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HOW TO RAKE YOUR LAWN I swear this is true.It was last year, autumn. The leaves were dead and strewn about the yard; I was handed a rake by my lovely and overbearing wife and told to get to work. The day was bitterly cold, less than pleasant. I was inadequately dressed. Sure my marriage was happy. I loved her. But she could be so bossy sometimes. She was beautiful; we had been married 25 years and she was still beautiful, with soft brown eyes, pouting lips, and a sweet smile she offered generously even to those who least deserved it, plus she had added to her features a maturity and wisdom that showed her age with a grace and poise she hadn't had on our wedding day; and her body was also fantastic, better even, I don't know how but better, and she was nice and fun and in most respects the woman I fell in love with and married and had three kids with, but other times she could really piss me off. As I raked my lawn there arose a cruel wind to sting my uncovered neck and forearms, a wind that stung with all the cruelty it could muster, nasty. I thought briefly of escaping to Hawaii, secretly, leaving the rake and the missus behind; then I thought of enjoying the warmer climate I already worked long hours at a thankless job to provide for me and she indoors. I raked the lawn. I kept raking the lawn until, as I paused to reflect on (1) just how important, really, were these leaves that they had to be removed from the yard and put into large black garbage bags now, this instant, in weather like this, and (2) when exactly did I start taking marching orders regarding the maintenance of our property from my wife, and don't I work long hours to pay for this same property while she sits at home and shops eBay and all our kids have moved out and gone to college and isn't this the 21st century and women are liberated and why isn't she working, God knows she can—I kept to my raking until, as I paused in reflection, I saw in the distance a large pink object that walked on four legs and was a pig. This was highly unusual. There are no farms or zoos in my neighborhood. Where did this thing come from? I approached the pig, still cold, still holding my rake, suddenly hungry. Come here little piggy, I suggested. The pig came toward me, raising its snout as if in a gesture of kindness or friendship; I lifted the rake high above my head because it was no longer a garden tool—as my wife had had me believe—but a weapon, and I was ready to kill, cook, and have ham for dinner. The wind. It was crueler, nastier, more frigid, casting all considerations of human decency aside, and in a flagrant trespass of decorum dead leaves blew up into my face. I stumbled backward, surprised, violated by my lawn's dead and colorful leafy intruders, losing my grip on the rake, which fell from my hand, which I bent down to pick up, which I held with a ferocity that matched the wind and this delinquent earth's own; and as I rose to my feet, rake in hand, wronged and vengeful, something was very different about the pig. The pig. It was holding an electric guitar, and it pressed its pig face into the neck and played the Waldstein Sonata, the first two movements, from memory. It was borderline amazing. Although some of the more technical passages were iffy and the overall performance lacked the pianistic expressiveness one comes to expect of Beethoven, it was pretty impressive, especially for a pig. It played the first two movements. Stop, I said. I was impressed, but cold. I wanted to hear the third movement, but not out here in this wind tunnel that was once my front yard, and who gives a damn about this yard anyway? I gestured toward my house. The pig followed me inside. She was on the computer. Not the pig, my wife. eBay. Scrap your dinner plans, I suggested, we're eating pork tonight. And how long have you been on that blasted computer? I said in my head, not out loud. I hope you lose your auction. Little hands and little hooves warming up as anticipation for the third movement was mounting. Then, knock, at the door. What? Not now, I'm busy. The guitar was out; we were ready, here we go. Knock knock. What do you want? I cannot entertain you, for I myself am being entertained, with swine. Go away. Another knock at the door. I am not answering that. And I had every intention on ignoring it and listening to the Rondo: Allegretto moderato, which I'd never heard in live performance, which was a workout for the fingers or the snout, and which I'd been eager to hear ever since those opening musical pokes—short and excited and repeated for emphasis or effect—announced Ludwig's Op. 53—a great piece, as great as everyone always said it was, really worth hearing live, if you can; but then I remembered the wind, its vicious disregard for social courtesies and conventions, and I'll be a nice guy and invite this jackass knocker in out of the cold, only for a minute or two, then usher him out of my house and back into the cold and the pig would play. I would have asked my wife to do it—open the door, that is—but she hadn't inquired about the lawn yet and I was irritable and prone to anger but tired enough to want to avoid a fight. Why did we fight? It's her fault. We didn't used to fight like this. The door opened. These were religious people, two of them. A guy and another guy, and I invited them in, just into the front entryway, not into the house proper, and they explained, smiling, that they were representatives of a church I'd never heard of before, and they met to worship in a building in a neighborhood not too far from here, and gosh, it sure was cold outside, what a doozy! They spoke simply at less than modest lengths on matters that were of obvious significance to them, and though I wasn't paying attention to what they said I accepted what they handed me, religious literature. I'll read this prayerfully, I said, trying to sound cute without them knowing it, and smiling. I wanted them to leave. They continued to say things I didn't hear (I was listening to Herr Beethoven in my head) and when they asked me if I attend church regularly I said no, I haven't been since childhood, when my parents stopped taking me, and I had a pig to eat, so I'll be cooking it now, thanks for stopping by. Instantly their smiles were gone; the shorter and fatter of the two visitors winced as if the words "pig" and "eat" had combined to form a hammer I had just used to pummel him in the face. A pig? they wanted to know. Yes, a pig, my dinner, ham is terrific, and my wife's auction was finished; she won. Winning these silly little internet contests always put her in good spirits. She spent hours online everyday buying stuff she didn't need, and although it was a tremendous waste of time, at least when she wins, she's happy. Unfortunately, the Good spirits of eBay victory had gotten weaker over time (or maybe the twin spirits of Grouch and Thanklessness for all the work I do around here had gotten stronger, it was hard to say) and she returned to her bossy self sooner and sooner, which was a bummer, and I can't believe she wanted me to rake the lawn in this weather, I could have died. She joined me in the entryway as the short-fat religious guy, having barely recovered from my initial eat-pig shot to the face, leafed frantically though a set of scriptures he had just retrieved from a backpack that was so tiny I hadn't noticed it until he slung it off his shoulder (even then I could barely see it), searching with abandon for the one verse—that magic verse—that would change my eating habits forever, and the tall-thin religious guy told me that I mustn't eat pork because the Lord had commanded good Christians everywhere to abstain for God's sake, and were these people Jews? I thought, unpleasantly—Christians eat pig all the time. I didn't want to have this conversation. I was hungry, irratated, and on the defensive in my own home, and a Sonata was waiting; I didn't want to have this conversation but I had to say something. I'll eat whatever the hell I want, I suggested, opening the front door, hinting. No one said anything. Through the mosquito guard of the screen of the flimsy plastic inner door to my house we all looked in unison and saw a river of dead leaves crashing violently against my lawn, and the rake I hadn't cared to bring back inside the garage where it belonged was near invisible in the churning leafy flood, but it was there; I'd never seen an autumn so psychotic and this wind was a bitch, crueler than ever. These religious fellows thanked me for my time, sheepishly, downcast and defeated, and made a move for the door, for the tempest that awaited them on the other side, and I was glad. My wife stopped them (I bet she thought I was being a bully, which I was, because who were these yahoos to tell me how to live my life?, and she was a kind woman who genuinely cared about people, I loved that about her, and was smiling, though she mustn't have been happy about the yard not being done, and she noticed it, I just knew it, from the moment I opened the door, there were leaves everywhere, she couldn't help but notice, though she probably wouldn't say anything until later tonight, long after the missionaries had left, long after a hearty pork dinner had sated our bodies and souls and settled heavily in our stomachs, that was her way, she wouldn't bring it up until later, and if I could keep from getting agitated while she complained, which would be difficult, but if I could do it, if I could apologize for my thoughtlessness and general marital incompetance and promise to rake the lawn tomorrow, we could kiss and hold one another and make love, still fat with pig, and it would be marvelous, this was my wife, my beautiful, beautiful, precious wife) and asked them to come in and stay a few minutes longer, because it was unbearably cold outside and they might drown in the current of the river of leaves and never make it back to the thin black bicycles they had parked at the bottom of my driveway. Yes, we'd love to stay, thank you, they said, at once cheery and flamboyant, don't make eye contact with the husband he's an angry man. They took off their shoes and followed my wife into the living room. I shouted after them. Hey, have you two guys ever heard the third movement of Beethoven's Waldstein Sonata? They hadn't. I grinned ear to ear and skipped into the kitchen to fetch my pig and grab, from a rack on the counter to the left of the oven, the sharpest shiniest butcher knife I could find. 
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