You’re the lawyer so you handle it, Ashley said.

Cupping her hand over her cell phone she looked at Piggg, the stray baby porker she named with three Gs sitting beside her in the passenger seat.

Do you believe this guy?

Piggg looked up from her Oreo Double Stuf cookie.

Oink, she said.

We can do all this online. Ashley said. If you have a problem with that I’ll find some crookeder lawyer who will. And don’t tell me crookeder isn’t a word because I just invented it special for you. I don’t want to own any pizza parlors. Not a single one.

Ashley made a face, rolled her eyes at Piggg and spoke in a conspiratorial whisper.

I love pizza, though, she said.

Oink, oink, Piggg said.

Yeah, I know, you, too, Ashley said.

Look, Mr. hotshot attorney-at-law, I’m not Patty Hearst yet but I have plans for my inheritance to do right by America. I want to help people not corporate them. Corporate is a verb. It means worse than screw. Like that woman my father was trying to run out of her family pizza business. What’s her name?

Piggg rooted into her cookie bag for another Oreo.

Yeah, Gina, that’s right, Ashley said. Get in touch with Gina and ask if she wants to run my Pizza King chain. Put her on the payroll. Make her president of the board of directors. Maybe I’ll just give her the empire.

Ashley abruptly ended the call with her lawyer.

Oink, oink, Piggg said.

You like that idea, don’t you, little piggie? We’ll rob from the rich and give to the poor like Robin Hood. Now, let’s see if we can find your mother, Ashley said.

Piggg whimpered as much as a pig can whimper.

Poor baby, Ashley said. You’re homesick. I know just how you feel. The difference between us is we’ll get you back with your mommy. I’m on my own. I have a new life. You can visit when I get back on my feet.

Oink, oink, Piggg said.

Ok, now, where would your mother run to hide?

In Siloville, Iowa, an abused animal sanctuary prepared to open for the day. The owners didn’t have much but what they had they gave to the animals – a balding, retired circus lion, a tiger losing his stripes, a juvenile elephant with one tusk, three anxious ducks from a bankrupt Peking acrobatic troupe and a chimpanzee that refused to stop smoking Marlboro cigarettes. On this glorious morning Adam, Eve and their animals relaxed at the refuge surrounded by spacious farmland where the retired couple lived.

They were weird, the old folks, burned out, barefoot acid-casualty hippies who wore matching faded bib overalls and called themselves Adam and Eve because they believed they lived in the Garden of Eden and had a responsibility to all creatures great and small. They avoided church and men of God because they no longer trusted the human species. They trusted animals because animals asked for nothing except sustenance.

People needed bars and restaurants and beaches and water parks. Animals weren’t spreading the COVID so the old folks knew they were on to something sacred. Animals didn’t crave Anthony Bourdain reruns on TV.

And now that they adopted the huge sow who magically wandered onto their land they believed they were, indeed, special. They named the old pig Bess and cared for her like she was one of their own, which she was, of course, because the seniors felt an honest connection with all environmental life.

Bess seemed terribly sad.

Don’t know what’s ailing her, exactly, Adam said.

When a momma sow won’t eat, more than likely she’s missing a young’un.

Nobody knew why the old-timers talked like that but the animals seemed comforted by their country time down home demeanor.

Adam stood from his rocking chair on the front porch and spoke to Bess who reclined on her side in a wide wet mud hole in the yard.

Would you like some watermelon and fresh corn on the cob?

At the mere mention of food, Eve perked up from a nap on her front porch rocker.

I’d love some watermelon, Adam.

After Bessi, dear, he said. She’s our special guest.