Swine Not: A Novel Pig Tale - By Jimmy Buffett & Helen Bransford

Copyright © 2008 by Jimmy Buffett

Illustrations © 2008 by Helen Bransford

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Little, Brown and Company

Hachette Book Group USA

237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroupUSA.com

First eBook Edition: May 2008

The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

Special thanks to Nina, Lynda Lou, Amy, Sunshine, Karen, Kathy, and Bonniet for shepherding me along through the whole pig-tale adventure. I couldn’t have done it without you. — J. B.

Photograph on page xiii by Benjamin Mendlowitz

Photograph on page xxi by Pamela Jones Photography

Photograph on page 16 by Julie Skarratt

ISBN: 978-0-316-03231-5

Contents

About This Book

Apology to the Author

Chapter 1: Don’t Look Down

Chapter 2: Coach Mom

Chapter 3: Learning to Play the Angles

Chapter 4: Raising Humans Is Hard

Chapter 5: Instant Replay

Chapter 6: Men Are Not Pigs

Chapter 7: Down on the Farm

Chapter 8: Ghosts in the Trees

Chapter 9: Uprooted Like Truffles

Chapter 10: Start Spreading the News

Chapter 11: Family Week

Chapter 12: Movin’ on Up

Chapter 13: The Meat Thing

Chapter 14: A Poetic Pig

Chapter 15: Welcome to New York

Chapter 16: Warning Signs

Chapter 17: Traveling at the Speed of Dreams

Chapter 18: More Soccer than a Boy Could Want

Chapter 19: Not So Fast There, Rumpy

Chapter 20: An Unwanted Exotic

Chapter 21: Double-O Pig

Chapter 22: My Four-Star Prison

Chapter 23: Road Trip

Chapter 24: No Whining

Chapter 25: The Table Begins to Turn—What New Dog?

Chapter 26: That’s What Moms Are For

Chapter 27: A Pig in Sheepdog’s Clothing

Chapter 28: Cabin Fever in a Fish Tank

Chapter 29: A Prisoner of Plumbing

Chapter 30: There’s a Diva in the House

Chapter 31: A Roomful of Room Service

Chapter 32: A Pilot to the Rescue

Chapter 33: Something to Fit the Occasion

Chapter 34: A Stitch in Time

Chapter 35: Let Them Eat Pizza

Chapter 36: Blood Is Thicker than Cotton Candy

Chapter 37: Halloween Comes Early in New York

Chapter 38: I’m Not a Sausage—I’m an Animal

Chapter 39: Just Dessert

Chapter 40: Anteater on the Loose

Chapter 41: It’s Not the Avon Lady Calling

Chapter 42: Follow Those Pigeons

Chapter 43: An Unexpected Order

Chapter 44: Icing on the Cake

Chapter 45: A Taste of Show Business

Chapter 46: Pig Out

Chapter 47: Always a Madridista

About the Author

About the Illustrator

ALSO BY JIMMY BUFFETT

A Salty Piece of Land

A Pirate Looks at Fifty

Where Is Joe Merchant?

Tales from Margaritaville

(AND FOR YOUNG READERS)

The Jolly Mon

Trouble Dolls

FOR JANE BUFFETT, WHO KNOWS HOW TO PUT PEOPLE AND PIGS TOGETHER IN THE SAME PEN

Always remember,

a cat looks down on a man,

a dog looks up to a man,

but a pig will look a man

straight in the eye and see his equal.

— WINSTON CHURCHILL

About This Book

SOMETIMES YOU have to find the story, and sometimes the story finds you. In all my previous fiction, the stories were rooted in this nomad life I live. I converted my real-life experiences into fictional fun and made up a few more tales myself — always keeping a bit of mystery as to what was based on reality and what had sprung from my imagination. Faulkner said he was a liar by profession, and he made good money at it. However, in the case of Swine Not?, the story came to me.

One day our friend Helen Bransford brought over a manuscript she had written and some illustrations that went with it. She asked me to look at them. I knew the basic story, and everyone who knew Helen did, too. Her real-life story was this: Former Belle Meade debutante from Nashville, Tennessee, winds up marrying well-known author and moves into the Carlyle Hotel in Manhattan with her husband, twin kids, cats, and large pet pig — which she conceals from the management for two years. I had joined the chorus of Helen’s friends who had told her, “You have to write this stuff down.” When you’re a fiction writer, you sometimes simply can’t top the facts.

It is a unique and magical thing to read an original story for the first time, especially when what you are reading is good and, in my case, makes me laugh out loud. Those original twenty-five pages of text and the accompanying illustrations hooked me. The idea of a mom and two kids hiding a pig in a four-star hotel suite on the Upper East Side of Manhattan got me thinking. When I finished reading Helen’s story, I walked from the office to my