Wisdom, chaos, kindness, and piglets

“Did you know that every pig on the planet is pregnant for three months, three weeks, and three days?” Mr. Fletcher said as we rested our arms on the fence.

“No way, you’re pulling my leg again.”

“It’s true. Once they mate, we can put an X on the calendar, and you’ll know about when they’ll farrow.” 

“Oh my, look,” I pointed over to the boar and the sow. “I guess I’ll go in and put an X on the calendar, the one from the feed store, I think.” 

“Any calendar with days ending in Y will do,” he snorted. “You city people.” 

Three months, three weeks, and three days later, February snow drifted up against the barn. I shoveled a 150-foot path from the house, in the dark, even though it was Academy Awards night and this chore meant I was going to miss most of the red carpet. 

The X on the kitchen calendar stood out like Angelina Jolie’s leg in that fabulous black dress. I had no choice. “Perfect,” I thought. “The only night I get to pretend I don’t live here.” 

Now weighing more than 500 pounds each, the two sows were lying in straw beds they’d made for themselves, each in a separate corner of the freezing barn. Nothing was happening except low grunting, the same noise they made when I fed them stale Sunday doughnuts. 

Around 1 a.m., after the best picture was awarded to a movie I hadn’t seen, I trudged back out to the barn. 

Blood-streaked piglets were loose everywhere, and high-pitched squealing reverberated like 15 whistling teakettles. A few newborn piglets wandered around, seemingly dazed; one was bashing up against the barn wall again and again. More came from both sows at a frequency that seemed miraculous and excessive. 

“I mean, are you kidding me?” I yelled to the assembly.

I had no idea what to do next. Completely clueless. Obviously, I had prepped for the event. I’d read everything I could find. I simply did not think I’d be working with such volume. I left the barn and went out into the pen, looked up to the heavens, and said, “Hey, I have absolutely no idea what to do next.” 

I turned toward the road because the wind picked up just then and bit my face hard as only a February wind can. Running lights, the kind that comes standard on every pickup truck, shone like little beacons, making their way down my driveway. 

The radio stopped when the driver’s door opened. Mr. Fletcher stepped out. 

“Three months. Three weeks. Three days. And I forgot to tell you, usually at 3 o’clock in the morning.”

The clock in the barn read 2:45. He had timed his heroism perfectly. 

“You’re a good man, Mr. Fletcher, you know that, right?” I said, patting his shoulder as he opened the gate to get to the pigs. 

“Well, no one knew that until I met you,” he said, gently placing the piglets under the heat lamps with hands the size of dinner plates. “You went and ruined my reputation.”

“It was my pleasure, Mr. Fletcher. My pleasure,” I said to his profile as we watched the piglets do the Darwinian dance of who can get the best spot under a heat lamp. 

I used to think that there was no arc to Mr. Fletcher’s story, that he is and will forever be a man going from work to church to home (“minus the church,” he’d say), expecting little and living a predictable life based on the seasons and the chores that went with each.

I was wrong.

Yes, his truck will never leave the county and yet will log 200,000 miles in five years. He will never take a vacation, get on a plane, or sit in a cafe surrounded by chatter he cannot understand. His life will not be cinematic, but that’s not important or necessary. 

That’s because he spent a freezing February night placing 22 warm, clean piglets up against their waiting moms, making sure that they – and I – found peace. Acts of unselfish kindness can change a person from grumpy to gentle, or at least that’s what happened to my friend Mr. Fletcher: a hero on any day that ends in Y.