated at too many card games, I guess," the mouse said. "It was either that or be a tapeworm, and I figured this was the better deal. That's neither here nor there. I'm here for a reason. You must avenge my foul and most unnatural murder."

"Murder?" Piglet was incredulous. "I thought you fell off the roof of the house and died."

"Oh, I fell rightly enough. Your Uncle Claude put a banana peel on the roof when I wasn't looking and I plummeted to my death. He got to marry my Gertie and I get to dodge mousetraps until the next incarnation."

"What do I have to do? Do you want me to kill Uncle Claude? Do you know how much trouble that's going to cause?"

"If you love me, you'll do as I ask," the mouse said. "Remember my death and how I am suffering now. Claude must receive his punishment, and you're the only one who can mete it out so I may have peace. Adieu, son. Remember me." The voice faded away and the mouse disappeared.

Ray walked back to see what was keeping Piglet and heard him say in a loud voice, "Goodbye, father." Ray asked him what was going on and Piglet shook his head.

"Just having a talk with my dad," he said matter-of-factly.

"In case you hadn't noticed, he's dead. I don't think he can hear you."

"Of course he can. He's alive. He's just been reincarnated as a talking mouse."

Ray felt a headache coming on. "And this mouse said it was your father?"

"Yes," Piglet said. "He said I have to avenge his death by killing Claude!"

Ray decided he had a hankering for mush and goat milk after all, and scurried home.

Nothing happened that day or for the next few weeks. Ray decided Claude had merely suffered some odd vision or delusion and had gotten over the matter. He happened to be at the Hamilton house one evening when the Hickox family came over. The Hickoxes were good friends of Claude and Gert's. Cornelius Hickox was Claude's neighbor and partner in an illegal whiskey-running enterprise. Claude's wife had died some years back, leaving Cornelius to raise two children. They turned into Clyde, the town cardsharp and playboy; and Ophelia, a young lady of few talents and two overriding ambitions: eating as much as possible, and wooing Piglet Hamilton. Apart from a shared love of fattening food, Piglet despised and feared Ophie even more than Claude, and always tried to hide whenever she was around.

Ophie bounded up to Ray. "I can't find my Piggy anywhere! I want to give him a piece of my dee-licioius triple-decker fudge surprise cake. Do you know where he is?"

Ray remembered the last time he'd covered for Piglet in a situation like this, Ophelia had sat on him until he'd told where Piglet was hiding. That was a life's lesson well learned. "Under his bed, Ophie."

"Thank you!" Ophie gave Ray a hug and left chocolate frosting all over his shirt. Up the stairs she ambled, bounding into Piglet's room and bouncing on the bed.

"Piggy! Come out! I've got chocky num-nums!" she said gleefully, each exclamation coming with another bounce on the bed. The fourth bounce broke the bed completely, leaving Ophie to dig Piglet out of the wreckage."

"I'm not hungry," he moaned. "Get me a doctor!"

"Now that's not true. Piggy always wants his num-nums! And Feefee is going to make him lots of num-nums when I marry you."

"I am not marrying you."

"And why not, Piggy-poo?"

"You eat too much. You sing like a love-starved moose. You hug people and suffocate them to death. You break the furniture. You need a crowbar and a bucket of butter to get through doors. I marry you? Bah! Get thee to a nunnery!"

Ophie began crying furiously and hit Piglet in the face with the cake. She ran down the stairs and out of the house.

Meanwhile, the card game in the parlor was going with gusto. Ray, being the only one who didn't cheat, was losing. Gert was puffing her cigar. Claude wiped his brow and rubbed the collar of his lucky genuine made-in-Hong-Kong Hawaiian flowery shirt. Cornelius and Clyde looked like a pair of shifty riverboat gamblers, eyes darting from hand to card and back again. No one paid any attention to the crying Ophelia or to Piglet as he eyed the gathering from the top of the stairs.

Piglet had a wonderful idea. All he would have to do was get the bowling ball from his closet and accidentally arrange for it to fall and hit that swine in the flowery shirt. He ran and got the ball. From the yard outside, Ophelia screamed. Everyone at the table ran out the door to see what had happened. Everyone but Piglet, who overbalanced on the staircase peering down to see where everyone went and fell, with bowling ball, down on the card table and smashed it to bits.

"The funeral was beautiful, wasn't it?" asked Gertrude.

Claude looked up from his newspaper. "Very nice. Old Reverend Guildenstern can give a damn good eulogy when the mood strikes him."

"Poor Ophie didn't deserve such a fate."

"I don't know how something that big can fit in a well, let alone drown herself in one."

"Shush! Enough of that. Clyde was convinced our Piglet was responsible for her death. I had to keep telling him how terrible he must have felt to try and throw himself off the stairs. I really do think he loved her."

"We should invite them over. I know how hard Cornelius has been taking it. A good cheering up is just what they need."

"Splendid idea. Why not Friday night?" Gert went off to call them up.

Piglet was listening to all of this and decided the time had come to try again. Gert was complaining about Claude not taking out the trash, so Piglet climbed up on the roof with a flowerpot and waited for Claude to emerge from the house. When he came out, Piglet threw the pot at him. The pot landed right in the trash can.

"Excellent shot, Edward!" Claude called out. Piglet didn't reply, but seethed with anger.

All that night, Piggy stayed awake in his room. Nothing like curling up with a good book, he thought: 1001 Nifty and Dangerous Science Projects. #746 caught his eye: how to build a time bomb using everyday household items. Piglet built his bomb and stuck it in a cardboard box. As dawn began to break over the valley, he snuck into the garage with the box. The garage was very dark, and Piglet tripped over something, dropping the box. He picked it back up and set it in the back seat of Claude's convertible. Out of the garage he stole, chuckling as he went.

Later that afternoon, Ray stopped by. Piglet was pacing nervously. "Is it 4:00 yet?"

"I do believe it is," Ray said, looking at his watch.

Claude drove out of the garage and headed for the market to buy the groceries for entertaining the Hickoxes. Piglet waited for the 'boom', and it was not long in coming. It was a much louder boom than he anticipated--the garage blew up. Claude was very grateful to Piglet, as he had wanted to tear the thing down anyway and build a new one. Now he didn't have to bother paying someone to come and do it. Nevertheless, Piglet got a whipping for putting a box with a leaky old battery in the back seat of Claude's car, spoiling the interior.

Friday morning came and Piglet was brooding again. He sat alone in his darkened room and stared at the walls. The house was quiet, and the only disturbance to Piglet's thoughts was a crow cawing in a tree outside the house.

"To be or not to be," Piglet mused. "That is the question."

"To be what, however?" a voice replied. A mouse sat on the top of Piglet's bed and watched him intently. "I'm doing better at this than you are. At least I scared the crap out of Gert. You should have seen her dancing around on that chair yesterday."

"It isn't like I've not been trying, Father. I've just had a lot of bad luck."

"I know. I admire your courage," the mouse said, scratching a flea or two into the bedcovers. "Keep trying, son. To thine own self be true. Adieu!" The mouse hopped off the bed and disappeared into a mouse hole in the floorboards.

"Where did he learn French?" Piglet wondered, and started scratching himself.

The clock on the wall said 5:00 and the house smelled of barbecue sauce, chicken, buttered corn, and Gert's famous apple pie. Outside, a beautiful tablecloth of white and red covered a rustic picnic table in the yard. Claude carried a crate of vintage moonshine from the fruit cellar. The phone rang in the house, and a few moments later, Gert appeared telling Claude that the Hickox's car wouldn't start and they needed a lift. Claude and Gert hopped in the convertible and drove away, leaving Piglet alone.

"Now's my chance for sure," he shouted. There would be no mistakes this time. He poured weed-killer, rat poison, and drain cleaner in the moonshine jug, and hid the empty cans in the ruins of the garage. Of course, Claude could stumble off to try and reach the poison kit. There were two in the house: one in the hall closet and the other in the cellar. Piglet put an anvil from the garage in the hall closet and balanced it so that opening the door would make it fall out. Then he rushed down into the basement looking for something to booby-trap the cellar stairs with. Eventually he settled on a pack of marbles (which he spread on the stairs) and the old Civil War sword of that grand patriot General Fortinbras Hamilton nailed upright on the bottom stair. Anybody falling down those stairs would get a piercing experience, he chuckled. Just as he was leaving, he took the light bulb out of the socket, so no one could see what fate awaited them.

Piglet finished just as the car drove into the driveway. Clyde and Cornelius brought a large icebox from the car, and Claude carried out a box containing Frisbees and footballs. Gert cornered Piglet into helping bring the food to the table and everyone sat down to have a delightful meal. Piglet poured a large mug of shine and handed it to Claude. Claude refused it.

"Your mother made all this delicious food. She should have the first glass."

"Why thank you!" Gert said. "You are such a chivalrous man." She took the mug and swallowed a huge gulp over the protestations of Piglet. "To the best husband a woman could ever have," she said, and keeled over face first into the apple pie.

"Powerful stuff," Clyde said. "You might want to dilute the recipe a bit next time."

Claude smelled the bottle. "Dilute it my ass! This stuff's poisoned! Get the poison kits from the house!" he exclaimed. "Hall closet and cellar---between the two of them, something in there has to work. Piglet, you dial the ambulance."

Clyde and Cornelius tore off for the house and Piglet realized that his foolproof plan was going spectacularly wrong. He tried to catch up with the two unsuspecting victims, but he couldn't waddle fast enough. Cornelius found the hall closet and the anvil found him, crushing his skull instantly. Clyde threw open the cellar door and charged down the stairs without bothering to turn on the light. He slipped on the marbles and fell down the stairs, impaling himself upon the sword. Piglet surveyed the carnage and knew there was no hope of ever getting away with murder now. Everyone except himself and Claude were dead, and he now would have to confront Claude directly. The rifle kept over the fireplace would do the trick. Alas, Piglet's frustrations got the better of him and he went to kick the cellar door in disgust. Piglet was never much of an athlete, and he missed, lost his balance, and fell down the stairs himself. The sword was still there, and Piglet landed on top of Clyde on the top of Fortinbras' sword.

"I am justly killed with mine own treachery," he mumbled to himself before he expired.

Claude was a broken man from that point on in his life. The neighbors eventually grew tired of his constant wailing and moaning and sent him to the Elsinore Asylum for the Insane, where he spent the rest of his days. The official court records say that one fine May Day, Claude Hamilton threw himself out a window at the Asylum and committed suicide. There exists a legend however that one of the attendants heard two voices arguing in the room before Claude jumped. When the attendant opened the door, Claude had already gone and the room was empty...save for the presence of a mouse on the windowsill peering down to the grounds below. The mouse turned to look at the attendant and the man swore the mouse smiled at him before dashing off into a mouse hole never to be seen again.

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