Snowball's Chance Read Online Free Page A

whole barn that awaited the truth. Even Minimus, overwhelmed by circumstance, had turned to the donkey to remember.…
    Benjamin scanned the animals of the Manor Farm. The geese, the ganders, the goslings, the ewes, the rams, the lambs, the mares, the steeds, the foals … and the pigs.
    Benjamin looked behind Minimus to the entourage of swine, mostly Tamworths, that was now arriving. Following on their heels, German shepherds briefed their masters in veiled voices.
    Minimus’s brown sow wore a red skirt suit. (It had taken her so long to change that it seemed to confirm the rumor of her preference for French lingerie after 8 PM , and subsequent to that hour, her pronounced reluctance to wear anything else.) Higgledy-piggledy, she and all the porkers were waddling in—pizza hanging from their snouts, cookie dough in their hooves.
    “You have mustard on your shirt,” said one pig to another.
    “Oh,” said the first, licking up the dollop of mustard, “why, thank you.”
    With their black eyes, the animals beseeched the donkey to give them the answer—
    Was it Snowball? Could a pig be their friend? What was the truth?
    But Benjamin shook his head, no. No, he didn’t care anymore. No, he didn’t see any reason to distinguish one pig from another.
    No
.
    Withdrawing into his stall, Benjamin closed his eyes and lifted up one leg. He was a bit deaf, and would have no trouble going back to sleep.…
    Minimus exhaled wheezily.
    It was up to him.
    He knew it would be. Everything petty and meaningless was up to him.
Was this Snowball? And if so, who was Snowball? A traitor or a hero?
Minimus looked intothe eyes, and the heart, of the pig before him. And then, Minimus looked into his own heart.
    Always a bit of a softie, Minimus, in his old age, had gone softer. Not to undervalue his considerable achievements—it was now Minimus who was Leader—who inhabited his own apartment in the Jones House—who had two dogs to wait upon him—who ate off the Crown Derby dinner service—who drank his daily half-gallon of beer from the soup tureen. And yet, where Minimus was very much like the other pigs, in that he was soft on the outside, he was not like them, in that he was soft on the inside. The other pigs would chew out the heart of an enemy were their nightly beer threatened—but Minimus didn’t really care about stuff like that. All the milk and apples left him empty. He had always suspected he had a soul so pure as a dove’s, and he suffered a salient regret, a remorse, that he had not been stronger, that he had not been greater, that he had not shown the fortitude to be faithful to himself—to be kinder, gentler to his own ideals … and, maybe, to the farm.
    Snowball (or the Yorkshire making a mighty lot of claims about Snowball) broke the silence—
    “Do you know the old pig pen?” he asked Matilda the cow, who nodded yes. “Bed it with hay, for me and my associate. We will sleep nowhere else.”
    The old cow, not sure what to do with this questionable order from this questionable source, shuffled anxiously, and mooed to the pig she was certain was her Leader—Minimus. And Minimus, that Berkshire boar as fat and handsome and chocolate black as any a Berkshire boar that ever walked on two hooves, made his decision.Tears welled up in his eyes, for however insignificant this decision might turn out to be, he understood somehow that with it he was striving towards that magnanimity that would raise him up to history.
    His weighty throat resonant with emotion, Minimus spoke—
    “Cow, get him his bedding, and make him comfortable—and make him welcome. He is Snowball, Animal Hero, First Class, of the Battle of Cowshed.”

II
    IT WAS MADE KNOWN DURING THE WEEK THAT the Sunday Meeting was to resume. For years, after the Sunday morning raising of the green flag, the “Meeting” had taken the form of a general assembly, where any animal might voice an opinion to the powers that be. (The pigs.) The Meeting had been