The Pigman Read Online Free

“The name of our charity is the L & J Fund, Mr. Pignati, and we’d like to know if you’d care to contribute to it? It would really be a very nice gesture, Mr. Pignati.”
    There was a pause.
    “What was the joke the girl told you?” he finally said. “I know a lot of jokes, but my wife’s the only one who laughs at them. Ha, ha.”
    “Is that so?”
    “She really did laugh at them. She liked a good joke, she did, and I miss her. She’s taken a little trip.”
    “Oh, did she?”
    “Yep. She’s out in California with my sister.”
    “Isn’t that marvelous!”
    “Her favorite was the one about the best get-well cards to get. Did you ever hear that one—what’d you say your name was?”
    “Miss Truman.”
    “Well, Miss Truman, did you ever hear that one, the one about what the best get-well cards you can get are?”
    “No, Mr. Pignati—”
    “It was my wife’s favorite joke, that one was. She’d make me tell it a lot of times….”
    There was something about his voice that made me feel sorry for him, and I began to wish I had never bothered him. He just went on talking and talking, and the receiver started to hurt my ear. By this time Dennis and Norton had gone into the living room and started to watch TV, but right where they could keep an eye on timing the phone call. John stayed next to me, pushing his ear close to the receiver every once in awhile, and I could see the wheels in his head spinning.
    “Yes, Miss Truman, the best get-well cards to get are four aces! Ha, ha, ha! Isn’t that funny?”
    He let out this wild laugh, as though he hadn’t known the end of his own joke.
    “Do you get it, Miss Truman? Four aces… the best get-well cards you can get—”
    “Yes, Mr. Pignati—”
    “You know, in
poker
?”
    “Yes, Mr. Pignati.”
    He sounded like such a nice old man, but terribly lonely. He was just dying to talk. When he started another joke I looked at John’s face and began to realize it was he who had started me telling all these prevarications.
    John has made an art out of it. He prevaricates just for prevaricating’s sake. It’s what they call a compensation syndrome. His own life is so boring when measured against his daydreams that he can’t stand it, so he makes up things to pretend it’s exciting. Of course, when he gets caught in a lie, then he makes believe he was only telling the lie to make fun of whomever he was telling it to, but I think there’s more to it than meets the eye. He can get so involved in a fib that you can tell he believes it enough to enjoy it. Maybe that’s how all actors start. I don’t know.
    One time last term Miss King asked him what happened to the book report he was supposed to hand in on
Johnny Tremain
, and he told her that he had spilled some coffee on it the night before, and when the coffee dried, there was still sugar on the paper and so cockroaches ate the book report. You might also be interested in knowing that the only part of
Johnny Tremain
that John did end up reading was page forty-three—where the poor guy spills the molten metal on his hand and cripples it for life. That was the part he finally did his book report on—just page forty-three—and he got a ninety on it! I only got eighty-five, and I read the whole thing. Of course, writing book reports is not exactly the kind of writing I want to do. I don’t want to report. I want to make things up. In a way I guess that’s lying too, except I think you can tell the real truth with that kind of lying.
    And John lies to his mother and father. He told them one time that he was hearing voices from outer space, and he thought creatures were going to come for him some night, so if they heard any strange noises coming from his room would they please call the police.
    “Don’t be silly,” his mother told him and laughed it off with just the slightest bit of discomfort. His parents don’t know quite what to make of him because neither of them has the imagination he has, and in