"The Pigman" by Paul Zindel, Chapters 6-8

“If we don’t cash it, he’ll know something was funny and really call the police,” he told me with typical John Conlan logic.

It’s not exactly easy being her daughter, and more than once I’ve thought about what a good psychiatrist could do for her.

Actually, I think her problems are so deep-rooted she’d need three years of intensive psychoanalysis.

If my mother had ever let me have a dog, I think it would have been the happiest dog on earth. I know just how the minds of animals work—just the kind of games they like to play. The closest I ever came to having a pet was an old mongrel that used to hang around the neighborhood.

I felt sorry for the old man because people just don’t go around smiling like that all the time unless they’re mentally unbalanced or harboring extreme anxiety.

I realize now there were plenty of bad omens within the next few minutes.

I mean, that’s how antagonistic she was. A real devoted antagonist. You could tell she hated kids—just hated them.

The third omen that this was going to be a bad day was when we went into the nocturnal room of the Mammal Building.

And when I came up to the cage to see these ugly bloodsucking creatures, I had to look right into this little kid’s face that had a smirk on it. He made me feel as though I was a bat in a cage and he was on the outside looking in at me.

Anyway, after seeing Galapagos tortoises, reticulated pythons, and puff adders, the Pigman dragged us over to the Primate Building, more popularly known as the monkey house.

It was obvious that Mr. Pignati was going to visit awhile with Bobo, and John and I felt like we were intruding.

"I’m sure you will,” John added as we went out of the monkey house and got on this mechanical contraption that came by.

We passed the bald eagle (which is also the nickname for the principal of our high school), the white-tailed deer, tahr goats, three white-bearded gnu, lions in a pit, one otter, a black leopard, a striped hyena (“a raider of graves”), two cheetahs that were fighting, four Bengal tigers, a Kodiak bear, an American bear, a polar bear, two hippos (“which secrete a fluid the color of blood all over their body”), an eight-ton bull elephant, and a giant anteater.

The only difference between her fibs and mine are that hers are eerie—she’s got a gift for saying things that make you anxious.

If you let her, Lorraine would eat until she dropped, and if she keeps going at that rate, I’m afraid she’s going to be somewhat more than voluptuous.

Once I ran away from Lorraine and the others and hid in a part of the cemetery that didn’t have perpetual care.

If I was lying on somebody’s grave, whoever it was would be six feet away. Maybe there had been a lot of erosion, and whoever it was was only five feet away...or four.

Maybe one of the molecules of iron from the corpse’s hemoglobin is in the strand of grass next to my ear.

She finally got out of the house again that night by performing an elaborate ritual about having to go to the library.

It was the first thing he’d said to me during dinner, and even though it wasn’t the warmest remark, I could tell he had given up prosecuting the case of the phantom gluer.

“I think your problem is you have too much spare time.”

He’s almost sixty years old, and I know he’s not going to be around much longer. All the guys at the Exchange drop dead of heart attacks. They gather around this circle and bellow out bids all day long....

“I’m asking you to try working for a change. At your age I was working hard, not floundering around in a fool’s dream world.”

“Do you mean real whipped cream or that horrible, prepared-mix, fake whipped cream?”
“Don’t give the ingrate anything.”

“Your father’s a little tired tonight. Maybe you’d better go over to a friend’s house to do your homework? I mean he’s worked hard, and I don’t think we should aggravate him, do you?”

At first we had just stood around, bashful about touching his things.

“May I use your bathroom?” Lorraine asked, her face turning stark white.

I didn’t exactly suspect Mr. Pignati of having murdered her and sealed her body behind a wall in the cellar, but I was suspicious.

It was probably the only part of Beekman’s he’d ever been to, and I could just picture Conchetta and him pushing the cart up and down the aisles picking out all that vile food.

“I’m not his daughter,” I blurted out, and the Pigman looked depressed. I didn’t mean to say it as though I would be ashamed to be his daughter, but I guess it just came out that way.

There was enough artillery in Beekman’s toy department to wipe out Red China and the Mau-Mau tribe of Africa, and I personally think some of the toy manufacturers could use a good course in preventive psychiatry.

“Of course we can,” I said scowling at John.

The three monkeys were hugging each other desperately, and I really had to smile, watching them. Here they were, clinging to each other in the pet shop at Beekman’s, looking out at everybody with those tiny, wet eyes—as though pleading for love.

“Bobo...you look just like my little Bobo,” Mr. Pignati was saying, leaning over the counter and waving his hand at one of the poor monkeys that looked like it was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

One part of me was saying “Don’t let this nice old man waste his money,” and the other half was saying “Enjoy it, enjoy doing something absolutely absurd”—something that let me be a child in a way I never could be with my mother, something just silly and absurd and...beautiful.