Free The Pigman by Paul Zindel

anything more, but I couldn’t help looking around.
    “No, nothing, thank you.”
    “We have some lovely nylon stockings,” the saleslady said, with just the tone to make me embarrassed if I didn’t say yes.
    “Go ahead,” Mr. Pignati urged. “Please.”
    “I’ll take one pair,” I mumbled, and I’m sure my face was stark red.
    “They come in three-pair packages.”
    “We’ll take three pairs,” the Pigman insisted.
    “What size, please?”
    “Eleven.”
    “Eleven?”
    “Yes, ma’am. Eleven,” I repeated.
    “You couldn’t take more than a size seven-and-a-half.”
    “I want size eleven, thank you.”
    “But—”
    “Size
eleven
.”
    I began to get terrified at what my mother would say when I brought her home three pairs of stockings. I’d have to tell her some girl friend at school bought them by mistake and wanted to sell them cheap or something like that. But then I broke out laughing.
    “Is something funny?” the saleslady inquired, putting her hand up to her beehive.
    “No,” I said, watching John slip a lit cigarette into the hand of the dummy with the girdle and the brassiere.
    The visit to the toy department was something else. I hadn’t been in Beekman’s toy department in years, not since I was three years old and my mother took me to sit on Santa Claus’ lap. It was fun then, but now everything was made out of cheap plastic, and you could tell the stuff would break in a minute.
    The one thing that really got my goat was these ships in bottles. They were ships in bottles all right, but the bottles were made out of plastic. They had bottoms so you could open the bottle up and take the ship out whenever you felt like it. I mean, they lost the whole point of having a ship in a bottle. You’re supposed to wonder about how it got in there, not be able to screw the bottom off the thing and take the ship out whenever you feel like it.
    And there was the arsenal of course: guns, pistols, shotguns, slingshots, knives, and swords. It’s no wonder kids grow up to be killers with all that rehearsal. There was enough artillery in Beekman’s toy department to wipe out Red China and the Mau-Mau tribe of Africa, and I personally think some of the toy manufacturers could use a good course in preventative psychiatry.
    “Can we look at the pet shop?” Mr. Pignati asked.
    John groaned.
    “Of course we can,” I said scowling at John.
    “Kitchykitchykitchykoo,”
John said, tapping his finger on the side of an aquarium that had two piranha flesh-eating fish in it. One of them darted for his finger and bumped its nose on the glass. Next to them were three little monkeys in a cage that were hugging each other like crazy, and you-know-who stopped to talk to them for half an hour.
    “Bobo… you look just like my little Bobo,” Mr. Pignati was saying, leaning over the counter and waving his hand at one of the poor monkeys that looked like it was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
    “My little Bobo.”
    The three monkeys were hugging each other desperately, and I really had to smile, watching them. Here they were, clinging to each other in the pet shop at Beekman’s, looking out at everybody with those tiny, wet eyes—as though pleading for love. They looked so lonely and sweet just holding on to each other.
    “Aren’t they cute?” I had to say.
    “Bobo… you look like my little Bobo—”
    “Give ’em a piece of popcorn,” John suggested. I offered my can of Love’n Nuts to Mr. Pignati, and he took a couple of pieces.
    “Don’t feed them,” this nasty floorwalker called out.
    “I’m sorry,” Mr. Pignati said, looking embarrassed.
    “Why not?” John had to ask.
    “Because I told you not to, that’s why.”
    Now that’s the kind of logic that really sets John off. That floorwalker could have simply said that monkeys bite or that popcorn is not their natural diet or something like that—but instead he had to think he was a schoolteacher. From that moment on, every time the