Rover the Pet Pig

Photo by Abonyi Kevin on Unsplash

I started writing about my childhood friend Ida this morning, and I just couldn’t stop. There’s a lot I’m leaving behind for this breath of an instant of the yeas that we knew one another. Maybe it will come out later.

Ida lived at the bottom of a steep hill --

When we walked up and down her street,

we literally walked up and down,

from the fork where the road split off into Devou Park,

to the underbrush between her house and the golf course

(home to pocketsfull of errant golf balls

encrusted with the earth that rose from where they landed.)

Ida named her pet pig "Rover."

It was illegal to have "exotic pets" in Park Hills, Kentucky.

(As if there was anything exotic about the three of us.

A small black pig who walked on a leash and slept on an old pillow.

One girl too skinny, wearing too thick glasses on her too pale face,

the other too fat, reading too many books, with hair too short for a girl.)

Rover made us walk slowly up the street,

slow enough to ask each other questions Catholic school didn't answer --

"Our names aren't in the Saints book.

Or in the parts of the Bible we read.

So, who watches over us?

Who keeps us safe and when is our name day?

Are we the children of the woman who didn't die young, virginal,

sacrificed in fire instead of in marriage?"

Down the street, Rover stumbled over his legs on the steep incline.

We laughed ourselves silly the whole way --

laughed instead of finding answers.