The Pig from Heaven

Discovered by Robert Yoder and originally appearing in The Farm Quarterly, Fall 1963 and authored by the editor R.J. McGinnis

There is scarcely a person in all the province of Durango who has not heard about Ramon Garcia’s pig – his pig from heaven. I first heard the story from Father Avilla, the parish priest at Texocan, a little village in the mountains of Mexico ten miles by mule path above the town, Durango. The houses of Texocan are made of mud and sticks, with palm-thatched roofs and dirt floors. Each family has a small plot of ground planted to vegetables and corn. Water for irrigating the gardens and for family use is carried from a spring that trickles lazily from the hillside near the village.

When Ramon’s pig arrived from heaven, some years ago, the richest man in Texocan owned a hectare of land, a little over two acres; the poorest had only a fraction of an acre. All the people were poor and the poorest man of them all was Ramon Garcia. Most of Ramon’s neighbors owned a goat or a pig, and a few had donkeys, but Ramon had neither goat nor pig, much less a donkey.

Of all the riches of this world that Ramon did not have, and there were many, he yearned most for a pig. A sow pig would throw a litter, sometimes two, every year. The family would have meat and there would be three or four pigs to sell, fattened on the corn grown in his own garden. Ramon dreamed of the sow he would like to own, a long sow with many teats, full-bodied and gentle. She would be blue, the deep blue of the mountains at dusk.

When Ramon was married he took a peso to Father Avilla. “I am a weak man,” he said, “If this peso is in my pocket I will spend it. I will add to it, and when I have saved ten I will buy a sow pig.”

But Ramon’s nine children came along, stepping on each other’s heels, it seemed, and saving was difficult. Once Father Avilla had as much as seven pesos of Ramon’s pig money, but another baby, or illness, or hunger, always forced him to draw against his account. When his old mother came to live with him he asked for the last two pesos to buy a blanket for her bed. He had given up hope for a pig, but he still dreamed as he toiled to feed the twelve hungry ones in his family.

Like the other men in the village he earned a few rare pesos working on the roads, or cutting cane at the hacienda. When he had extra vegetables of fine quality from his garden he took a basket to the market at Durango. The money went quickly – for salt and spices for the table, a new hoe, or a length of cloth.

One spring Ramon grew a crop of very fine tomatoes. He picked a large basket of choice fruit and at midnight, with five of his neighbors, set out for the market. Ramon carried the 50-pound basket on his head for the ten miles, arriving in early morning as the market opened. But that day there were many with fine tomatoes, and it was late afternoon before he had sold his last. Resisting the temptation to stop at the cantina with the others, he made his purchases and set out for home.

It was then that fate took Ramon in hand and led him through a series of circumstances that were to change his life beyond his most secret dreams. He had, perhaps, covered half the long road home and was in the midst of the barren and uninhabited hills when he thought he heard a rustling in the thicket along the roadside. He stopped, thinking it might be some wild animal, a jaguar perhaps. He listened; he heard what was surely the grunt of a pig, and then a faint complaining squeal. Ramon cautiously approached the thicket, parting the bushes to look ahead. He saw a movement in a hollow beneath a mesquite bush, and peering closely in the gathering dusk, he saw that it was a weanling pig of the female sex, and unmistakably blue.

He stared at the little animal for a long moment, scarcely able to believe what he saw. Where had it come from in this desert? Perhaps the mother was near. He listened again. “The little one must be lost,” he thought. But there was no habitation within miles and such a small pig would not wander far from its mother. “It would undoubtedly be wrong to take this pig,” he said to himself, “for it certainly has an owner somewhere. But if I leave it here it will surely die of starvation or thirst, or some wild beast will make a meal of it.” Ramon was not the sort to take the devil by the hand, yet he was all too human. His lifelong desire to own such a pig made him prey to temptation. “This is the pig I have always wanted. For some good and sufficient reason it must be mine.” Impulsively he picked up the animal, thrust it into his basket, and scurried away. The pig made no complaint; it seemed almost to have expected to be taken.

When Ramon arrived at his dooryard he called out to his wife. “Antonia, come quickly. I have a pig, a little sow pig.”

Antonia came out of the house, brushing the taco dough from her hands. “A pig!” she said in wonder. Ramon had deposited the pig on the ground before the door where it nosed around in the litter as though it had lived there always.

“Por Dios! Where did this pig come from?” Antonia asked suspiciously.

Ramon was disturbed by the tone of her voice. To cover a feeling of guilt he began to explain in a torrent of words. “I swear before the Holy Virgin, this pig was sent to us by the Father. It is from heaven. See for yourself. Does this look like a common pig from the pens of Durango?”

Now Señora Antonia Garcia was not only a religious woman, but a practical one. The pig was truly of superior quality, so she was inclined to accept Ramon’s explanation for its presence. However, she had one reservation. “The pig no doubt is from heaven,” she said, “but scarcely from the Father. He would not concern Himself, as busy as He is, with a small pig. It was sent by Saint Ignatius, to whom I have always directed my prayers.”

They took the pig into the house, gave her a heaping ration of cornmeal mush, and she straightway went to sleep near the firepit. The next morning Ramon awakened early, concerned whether the grand dream he had had that night about a pig in the house was really true. The pig was there, and Ramon set about building a handsome sty. He built a roof of reeds against the sun, found a discarded gasoline tin for a feed trough, and covered the floor with husks. No pig in Texocan ever had a sty so snug.

But as Ramon worked in his field that day, doubts assailed him. Antonia had too willingly accepted his inspired explanation. What if the true owner should come inquiring? And what if with him should be Señor Suarez? The idea of having any business with Señor Suarez filled Ramon with misgiving. The Señor represented all of the law, the government and the police in Texocan – a feared and respected enemy of evildoers. The thought of facing the Señor with so unlikely a story as a pig from heaven was too dismal to contemplate. He must seek higher and more reliable advice than that given by a mere woman as excitable as Antonia. He would go to the priest, who knew everything.

He left his hoe leaning against the gate and walked down the village street to the church. He found Father Avilla working in his own garden.

“I must be clever,” thought Ramon. “I must not take unnecessary chances. If Padre Avilla says the pig is not mine, I shall be a fool for telling him about it at all.”

Ramon bade the priest good day, made an observation about the weather, and with much stammering and indirection finally brought up the matter of the pig. “Suppose, Padre, just suppose, mind you, I don’t say this has happened, but just suppose one was to come upon an animal, like a goat or a pig, away off in the desert, and there was no one near and the pig, or the goat, was likely to starve or become the prey of some wild beast…” He stooped to pluck a weed from among the cabbages; not daring to meet the understanding eyes of the priest.

Father Avilla had learned a great deal in the many years he had been priest of the Texocan parish. He asked bluntly, “Ramon, where did you find the pig?”

Ramon knew better than to dissimulate with Father Avilla. He placed his cards face up on the table. Moved by both faith and sympathy, Father Avilla agreed that there was something to Ramon’s contention that the pig was of mysterious origin.

“Go home,” he said, “and if the owner comes for the pig I shall explain and you will not be punished. If an owner does not come, then it is certainly as you say, the pig was heaven sent.”

Señor Suarez, who knew all that went on in the village, at first remained aloof, satisfied to wait for an official complaint, but as time passed and no one came to claim La Regala, even he took up the search for the rightful owner. Days and weeks passed until finally the frustrated official had to admit that Ramon’s pig could only come from an unusual and mysterious source, very possibly from heaven itself. In the end, La Regala was accepted for what Ramon now believed, a gift from heaven.

When La Regala was almost full grown, sleek and long as a sow should be, Ramon began to canvas the pigs of the neighborhood for a mate. This was no trivial matter, for not every male pig was a suitable mate for a sow with Regala’s spiritual connections. Ramon considered this one and that one; the days went by. Many offered their boars for this service, of course for the usual fee of one piglet from the litter, but Ramon could not make up his mind.

One evening Antonia, in a very serious mood, took Ramon’s arm and led him to Regala’s sty. “Look closely,” she said. “La Regala grows heavy in the belly; her teats swell. We shall have a litter of pigs. They will grease our cooking pot and put pesos in our pocket.”

“But she cannot be with pig,” Ramon explained. “She has not been mated. It is impossible.”

“It is quite possible,” replied Antonia. “Have you not noticed that when you call our Regala in the evening, Gonzales’ boar is usually close behind? He may not be a gift from heaven, but he is potent.”

Ramon bowed to a superior logic. In time Regala threw eight of the finest pigs ever seen in Texocan.

The corning of the pigs marked the beginning of a new life for Ramon and his family. His fortunes snowballed. Regala’s pigs brought the highest prices, for they were not only fine pigs, but there was something most desirable about their mysterious ancestry. For two of them Ramon obtained the farming rights of an additional piece of ground. Then he bought a donkey to take his produce to market, and he acquired a rich field near the spring which could be irrigated easily. He placed his oldest son in school and this son, being bright and ambitious, was noticed by the owner of the hacienda and sent to the university.

Ramon became a man of standing and influence. He was elected mayor of the village and sat on the council of farmers of his district. Meanwhile, the descendants of Regala kept right on producing and reproducing, adding to Ramon’s wealth. He became known throughout the province, and his name was often spoken.

There was no end to the blessings that Regala brought into Ramon’s life. Antonia had been a good wife, but she was inclined to be shrewish, and often bullied the good-natured Ramon. Now, as the grinding poverty of the household lessened, she gentled and looked at Ramon with new respect; had he not been touched by the finger of Saint Ignatius? Ramon remembers with a warming of the heart one evening as they sat among their children, eating the frijoles spiced with the backfat of one of Regala’s offspring. Antonia had broken a long silence; she looked hard at Ramon. “Ramon, esposo mio,” she said, “you are a good man.” Ramon could not at that moment find words to reply, but in his heart he thanked La Regala.

The story of Ramon’s pig and his rise in the world grew into a legend, and, as legends have a habit of doing, gathered embellishments. One hears that Regala appeared to Ramon in a blaze of light and climbed into his market basket as he was resting along the road from Durango. One even hears that Ramon made a pact with the devil.

Ramon is an old man now, and venerable Father Avilla is still the parish priest of Texocan. One would think that the place to get the truth is from these men, and these men tell the same simple story. They declare that La Regala was truly a gift from heaven. Perhaps Ramon’s son, who attended a university and is a successful man of the world in Mexico’s capital, would be less likely to be swayed by the emotional excesses of the simple people of his native village.

“Your father’s first pig,” I asked him, “the one he called La Regala. Do you believe she was a gift from heaven?”

“Oh, that frayed old tale,” he shrugged. “My father is a superstitious old man. And Father Avilla is cut from the same cloth.”

He turned and walked hurriedly away. But I saw that he crossed himself, which left Ramon’s pig from heaven about what you wish her to be.