The Christmas Pig

A Fable

Kinky Friedman

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Year: 2006
• eBook ISBN: 9781416543459

It's a Christmas tale only a man called Kinky could tell. King Jonjo Mayo the First is in a bind. Every Christmas, he commissions an artist to paint a traditional nativity scene to be dramatically revealed after midnight mass. This year, though, the date is mere weeks away, and he still has not yet found his painter. The king decides to take a chance on a peculiar, mute boy whose artistic genius and clairvoyance are rumored throughout the kingdom. He sends three valiant, if begrudging, knights to seek out the boy in the remote countryside. Finally, they find Benjamin -- and he is, indeed, peculiar. Nobody knows if the child is up to the task, but the king's Christmas tradition -- and Benjamin himself -- might just be saved by a Christmas miracle that comes in the form of a very special pig -- who is rather peculiar herself.

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 ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Colophon
• By the Same Author
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Acknowledgments
• Dedication
• Chapter One Where Are Feinberg’s Shoes?
• Chapter Two The Mermaid
• Chapter Three The Bridge
• Chapter Four The Magical Boy
• Chapter Five Leaving Home
• Chapter Six The Journey
• Chapter Seven The Pregnant Sweetheart
• Chapter Eight The Man on the Bridge
• Chapter Nine A Magical Boy in King Jonjo’s Court
• Chapter Ten The King I
• Chapter Eleven Uncle and Son
• Chapter Twelve A Conversation in a Dream
• Chapter Thirteen The Horse
• Chapter Fourteen The Cow
• Chapter Fifteen The Lamb
• Chapter Sixteen The Rooster
• Chapter Seventeen The Dog, the Cat, and the Three Wise Men
• Chapter Eighteen Jesus, Joseph, and Mary
• Chapter Nineteen A Christmas Pig
• Chapter Twenty An Empty Canvas
• Chapter Twenty-One The Forest
• Chapter Twenty-Two The Midnight Mass
• Chapter Twenty-Three The Angels
• About The Author