What’s Conversation to a Pig?

IT WAS DUSK when Wrong Willie leaned over and placed his lips less than an inch from my ear. He virtually breathed the words. “You hear it?”

I whispered back. “That tickles, and the only thing I hear is your stomach grumbling.”

Delbert P. Axelrod thumped against the side of the ground blind we’d erected only the day before and spoke in a volume slightly less than that of a jet on takeoff. “What are you guys whispering about?”

“The hog.”

This time Willie’s whisper was stronger, from aggravation.

“I asked him if he heard the hog, but I doubt if it makes any difference, because that stinkin’ thing’s probably in the next county by now because you’re talking so loud.”

Apparently, the large slab of bacon on the hoof was hard of hearing. Bulling its way through brush and fallen leaves, it shoved through the brush toward the pond where we were hunting near the East Texas town of Centerville.

An explosive sneeze in my ear echoed off the nearby pines.

“Harrruuuggghhhnnn, sput!”

Delbert P. Axelrod, King of the Idiots, cleared his throat. It was incomprehensible that he’d make so much noise when he knew we were supposed to be quiet.

Everything around us went dead silent. No birds chirped. The wind ceased to move the trees, and the hardwoods dropping the last of their leaves were stunned into holding onto what leaves they had left for a few more hours.

“Are you insane!!!” Wrong Willie whispered in astonishment. “We’re hunting! You’re supposed to be quiet!

“Hey. The last time you hunted with Rev’s wife, she made noises and squalled like a banshee, saying she was calling hogs. You didn’t get onto her.”

“That’s a good point, Delbert, but we’re talking about you. I’m sitting right next to you. Don’t you know how to whisper?”

“Yes.” His whisper made my ears ring.

I held up a hand for silence, and the deaf pig grunted again.

“That thing needs a hearing aid,” I said.

Our prey was close, but the light was going and soon it would be too dark to shoot.

“Snuuuggkkk,” came another nasal sound as Delbert cleared his sinus passages.

A sudden movement inside the stand caught my attention. Delbert raised a hand, and his finger went under his nose. Fascinated, I couldn’t take my eyes off him. I thought sure by this point he’d demonstrated every noise the human sinuses could make.

“Aaaachoooo!”

“That does it,” Wrong Willie stood and spoke in a normal tone of voice. Silence was futile at that point. “Delbert, did your parents have any kids that lived?”

“Just me.” He missed the entire point. “Technically, they didn’t have me, I was adopted.”

We absorbed that bit of information concerning the luck of the draw.

Delbert continued, “The story goes that Dad went out to buy a Pontiac and came back with me. He got me from an Italian family.”

Shocked at the story we’d never heard, Willie and I waited for him to finish.

“When he got home with me, he told Mom what he’d done, and she immediately went out and started taking Italian lessons.”

I couldn’t stand it. “Why?”

“So, she could understand me when I started talking.”

“We could shoot him,” Wrong Willie suggested.

Delbert continued, as if Willie hadn’t spoken. “Dad was a little weird.”

“Your dad was a little weird!!!???” Wrong Willie exclaimed.

Delbert continued through the interruption. “Maybe it was because he had high blood pressure. Probably did something to his brain. Because of that, he never went above the first floor of any building.”

I saw that one coming. “To keep his blood pressure as low as possible?”

“Right.”

“Shoot him,” Wrong Willie suggested.

“No, it’s the truth,” Delbert defended, then sneezed again.

“No, shoot him now!” Wrong Willie said to me.

Misunderstanding, Delbert took off running and screaming for the camp, thinking Wrong Willie was referring to him.

Wrong Willie turned to me. “I was talking about the hog,” he said, pointing at the porker standing broadside to us. It was apparently confident that we were no threat, because dangerous beings are most often noiseless during the hunt.

I stood. “This makes no sense. We’re supposed to be quiet while we hunt. Here we are having a pointless conversation in a normal tone of voice, and this stupid pig just walked out into the open.”

I shouldered my rifle and stepped into the dusk.

“Where you going?” Wrong Willie asked.

“To talk to the pig. The intelligence level of this conversation has to go up.”

 

Email Reavis Wortham at ContactUs@fishgame.com

 

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