Snowball's Chance Page 5

  Filmont had been conveyed to the big barn on a scrapped door hitched to a steer. As most of the animals were then returning for the evening, Filmont had died before all of them—his body gone limp as his sandy colored fur.

  The last words that passed through his muzzle were words of love for his collie, Sandra-Marjorie, who was expecting a litter of puppies—his puppies.

  Sandra-Marjorie was Mr. Pilkington’s collie—Mr. Pilkington of Foxwood. And for this reason had Filmont been beaten by his own owner, Mr. Frederick, who, besides having a fondness for beating animals, was none too pleased to be informed by Mr. Pilkington that he would soon be receiving a litter of puppies—as his was the mongrel that fathered the mess. Frederick and Pilkington had always hated each other, and this romance of their dogs had exacerbated the situation. Nobody wanted a damn golden Labrador collie.

  “Send a message to my Sandra-Marjorie,” said Filmont, “that I will be waiting for her on the moon.”

  The scene was of such sentiment that many of the animals began to weep. For those unfamiliar with the lunar allusion, Norma the cat provided the salient belief of dog culture.

  “Dogs think that when they die they go to the moon. That’s why they always howl at the moon,” she quietly explained.

  Filmont exhaled his last, and the barn was penetrated by melancholy—that despair of life faced by death.

  But then, Thomas the goat arrived.

  “Clear the way! Clear the way!” cried Snowball—and the animals staggered aside to let the goat pass. There were puzzled snorts, clacks and bleats as Thomas banged on the chest of the Labrador—and blew into his bleeding mouth. And then, suddenly, amid shocked whispers and cries, blood sputtered from Filmont’s maw—and the dog heaved, and breathed again.

  “Convey this dog to my laboratory!”

  Months before, at the command of Thomas the goat, the old harness-room had been transformed into a laboratory, where Thomas performed miracles of modern science. And it was here that Thomas performed his greatest miracle to date. One of the rats saw him do it, and reported back to the other animals in the middle of the night.

  Thomas and Snowball had donned white uniforms and masks, whereupon, with the shiningest knife the rat had ever seen, Thomas the goat had cut open the dog’s belly—

  “Inside the dog, there were these different colored blobs, and one of them was bleeding. Thomas took some needle and thread and stitched it up, so it stopped bleeding,” recalled the amazed rat—

  “And then he stitched the dog closed. And, I think, the dog’s still alive. And he’s gonna stay alive.”

  And as it turned out, Filmont did survive.

  His wound bandaged, the Labrador was given his own stall—where over the next weeks, he was visited by many of the animals, with whom he shared long conversations. Throughout his ordeal, his earnestness, his gentleness, endeared him to the farm animals.

  Under the Pinchfield despot, Mr. Frederick, Filmont’s life had been one hardship after another—and when he spoke of Animal Farm, of how the animals had taken control of their own lives, of the wonder represented by the voting process, of the miracle of education, and of how an animal could rise up, as had Napoleon, as had Snowball … well, he shared a dewy eye with many a creature. With no more than his own optimism, Filmont could renew a sense of Animal Farm greatness in beasts more accustomed to exhaustion. So encouraging, so without pretension (Yes, most animals were equalish!), Filmont could restore dignity to a rat who had not felt pride in his work since the day he switched from river to sewer, for the better hours. Here, in Filmont, was an animal who represented, merely by his arrival, what a glowing beacon Animal Farm was to the village. And here, in Filmont, was an animal that allowed all the farm animals, for at least a moment, to put aside their resentments of the newcomers who were digging under the fences to join the farm, and experience in their coming a reawakening of that initial freedom.

  The animals had taken over the farm!

  Ah yes, what glory! What limitless possibility!

  Meanwhile, the re-education classes proceeded as scheduled—everyone was humanized. “Four legs good, two legs better,” a few of the sheep remembered from somewhere. The geese were excused from the fields to work on providing the farm animals with clothing. Reams of cloth were delivered, and the geese took to their seamstress labors fairly capably. By the end of the summer, each male animal had one pair of short pants, one pair of long pants, one long-sleeved shirt, one short-sleeved shirt, and one headcloth—while each female had one short dress, one long dress, one shawl, and two bonnets. After the sewing was completed, the geese took up the laundry—as well as the patching and repairing of any garments that needed attention.

  It was generally agreed that, really, clothing wasn’t so bad—once a critter got used to it. Hot, a little bit, itchy, a little bit—but the animals appreciated the bright colors, and were soon bartering feed and services for more stylish vestments. It was supposed one might express one’s individuality through an innovative bandanna.

  As for the walking, some animals were more successful than others. The birds already had the two-legged gait down pat—and about half the sheep picked it up in the first week. Benjamin the donkey had no trouble—and as much as he complained about a pain in his left hip, he waddled with the best of them. The three horses, none of whom could recite the alphabet any higher than the letter B, found the task utterly impossible. Norma the cat, in contrast, lent a feline grace to the undertaking. The cows, too, adopted the form of locomotion without undue difficulty—though they did seem to do a good deal of leaning. The dogs, who with equal ease attained the upright position, were nevertheless allowed to remain on all fours most of the time—as they put forth a forceful argument that the bipedal position left them vulnerable and slow.

  Likewise, with the help of Thomas the goat, the plans for the windmills were rapidly becoming a reality. A team of goat engineers had been brought in to fashion tools for animal paws (as opposed to human hands) and with a foundation of poured cement and cement blocks, the construction commenced in November. Utilizing wood planks milled at the old Napoleon Mill, the structures grew rapidly. For those who had any impression of the past, and the awful setbacks experienced by the workers of Animal Farm in building the Napoleon Mill, it certainly seemed as if that better world had finally arrived. Even the pigs were seen to work, now and again, at some extremely conspicuous task—but a task all the same. Snowball himself was known to distribute water.

  “Pullin’ my own weight,” he would say, which was a good thing, as since his arrival he had put on several pounds. (He, Thomas, and several sows and nanny goats had taken up residence in the carriage house—the conversion of which was the very exemplification of animal elegance.)

  Taken as a whole, the erection of the Twin Mills was not so much backbreaking and interminable as easy and fast. To facilitate the progress, the farm youth, in an act of enormous swine munificence, had been sent away to be educated—so frankly, it being the cold season, there wasn’t much to do but work on the mills. (Without a litter to curl up with, what other way was there to keep warm?) The pigs were pleased to report that the Animal Farm coffers were holding out—and that it had not been deemed necessary to take out a “bank loan,” whatever that might be, to complete the work. When the time came, experts were hired—and many of the animals found the presence of human electricians, welders and inspectors disquieting. And yet, Snowball had been right—the walking on two legs and the wearing of clothing tended to diminish emotionalism on the part of human and animal alike. Many of the pigs had been so acclimated to humans, over their years of dealings with them, that the farm animals had trouble discerning any real difference between man and pig. (It often boiled down to nose vs. snout, shoes vs. hooves.) And as the days wore on, it was generally accepted that the best way to deal with a human was to treat it like a pig. They too appreciated a little toadyism.

  The sad part of the construction was the accidental deaths of two animal
s. In the pouring of the concrete, one of the lambs had been lost. (He had been inadvertently nudged into the cement pit by a crowd of other sheep who were overly keen on watching the cement-pour up close.) The second loss, while no more tragic, was perhaps more acutely felt by the animals on the farm. Norma the cat had been electrocuted when her tail brushed a live wire. In respect for her sacrifice, the feline was not sold to the glue factory. (The remains of the lamb were not recovered.) Each of the two fatalities was distinguished with the honor, Animal Hero, Second Class.

  To honor all the animals that had, since the rebellion, fallen in the service of the farm, the old Napoleon Mill was renamed. Snowball, at the March re-dedication, spoke of Boxer, a horse whom all now remembered (though they did seem to have previously forgotten him temporarily) as a giant of an equine, both in stature and spirit, who had worked himself to death for his love of Animal Farm, and his dream of a windmill that might make a better world.

  “Henceforth,” said Snowball, “the Napoleon Mill will be called—Dreamer’s Mill.”

  This expressed, Filmont the Labrador became so excited that he started to chase his own tail—he just couldn’t help it. And Snowball, with a benevolent gruntle, not only forgave the spectacle, but encouraged all the animals on the farm to follow the lead of Filmont, Boxer, and even Napoleon—

  “Dream the impossible dream.”

  Concerning the completion of the Twin Mills, the only tinge of bitterness was that, following the inauguration, another Swiss goat had been brought in to initiate and oversee operations. (It would be nearly a year before any of that promised electricity and running water.) The outsider had been an associate of Thomas the goat—and as far as qualifications went, nobody could discern any, until the pigs printed a full-page biography, which differed pronouncedly from any rumored lack of qualifications. The position offered not only large rations and a room in the farmhouse (one needed to be well-fed and well-rested for brain work) but the respect afforded such an animalage.

  It was soon decided, however, that the management of both mills was much too much for any one animal to accomplish—and when it was announced that a second animal would be chosen from among the farm animals to fill the position, the grumbling about the appointment of the Swiss goat (who was very qualified) largely subsided. The following Sunday Meeting, a competition was held between all who wished to fill the newly mandated managerial post. Presentations were mounted, and when the pigs and goats retired to confer upon the merits of the candidates, it was unanimously agreed among the farm animals that a bull by the name of Hobart had carried the day.

  From the perspective of your average animal-in-the-barn, the contestants had been wildly varying in organization and intelligence—the low point, it was thought, being the nonsensical diagram scratched in the dirt by a chicken who, since the day she’d forgotten her own name, had been known around the farm as Temescula. “Temescula,” she had decided, was a name so exotic she would never forget it. (This had turned out to be untrue, as Temescula regularly forgot she called herself Temescula. “What’s my name?” was her customary greeting.) Nobody liked to hear bigoted talk, but Temescula was what some animals would call a “chicken-head.”

  With the decision of the pigs and goats that Temescula had been granted the post, there was an immediate reaction of confusion and even anger. But when Pinkeye explained that Temescula’s diagram had been utterly brilliant, the animals accepted the finding, as most of them were bright enough to know they weren’t bright enough to recognize brilliance. (Besides that, Pinkeye’s manner had been so honeyed and earnest that no animal dared doubt him, lest they themselves be considered devious.) Even Hobart merely shrugged, and congratulated Temescula on her presentation.

  The next day, the premiere issue of the Animal Farm weekly newspaper, The Daily Trotter, was distributed.

  “Local Fowl Makes Good!” declared the headline.

  Those animals who could read (and the pigs so wanted everyone to be able to read that enrollment in the literacy seminar was pushed up—fifty animals packed the classroom) were treated to a marvelously moving biography of the chicken who had, stubbornly, tirelessly, pursued several higher educational degrees through a prestigious mail-order university.

  “She always says yes,” one of the pigs was quoted as saying—

  “She’s a can-do bird!”

  Temescula, via a spokesrabbit, requested ten hours a week of volunteer labor from each of the animals. Initially, added to the extensive responsibilities of spring and summer, this was toilsome indeed. But by September, after all the crops had been harvested and brought to market, the hours seemed more of a relief than a toil—as, aside from lend a paw to the implementation of the electricity generated by the new windmills, there was little diversion to be had. The work would be completed in January, it was hoped, and the heated stalls would go a good way to making the long winter short.

  It was at the third meeting in October that Snowball put forth a plan to undertake, in the cool-weather lull, a possible annexation of the neighboring farms, Foxwood and Pinchfield, through something called a “lawsuit.” When it was clarified that this was not another uncomfortable article of clothing, most of the animals seemed to think it was a good idea—as it required nothing of them.

  But Minimus, who liked things the way they were, was not in agreement, and a debate ensued. Soon, said Minimus, they’d all have running water and electricity. Why get involved in the mania of the village? And even if they were to eventually get involved in the mania of the village, why not wait? With the Twin Mills, Animal Farm’s position would surely get stronger.

  Snowball, in reply, portrayed the lawsuit as retribution for old wrongs done Animal Farm, by Foxwood and Pinchfield. Minimus, in turn, claimed that lawyers were nothing more than a huge expense, and that no good ever came of them. Furthermore, he argued that Foxwood and Pinchfield were in such disrepair, and their populations in such poor health and of such poor education, that any annexation of those farms could serve Animal Farm no advantage. The animals of Animal Farm, he said, would be better off improving their own circumstance.

  Not to be silenced, Snowball asserted that Foxwood and Pinchfield had been severely weakened by the beaver attacks that had become regular occurrences at both farms, and that now was the time to advance, not retreat.

  “The enemies of Animal Farm are defenseless!”

  Snowball raised his hooves—

  “We must overwhelm them with every available means!”

  And it was with this argument, and the enthusiastic cacophony of the animals in the barn, and the short bursts of bleat-bleating and oink-oinking from the goats and the pigs, that a strange look crossed Minimus’s face. It was as if, though of course he was Prize Pig, he realized he was Prize Pig no longer. And as would ever more become the case at Sunday Meeting, he grew silent, and surly.

  The debate was reported at length in The Daily Trotter, where Minimus, in his sudden November turnaround, proclaimed that the concessions Snowball had made to his various concerns were more than enough to allay any fears. His faith in Snowball was complete—and every animal on the farm should feel exactly the same way. “Forward Ho!” proclaimed The Daily Trotter. In a letter-to-the-editor (penned by an excitable field mouse), it was suggested that the name Snowball was not forceful enough to capture the character of the visionary, and that perhaps “Snowstorm” would be more appropriate. The next week, Minimus showed up at the Sunday Meeting looking like he had sat on a fretful porcupine. The Trotter reported that he was suffering a case of constipation.…

  And when the hot water and showers and bathtubs and lights and electric heaters and air-conditioners were turned on—on January 14th—what a glorious day it was! What a glorious winter it was! And what a glorious spring it was! And what a hero Snowball was!

  V

  “TWO HUNDRED FRESH PIZZA BOXES!” EXCLAIMED one of the rats.

  And sure as slop, this was a time of plenty!

  The castoff of the pig
s’ take-out food now littered every inch of the farm. It was almost impossible to look anywhere without seeing an empty bag of chips or a cookie box pushed into the ground. Also, as a residue of the human “experts” (plumbers and whatnot), there were beer cans and cigarettes everywhere. Additionally, due to the lack of suitable human potties (nobody wanted a human using their potty!), there were muddy mounds and yellow puddles wherever one stepped. The construction, too, had made its contribution—a lime pit, a scrap-heap mountain of rubber and plastic do-dads and broken bits, and, in the quarry, a pool of oil.

  It was progress everywhere! said the pigs, to the cheers of the rats. It was civilization! And even a sheep was known to tip a beer bottle on end to drain those last delicious drops!

  And all this, as the goats scientifically charted in The Daily Trotter—all this stinking blackness would enrich the soil, and make Animal Farm the most fertile farm in the land!

  But really, there was no reason for that (enrichment, fertility) as there would be no crop come summer. It was not exactly that the animals were feeling lazy, or even sick—they were just feeling different. Maybe it was that now, in these good days, for the first time that any of them could remember, they were just enjoying the spring. Not even the pig overseers had ever before lain in the grass on a May afternoon, just to watch a beetle push a dung ball. So, simply stated, there was no farming, because there was no planting. Nobody seemed to want to plant, anymore.

  Fortunately, Snowball and Thomas had introduced the pigs to the “sniff-test” for real money. And now confident in transactions of paper denominations, the pigs were enabled to hire out the Dreamer’s Mill. In this, the animals managed to do their part, as limited as it was. Grind some grain. Cut some logs. Much better than pulling ploughs, all granted. Besides, there were far too many animals to work the mill everyday—so the activities were more distracting than obligatory.