“…we didn’t ask about javelinas (‘asshole javelinas,’ Sara says, because she says ‘asshole’- everything.) ’”  –  travel journal entry – Day 18

Living with Javelina

Javelina, it turns out, are not pigs.  Javelina are members of the peccary family, a group of hoofed mammals originating in South America.  My children are wanted to be javelina.

I find this out when I call the New Mexico Department of Fish and Game to complain that there’s this asshole pig that keeps rubbing its rump on my children while they’re camping.  They’re camping in the backyard and Ethan sleeps with his back up against the wall of the tent and every night this asshole pig comes and scratches her back on his.

“Are you saying,” says the woman at the Department of Fish and Game, “that this javelina is harassing your son?”

“What I’m saying,” I say, “is that this asshole pig—excuse me, this hooved mammal—is being aggressive with my children, interfering with their sleep in their own backyard!”

“I’m sorry,” says the woman on the phone, “why is it that your children are sleeping in the backyard?”

The reason the children are sleeping in the backyard is that their mother has seasonal depression and it’s better for everyone if we give her the house to herself.  I know it’s strange to hear of seasonal depression in New Mexico, but we moved here from Maine because our life was a mess and all we did was shovel.  The move helped with the snow but not with the sorrow.  At least the children and I are warm now, when we are safe.

My wife is not your typical wife, and her depression is not your typical winter blues.  There are hormones and genetics and history that come into play that no amount of ice cream and soap operas can fix.  This is serious stuff: once or twice a year I hide the knives and the pills and the children.  We’d leave for higher ground but we don’t know many people well and the school bus knows to get them here.  We collect rainwater and build fires.  We eat popcorn and Jordan almonds for dinner.  We read e-books to each other and play I-spy.  We shit in a hole and bury it like animals.  No one knows the extent to which we live like homeless outside our home.

“Because we can’t afford Disney,” I say.  “Now, what can you do about this pig?”

She tells me that javelina are rarely seen in Chaves County, and rarely without their pack.  She tells me that, in all likelihood, this asshole pig has lost its pack and is trying to recruit my children for her own, by rubbing her scent gland with my children’s non-existent scent glands so that their scents become indistinguishable, making the herd cohesive.

My children smell like sleep and insecticide.

“That asshole pig,” I say, “cannot have my children.”

“I suggest,” says the Fish and Game woman, “that you bring your children inside.  And don’t feed the javelina,” she says, “or you’ll never get rid of it.”

I will feed the javelina, alright.  I will feed that asshole pig to my family in the form of bacon at our end-of-depression dinner.  Not a pig!: Would anyone really know the difference when salted and cured?  Salt can disguise anything.  I should live in salt.

That night, I wake up to the sounds of my children squealing gleefully.  I zip open my tent and throw a rock at a forty-pound pig.  She chuffs and barks at me protectively.

Inside the house, my wife wails.  If she used Kleenex, their piles would block the windows; since she doesn’t, I’ll find the floors warped and the basement flooded with tears at the end of all this.  Which, I wonder, is worse: pig or parent?

I retreat back to my sleeping bag and listen to the children grunt and giggle.

On Monday, when I’m pouring my coffee, Sue asks how Brenda is.  “Oh, she’s fine…going through one of her major bouts of minor depression, to be honest.  But it’ll pass,” I lie.

Sue is my work-wife.  It’s not inappropriate, it’s inevitable.  When you’ve got two kids at home and their mother doesn’t care if they’re bleeding or bullied, it’s natural to turn to your co-worker for advice.  And if your son wins the Science Bowl and all his mother does is cry, it’s natural to need someone to brag to.  And if the only thing in the world that you care about besides the kids and the mad woman locked in your house is something the mad woman doesn’t care about and your kids don’t understand, then it’s natural to discuss with your work-wife the TV drama you’ve both been watching, she on the couch with her real-life-husband, you on a tablet in a tent next to the tent in which your children are being lured away by a hooved mammal.

“Anything I can do?” says Sue.  Kiss me, I think.

I know it is only a matter of time before the children realize that this is not a life.

“Do you have some room in your freezer for forty pounds of bacon?” I ask, only half-joking, and lean in with lips parted.

“Nothing good can come of this,” she says.

The next morning, my children are gone, a trail of hoof-prints and the scuff of feety-pajamas circling their tent before leading through the yard and away.  A musky scent hangs in the air.  Coming out of the tent is like walking into a stranger’s house, with the strange family’s smell an ozone of exclusion.

The sad part is that I know they’re better off: living like princes among pigs, instead of like pioneers among people.  Living with javelina.

I call Sue and tell her I’ll be late to the office.  “Stay there,” she says, “I’ll be right over.”