Free The Christmas Pig: A Very Kinky Christmas by Kinky Friedman Page B

was no answer.
    Benjamin took the lantern and walked over to the pigpen. There was Valerie sound asleep in the hay and the dirt of the cold floor of the barn. The door to the pen was closed and he wondered if she’d closed it herself because she wanted to be alone. This worried Benjamin. Valerie had previously taken such a great pride and interest in his work. Surely she knew by now that he would have put her in the manger if he could.
    Valerie stirred slightly and Benjamin noticed that she was shivering. When she opened her eyes to look at him, there was a certain sadness there he hadn’t seen before.
    “Dear Valerie,” he said. “You’re shivering. Take my quilt. It’ll help keep you warm.”
    “Dear Benjamin,” she said. “There’s only so much warmth and love in this world and there’s never enough to go around. Pigs don’t need quilts. Pigs need people to understand them.”
    “I understand you, dear Valerie.”
    “I know you do, Benjamin dear,” she said, as she closed her eyes and went back to sleep.
    Benjamin went back to his easel and went back to work on the wise men. After a while, he’d sketched them in to his satisfaction but he found he missed Valerie’s little nods of approval and the twinkle of encouragement for a job well done that now and then he could see in her eyes. Ah well, he thought, an artist’s life is often meant to be a lonely one. He’d never minded before working alone in his room or working alone in the barn by lantern light. But then he’d never had a friend before. And he’d never missed a friend before.
    In a strange way, he thought, Valerie had not only helped him perfect his art, she’d also helped him discover himself.

    Dawn was but a few hours away when the boy put his brush down and stood back to take a critical look at his rendering of the three wise men bearing their gifts for the babe in the manger. Benjamin had drawn them from memory. The first wise man was Will Wallace, the farmhand. The second wise man was the Viking. The third wise man was a little memorial from the artist to the now deceased White Knight. The work was nearing completion, Benjamin figured. All that was lacking was Jesus, Joseph, and Mary, give or take a few shepherds, if needed for balance and composition. All in all, the artist felt quite satisfied with the quality of the work. He also felt confident that he would have the commission completed on time.
    But as talented an artist as Benjamin may have been, he was still a ten-year-old boy, and ten-year-
old boys are not always the most accurate barometers of life. The lad was far more exhausted than, indeed, he realized. He sat down in the chair and leaned back to rest for a moment and the next thing he knew he was sound asleep.
    Benjamin was dreaming that he and Valerie were aboard a ship at the wheel of which was the Viking. They were sailing in peaceful aquamarine waters enjoying the warm sunshine on the deck. He and Valerie were happy and smiling and discussing Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting of The Last Supper .
    “You may not be aware of this, dear Benjamin,” Valerie was saying, “but it took Da Vinci almost as long as Jesus lived for him to complete The Last Supper .”
    “He obviously wasn’t working for the king,” said Benjamin.
    Valerie laughed. It felt nice to see her laughing again.
    “Da Vinci used his friends as models for the disciples,” Valerie continued. “But Jesus and Judas were the two centerpieces of the work and he could not readily find suitable models for them. So one day he saw a young man at the university who had quite a beatific face and Da Vinci thought he’d be perfect for the face of Jesus. He asked the young man if he would sit for him and the man said yes and so he did.
    “Da Vinci, much like you, dear Benjamin, did not realize that his work would become a great masterpiece. So he put it away for almost thirty years because he couldn’t find the perfect face for Judas. He was working on other