Snowball's Chance (6 page)

Diso was no nincompoop. As a young beaver, he had left the woods to seek out the education of the village goats. And only when Diso had learned all he could from the Swiss Toggenburgs did he return to the Woodlands. Diso had been well-trained in the history not only of his own land—but in the histories of the land that surrounded him. He knew all about Foxwood—a farm owned by Mr. Pilkington, a cavalier gentleman farmer who liked killing deer and carp. And he knew all about Pinchfield, which was owned by a Mr. Frederick, a cunning devil who reveled in filing lawsuits, and beating every last penny out of his land and livestock. And Diso, as well, knew all about the Pig Farm—about the endless avarice and deceit of the swine, and the ruthless way that they, like the humans, bombed the beaver dams. More than anything else, Diso knew about that hypocrisy—and those lying hogs. They treated animals no better than humans treated animals, and therefore, were no better than humans. Most of the Woodlands didn’t even understand that there had been a rebellion on the Pig Farm. The Woodlands animals had hated their mistreatment back when the Pig Farm was
the Manor Farm, owned by Mr. Jones. And they hated their mistreatment now, when it was owned by the pigs. It was all the same to them. And as much as the militant Diso was feared and even resented by much of the Woodlands population, there was still that incontrovertible thing—waterflow was their right.

As of late, the intelligence that Diso had collected on the Pig Farm was particularly comprehensive. Moses, who regularly reported to Diso on all three of the nincompoop farms, had been explicit in his account of the recent changes that were now taking place on the Pig Farm—under the dictate of the pig Minimus, and more importantly, the pig Snowball.

Also, there were the rats, who, always back and forth between the Woodlands and the three farms (based upon wherever life was easiest at the moment), could be relied upon for the most up-to-date news. Rats, though they had nearly no long-term memories, had excellent short-term memories—virtually photographic. And thus, they made exceptional spies and saboteurs—as they could be told anything about the past, and they would believe it, and they would do anything for you, and then forget it. The only problem with rats was that they were so greedy for chicken eggs, peanut butter, and coconut strips smeared with limburger, that they wouldn’t stop at making things up or exaggerating their tales to increase a dividend.

But despite the weaknesses of the sources—from the greed of the rats to the vagueness of Moses, who, though highly esteemed, was not known for his directness—the beavers, by their extremely technical minds, felt they could sort it all out. The beaver brain, suited to a task so
complex as to go beyond the wildest arrogant imaginings of any other animal (that task being dam-building), was uniquely adapted to sifting variant information into a cosmological entirety—an entirety that went all the way back to that time only Moses remembered, when beavers oversaw a village in harmony with the universe.…

“Up there,” Moses would point into the night sky—

“Up there you see the Lodestar of Sugarcandy, where, for every righteous beaver, 1600 virgin birch saplings await.”

And accordingly, being the chosen population of the Lodestar, and having for years had both Moses and their diverse intelligence operations, the beavers supposed that they had a pretty good grasp of things—one that was getting better every day. (At that time of earthly departure, this on-going striving for clarity would surely, and promptly so, plop a soul on the Lodestar.) And with the new information that had been provided by Moses, the Pig Farm, to the beaver’s way of thinking, was not only the most reprehensible of the Woodlands enemies, but also the most well-understood.

The hypocrite pig!

Nevertheless, at the moment, as much as the beavers hated the Pig Farm, Foxwood and Pinchfield were far more dangerous foes. Like Foxwood and Pinchfield, the Pig Farm bombed the beaver dams. But unlike Foxwood and Pinchfield, the Pig Farm did not engage in hunting, or trapping. More specifically, the Pig Farm did not engage in the horrific but highly profitable fur-trade. Diso favored the assumption that this was merely an oversight of the pigs. Yet, Diso could not deny the undeniable—the Pig Farm had not been responsible for the continuing and
senseless brutality. The Pig Farm was a newish regime, while, for as long as anyone could remember, Foxwood and Pinchfield had been relentless in their policy of stripping the Woodlands of every conceivable resource. A policy that was so far reaching as to peel the pelt from an animal’s back. Just the previous season, nine beavers had been lost—to that vile, devilish pastime of transforming animals beautiful, brilliant, and loving, into coats.

Based upon this, through secret dispatches conveyed by Moses the raven, a tenuous alliance had been formed with the Pig Farm—an alliance that, however fragile, had lasted several seasons. Because of the swine’s longstanding struggle against their neighbors (though the beavers saw hardly any difference between pork farmers and farmer pork), as well as their new association with a brilliant goat named Thomas, the Pig Farm had engineered revolutionary military technology. Namely, they had devised a method to disable traps—spring-traps and others—by the use of kerosene bombs. Animal Farm had dispatched to the Woodlands special advisors, who would educate and advise the Woodlands animals on the mastery of this lifesaving technology. In exchange for this expertise, the beavers had conducted a covert war against Foxwood and Pinchfield. Instructed by the goats in tactical operations, the beavers learned not only the art of destroying the farmers’ traps, but the art of chewing holes in roofs, grain sheds and chicken coops—and the art of mixing onion seed in the grass seed—and a dozen dozen other such arts, which the beavers were all too happy to have their Woodlands adherents carry out.

FILMONT ARRIVED HELPLESS. HE WAS MOSTLY Labrador, and part golden—all retriever. And having none of that fierceness that the shepherds of Animal Farm had, he had been beaten nearly to death by the farmer Frederick. The guard dogs had found him at the perimeter, bleeding from the mouth, and though they were initially shamed that any dog could be so passive, they could not but eventually be charmed by the shaggy tramp. He said he had never bitten anyone and he never would—he had never even been in a dogfight. And he would not even resist Frederick the farmer. He had just lain there under the man’s swinging boot.

Filmont had been conveyed to the big barn on a scrapped door hitched to a steer. As most of the animals were then returning for the evening, Filmont had died before all of them—his body gone limp as his sandy colored fur.

The last words that passed through his muzzle were words of love for his collie, Sandra-Marjorie, who was expecting a litter of puppies—his puppies.

Sandra-Marjorie was Mr. Pilkington’s collie—Mr. Pilkington of Foxwood. And for this reason had Filmont been beaten by his own owner, Mr. Frederick, who, besides having a fondness for beating animals, was none too pleased to be informed by Mr. Pilkington that he
would soon be receiving a litter of puppies—as his was the mongrel that fathered the mess. Frederick and Pilkington had always hated each other, and this romance of their dogs had exacerbated the situation. Nobody wanted a damn golden Labrador collie.

“Send a message to my Sandra-Marjorie,” said Filmont, “that I will be waiting for her on the moon.”

The scene was of such sentiment that many of the animals began to weep. For those unfamiliar with the lunar allusion, Norma the cat provided the salient belief of dog culture.

“Dogs think that when they die they go to the moon. That’s why they always howl at the moon,” she quietly explained.

Filmont exhaled his last, and the barn was penetrated by melancholy—that despair of life faced by death.

But then, Thomas the goat arrived.

“Clear the way! Clear the way!” cried Snowball—and the animals staggered aside to let the goat pass. There were puzzled snorts, clacks and bleats as Thomas banged on the chest of the Labrador—and blew into his bleeding mouth. And then, suddenly, amid shocked whispers and cries, blood sputtered from Filmont’s maw—and the dog heaved, and breathed again.

“Convey this dog to my laboratory!”

Months before, at the command of Thomas the goat, the old harness-room had been transformed into a laboratory, where Thomas performed miracles of modern science. And it was here that Thomas performed his greatest miracle to date. One of the rats saw him do it, and reported back to the other animals in the middle of the night.

Thomas and Snowball had donned white uniforms and masks, whereupon, with the shiningest knife the rat had ever seen, Thomas the goat had cut open the dog’s belly—

“Inside the dog, there were these different colored blobs, and one of them was bleeding. Thomas took some needle and thread and stitched it up, so it stopped bleeding,” recalled the amazed rat—

“And then he stitched the dog closed. And, I think, the dog’s still alive. And he’s gonna stay alive.”

And as it turned out, Filmont did survive.

His wound bandaged, the Labrador was given his own stall—where over the next weeks, he was visited by many of the animals, with whom he shared long conversations. Throughout his ordeal, his earnestness, his gentleness, endeared him to the farm animals.

Under the Pinchfield despot, Mr. Frederick, Filmont’s life had been one hardship after another—and when he spoke of Animal Farm, of how the animals had taken control of their own lives, of the wonder represented by the voting process, of the miracle of education, and of how an animal could rise up, as had Napoleon, as had Snowball … well, he shared a dewy eye with many a creature. With no more than his own optimism, Filmont could renew a sense of Animal Farm greatness in beasts more accustomed to exhaustion. So encouraging, so without pretension (Yes, most animals were equalish!), Filmont could restore dignity to a rat who had not felt pride in his work since the day he switched from river to sewer, for the better hours. Here, in Filmont, was an animal who represented, merely by his arrival, what a glowing beacon Animal Farm was to the village. And
here, in Filmont, was an animal that allowed all the farm animals, for at least a moment, to put aside their resentments of the newcomers who were digging under the fences to join the farm, and experience in their coming a reawakening of that initial freedom.

The animals had taken over the farm!

Ah yes, what glory! What limitless possibility!

Meanwhile, the re-education classes proceeded as scheduled—everyone was humanized. “Four legs good, two legs better,” a few of the sheep remembered from somewhere. The geese were excused from the fields to work on providing the farm animals with clothing. Reams of cloth were delivered, and the geese took to their seamstress labors fairly capably. By the end of the summer, each male animal had one pair of short pants, one pair of long pants, one long-sleeved shirt, one short-sleeved shirt, and one headcloth—while each female had one short dress, one long dress, one shawl, and two bonnets. After the sewing was completed, the geese took up the laundry—as well as the patching and repairing of any garments that needed attention.

It was generally agreed that, really, clothing wasn’t so bad—once a critter got used to it. Hot, a little bit, itchy, a little bit—but the animals appreciated the bright colors, and were soon bartering feed and services for more stylish vestments. It was supposed one might express one’s individuality through an innovative bandanna.

As for the walking, some animals were more successful than others. The birds already had the two-legged gait down pat—and about half the sheep picked it up in the first week. Benjamin the donkey had no trouble—and as much as he complained about a pain in his left hip, he
waddled with the best of them. The three horses, none of whom could recite the alphabet any higher than the letter B, found the task utterly impossible. Norma the cat, in contrast, lent a feline grace to the undertaking. The cows, too, adopted the form of locomotion without undue difficulty—though they did seem to do a good deal of leaning. The dogs, who with equal ease attained the upright position, were nevertheless allowed to remain on all fours most of the time—as they put forth a forceful argument that the bipedal position left them vulnerable and slow.

Likewise, with the help of Thomas the goat, the plans for the windmills were rapidly becoming a reality. A team of goat engineers had been brought in to fashion tools for animal paws (as opposed to human hands) and with a foundation of poured cement and cement blocks, the construction commenced in November. Utilizing wood planks milled at the old Napoleon Mill, the structures grew rapidly. For those who had any impression of the past, and the awful setbacks experienced by the workers of Animal Farm in building the Napoleon Mill, it certainly seemed as if that better world had finally arrived. Even the pigs were seen to work, now and again, at some extremely conspicuous task—but a task all the same. Snowball himself was known to distribute water.

“Pullin’ my own weight,” he would say, which was a good thing, as since his arrival he had put on several pounds. (He, Thomas, and several sows and nanny goats had taken up residence in the carriage house—the conversion of which was the very exemplification of animal elegance.)

Taken as a whole, the erection of the Twin Mills was
not so much backbreaking and interminable as easy and fast. To facilitate the progress, the farm youth, in an act of enormous swine munificence, had been sent away to be educated—so frankly, it being the cold season, there wasn’t much to do but work on the mills. (Without a litter to curl up with, what other way was there to keep warm?) The pigs were pleased to report that the Animal Farm coffers were holding out—and that it had not been deemed necessary to take out a “bank loan,” whatever that might be, to complete the work. When the time came, experts were hired—and many of the animals found the presence of human electricians, welders and inspectors disquieting. And yet, Snowball had been right—the walking on two legs and the wearing of clothing tended to diminish emotionalism on the part of human and animal alike. Many of the pigs had been so acclimated to humans, over their years of dealings with them, that the farm animals had trouble discerning any real difference between man and pig. (It often boiled down to nose vs. snout, shoes vs. hooves.) And as the days wore on, it was generally accepted that the best way to deal with a human was to treat it like a pig. They too appreciated a little toadyism.