Pink Pigs Play Again

“This is humiliating.”  Kate leans out over the prow of the boat and surveys the edge of the river.  She’s been in a bad mood all morning.  The buildings along the shore are draped with streamers, and music drifts out of the windows, but I know that Kate doesn’t appreciate any of it.  “I’m going downstairs and writing my obituary.  You can tell people that I died of embarrassment.”

“Don’t be dramatic.”  I was embarrassed too, at first, but now I can’t help laughing at our predicament.  It’s a Saturday afternoon in the middle of summer, and we’re the center of attention.  People along the river stop and turn, then stare and point.  Kate doesn’t have a problem with the boat itself.  She has a problem with the paintings on the side of the boat. 

I have never seen such a collection of pigs.  There are pigs capering across a lawn littered with daisies; pigs eating ice cream cones and laughing at some joke, pigs pushing each other on swings and skimming down metal slides; pigs in dresses, twirling their hair.  The worst bit about the whole thing is that these pigs were painted by our dead father.

“Come on,” I urge Kate.  She’s wearing one of my dresses, and it sets off her black hair beautifully.  She was always the prettier sister, but I love her so much that it doesn’t bother me.  “We’ll get to that music festival that you care so much about.  Plus, we get to see a side of the city that nobody else sees.”

Kate gags and then turns around and disappears downstairs.  It’s been a rough week.  First, Kate found out that her boyfriend was cheating on her.  They were in a band together, and they had been performing together for years.  Kate was a really talented singer, and her boyfriend was the bass player.  She found out that he was sleeping with their drummer.  Then, our car broke down and we had no way of getting to a music festival where Kate was supposed to perform.

Then – worst of all – our dad died.

I scan the edge of the river and see someone waving.  A woman and her three children.  The children see what’s painted on the side of the boat and nearly bust themselves laughing.  After a moment, I start laughing, too.

“It’s a pig!” one of them screams.  “A whole family of pigs!”

“Tell them to shut up!” Kate yells up at me.  She has been in a foul mood for days.  It’s unlike her, because Kate is so easygoing.  I know why she’s upset, of course – it’s because of her ex-boyfriend, on top of everything else – but I don’t know how to make things better.  Even though he told her that she was kicked out of the band and there was no need for her to come to the festival, Kate had announced that she was going to turn up and confront him.  She’s not performing, because she’s not in a band, but I’m not sure that Kate has realized that yet.  I’m her sister, so I’m here to give moral support, even if I think she’s making a mistake.

Suddenly I’m distracted by something on the shore.  It’s just up ahead.  A tangle of limbs and hair caught in a bicycle.

“Kate!” I call.  “I have to pull over!”

The old boat groans as I maneuver it towards the shore.  I can’t see anyone moving, but I need to make sure that this person is okay.  Steering the boat is really awkward: until a few days ago I didn’t know anything about boats.  When Kate and I got the call that our dad was dead, we both exchanged a surprised look.  “I thought he died a long time ago,” Kate said.  Our mom was dead by that point (she had died three years earlier) but either way, we couldn’t be mad at her.  Our dad had abandoned us when we were very young because he wanted to be an artist and travel the world.

When we came to Emory to collect his scant belongings, including the boat, we both burst out laughing.

“Glad…to see…his career was worth it!” Kate had hooted, wiping her eyes.  Our car was gone, though, and we didn’t have any cash to fix it, so we decided to move the boat downstream and try to sell it.  It was our ticket home.

“What are you doing?” Kate asks now, popping her head up.  I point to the bicycle accident on the shore.  “Oh, wow!  Hey!” she shouts to the hair. “Are you okay?”

Gradually the hair disentangles itself from the spokes of the bicycle, and we see that the person on the ground is a young woman.  Kate waits until I’m closer and then she leaps from the boat and helps the young woman stand up.

“Ouch,” she says, rubbing her head.  “I think I broke my violin.”

Once I get closer I get off and go over to help them.  The young woman is about my age, early twenties, and her violin case is on the ground.  I pick it up and hand it to the woman.  She unzips it and breathes a sigh of relief when she sees that her violin is unharmed.  

“Thank god,” she said.  “It’s fine.”

“I can’t say the same about your bike,” Kate says, with regret.

“Oh no,” the woman says.  “I was going to busk outside the music festival.  I was hoping to make some money.”

Kate and I exchange glances.  We don’t even think twice.

“We’re going to the festival,” I tell her.  “Why don’t you come with us?”

When the young woman is on board with us she tells us her name – Tabitha – and what she’s doing here.  She’s always wanted to be a musician and play in a band, but she hasn’t found anyone to team up with yet.  Also, she plays a violin, which means that a lot of modern bands won’t take her.

“I play a lot of classical music,” she tells us.  “Most people aren’t interested.”

“Why don’t you play us something?” I suggest.

Tabitha puts her violin to her chin and starts to play.  The music that comes out is the most haunting and beautiful music that I’ve ever heard.  Kate and I both have chills.

“Hey!  Hey, you!” 

We all turn at the sound of the voice.  Someone on the shore is waving us down.  It’s a young woman with bright purple hair.

“I know that song!” she calls.  “Oh my gosh, I love it!  It’s Vivaldi, isn’t it?  I love Vivaldi!”

I slow the boat down so we can have a conversation.  “Are you a musician?” I call.

“I wish!” she calls back.  “I keep joining bands and they keep kicking me out!  Everyone tells me that I don’t play a real instrument!”

We stop the boat next to the woman.  “What do you play, if you don’t play an instrument?” Tabitha asks.

“Spoons!” the woman grins.  She holds up a big, jangly bag of spoons.  “Tell me any note, any note at all, and I have a spoon that can play it!  I’m a real whiz at spoons!”

Before I even think about what I’m doing, I pull the boat over and ask the woman to join us.   “We don’t have a band, as such,” I tell her.  “But you might as well play us your spoons as we float down the river.”

For the next twenty minutes we sit in silence and listen as Annemarie plays us a variety of Blues and Country music on her set of spoons. It’s hilarious and heartfelt.  We tell her that we’re big fans.  But we’re not the only ones who like her music: as we drift along, a small crowd of ragtag would-be musicians begin to run along the shore.  Some of them are looking for a way to get to the festival.  Before the hour has collapsed, we have collected a banjo player, a xylophonist, a marimba player, and a girl with a tuba.  The edge of the festival is in sight.  Kate and I look at each other.

“What if we…”

“Could we possibly…”

“There’s no way.”

I stand on the prow of the ship and clang together a set of cymbals to get everyone’s attention.  “Hey,” I call.  “Look, we’re all in a similar predicament.  None of us have a band.  We’re all musicians, but we don’t have a band.  So why don’t we join together and play some music together?”

“I thought that’s what we were doing!” calls Tabitha.  

“No,” Kate explains, coming up to join me.  “At the festival!  That’s where we’re going, right?”

For the first time all afternoon, silence descends upon the deck of the boat.  We’re nearly full to capacity.  I have forgotten the embarrassment of traveling down the river in a boat painted with pigs.  I have been having so much fun that I don’t want it to end, but we’re almost at the festival.

“What’s the worst that could happen?” Kate adds.  “That we embarrass ourselves?  We’re traveling downriver in a boat painted with pigs!”

This gets a big laugh, and it’s decided.  We’re going to enter the competition.  We might not win the prize, but we’re going to show up anyway.

“What’ll we call ourselves?” someone asks.

“The Pink Pigs,” Kate says, with a shrug.  “It’s terrible, but we don’t have much time.”

Half an hour later, we arrive at the festival and tie our boat up.  We stride up to the judges’ booth and add our names to the list of performers.  

“Pink Pigs?” one of the women asks.  “Really?”

“Really,” Kate says.  She’s glowing.  I’ve never seen her so confident.  It’s great.  And then, all of a sudden, she sees him.  Rick.  Her cheating, lying, no-good ex-boyfriend.  Kate stiffens.

“Come on,” I tell her.  “He’s not worth it.”

An hour later, we’re on stage.  We haven’t had much time to practice, obviously, but we’re all there, and we all have our instruments.  We all start to play as one: the cymbals go clang, the bassoon goes wahhh, the harmonica goes bleeEEEeeet, the spoons go ting, and Tabitha’s violin goes creeeee!  On top of it, Kate starts to sing.  I can see Rick in the audience, staring up at her in amusement.  Kate is unfazed.

You thought I was trash,

That you could throw away,

But you don’t know,

That pigs don’t play,

Pigs ride again

Pigs ride again

Pigs ride again

That’s right, Rick, I have new friends.

It’s terrible.  Everyone continues to play for another ten minutes of pure cacophony.  When we finish, the audience is silent.  Then,

“Booooooooo.”

We all gather our gear and exit the stage as people start throwing their festival snacks.  Kate giggles and ducks a bucket of popcorn.

Everyone scrambles and gets onto the boat as quickly as we can, and just as quickly, we make our exit.

“Phew,” Kate says.  “Good thing we parked so close.”