Essays of E. B. White Read Online Free PDF Page B

a place under the apple tree where he had vomited in the night.
    At this point, although a depression had settled over me, I didn’t suppose that I was going to lose my pig. From the lustiness of a healthy pig a man derives a feeling of personal lustiness; the stuff that goes into the trough and is received with such enthusiasm is an earnest of some later feast of his own, and when this suddenly comes to an end and the food lies stale and untouched, souring in the sun, the pig’s imbalance becomes the man’s, vicariously, and life seems insecure, displaced, transitory.
    As my own spirits declined, along with the pig’s, the spirits of my vile old dachshund rose. The frequency of our trips down the footpath through the orchard to the pigyard delighted him, although he suffers greatly from arthritis, moves with difficulty, and would be bedridden if he could find anyone willing to serve him meals on a tray.
    He never missed a chance to visit the pig with me, and he made many professional calls on his own. You could see him down there at all hours, his white face parting the grass along the fence as he wobbled and stumbled about, his stethoscope dangling—a happy quack, writing his villainous prescriptions and grinning his corrosive grin. When the enema bag appeared, and the bucket of warm suds, his happiness was complete, and he managed to squeeze his enormous body between the two lowest rails of the yard and then assumed full charge of the irrigation. Once, when I lowered the bag to check the flow, he reached in and hurriedly drank a few mouthfuls of the suds to test their potency. I have noticed that Fred will feverishly consume any substance that is associated with trouble—the bitter flavor is to his liking. When the bag was above reach, he concentrated on the pig and was everywhere at once, a tower of strength and inconvenience. The pig, curiously enough, stood rather quietly through this colonic carnival, and the enema, though ineffective, was not as difficult as I had anticipated.
    I discovered, though, that once having given a pig an enema there is no turning back, no chance of resuming one of life’s more stereotyped roles. The pig’s lot and mine were inextricably bound now, as though the rubber tube were the silver cord. From then until the time of his death I held the pig steadily in the bowl of my mind; the task of trying to deliver him from his misery became a strong obsession. His suffering soon became the embodiment of all earthly wretchedness. Along toward the end of the afternoon, defeated in physicking, I phoned the veterinary twenty miles away and placed the case formally in his hands. He was full of questions, and when I casually mentioned the dark spots on the pig’s back, his voice changed its tone.
    â€œI don’t want to scare you,” he said, “but when there are spots, erysipelas has to be considered.”
    Together we considered erysipelas, with frequent interruptions from the telephone operator, who wasn’t sure the connection had been established.
    â€œIf a pig has erysipelas can he give it to a person?” I asked.
    â€œYes, he can,” replied the vet.
    â€œHave they answered?” asked the operator.
    â€œYes, they have,” I said. Then I addressed the vet again. “You better come over here and examine this pig right away.”
    â€œI can’t come myself,” said the vet, “but McFarland can come this evening if that’s all right. Mac knows more about pigs than I do anyway. You needn’t worry too much about the spots. To indicate erysipelas they would have to be deep hemorrhagic infarcts.”
    â€œDeep hemmorrhagic what?” I asked.
    â€œInfarcts,” said the vet.
    â€œHave they answered?” asked the operator.
    â€œWell,” I said, “I don’t know what you’d call these spots, except they’re about the size of a housefly. If the pig has erysipelas I guess I have it,