here.” He points to what look like a big ole hot water heater. “Then,” he says, “the condenser gets the steam compressed an it turns this generator, which makes electricity that moves out through these wires, and that’s where the power comes from.” He stands back, grinnin from ear to ear.
“This is wonderful!” cries Mister McGivver. “Edison, Fulton, Whitney, Einstein—none of them have done better!”
Little Forrest suddenly begun turnin valves an handles an thowin switches, an pretty soon the needles on the pressure gauges begun to climb an the meters on the wall begun to turn around. All of a sudden, lights flickerd on in the blockhouse an we is all jumpin for joy. Mister McGivver rushes outside an begun to holler—all the lights in the house an barns be on, bright as day, an in the distance we can see lights comin on in Coalville, too.
“Eureeka!” shouts Mister McGivver. “We have turned a sow’s ear into a silk purse, an we are now eatin high on the hog!”
Anyhow, next day little Forrest got me back into the blockhouse an begun showin me how the operation ran. He explained all the valves an gauges an meters, an after a while, they didn’t seem so hard to understand. I just had to check it all once a day an make sure that one or two of the gauges was not registerin more than they should be, an that this or that valve was turned on or off. I guess Mister McGivver was right, even a idiot like me could run this thing.
“There is somethin else I been thinkin about,” little Forrest says at supper that night.
“What is that, my brilliant lad?” says Mister McGivver.
“Well, I been thinking. You said you were having to slow down the breeding a little bit cause there are just so many hogs you can sell in Wheeling and the other places around here.”
“That is correct.”
“So what I’m thinking is, why not ship the hogs overseas? South America, Europe—even China?”
“Ah, well, my boy,” says Mister McGivver, “that is another fine idea. The problem is, it costs so much to ship hogs that it becomes uneconomical. I mean, time you get em to some foreign port, the shipping costs eat up your profit.”
“That’s what I been thinkin about,” he says, an he pulls out the little composition book, an damned if they ain’t another whole section of sketches he’s drawn.
“Fantastic! Unbelievable! Terrific!” Mister McGivver cries, leaping up. “Why, you should be in the Congress or something!”
Little Forrest has been at it again. He has done sketched a model of a hog transport ship. I did not understand all of it exactly, but the gist of it is this: Inside the ship the hogs is kept in layers from top to bottom. The floorin is nothin but heavy mesh steel, an so when the hogs on the top layer shit, it drops on the second layer an the second on the third an so on, until finally all the hog shit winds up in the bottom of the boat, where there is a machine like we have made here that runs the entire ship.
“So the energy costs are virtually nil!” Mister McGivver roars. “Why, think of the possibilities! Shipping hogs for less than half the normal cost! This is simply amazing! Whole fleets of ships powered by shit! And it doesn’t have to stop there, either! Think of it—trains, planes, airplanes! All of it! Even washers and dryers and television sets! Screw atomic energy. This may usher in a whole new era!” He is so excited he is now wavin his hands, an for a minute I worry he is gonna have a fit or somethin.
“I’m gonna turn this over to somebody first thing in the mornin,” Mister McGivver says. “But first, I want to make an announcement. Gump, you have been so helpful around here that I want to show my gratitude by cutting you in on one third of our profits. Now, how about that?”
Well, I was kind of surprised, but it sounded pretty good, an I tole him so.
“Thanks,” I said.
Finally the time come for little Forrest to go back to school. I was not lookin forward to it, but it had to be. The leafs was just beginnin to turn on the sycamore trees when I carried him to the train station in the truck. Wanda was ridin in the back, account of she was too big now for the cab.
“I want to ask you somethin,” little Forrest says.
“What is that?”
“It’s about Wanda. I mean, you ain’t gonna…”
“Oh, no—no, I ain’t gonna do anythin like that. I think we’ll keep her on here as a brood hog, you know? She’ll be fine.”
“You promise?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, thanks.”
“I want you to be good when you get home, hear? An do what your grandma tells you, okay?”
“Yeah.”
He just set there lookin out the winder, an I got the feelin there was somethin wrong.
“You ain’t unhappy about anythin, is you?”
“Well, I was sort of wondering, why can’t I just stay here and help run the hog farm?”
“Cause you too young, an you gotta go back to school. We’ll see about that later, you know? But it ain’t time right now, okay. Maybe you can come back for Christmas or somethin, huh?”
“Yeah, that’d be good.”
We got to the station an little Forrest gone around to the back of the pickup truck an got Wanda down. We set on the depot platform, an he was huggin her around the neck an kind of talkin to her, an I felt real sorry for him. But I knowed I was doin the right thing. Anyhow, the train come along an he hugged Wanda one last time an got on board. Him an me, we just shook hands, an I watched him through the winder as the train pulled out. He give me an Wanda a little wave, an then we gone on back to the farm.
Well, let me say this: The days that follered was crazy, an Mister McGivver, he was busy as a one-legged man at an ass-kickin contest! First, he done expanded the hog breedin operation tenfold. He is even
Next, Mister McGivver has gone to work on the project of buildin the pig-shit fleet, an almost within no time, he has got three huge ships under construction over on the Atlantic Ocean at Norfolk, Virginia. This is where he spends so much of his time now, he has left most of the hog farmin bidness to me. Also, we has had to employ about a hundrit workers from the town, which was a great relief to them, as most was out-of-work miners.
Furthermore, Mister McGivver has expanded the hog-slop garbage collection to ever military base within three hundrit miles, an we is got fleets of trucks pickin up the garbage, an what we don’t use ourselfs, we sell to other farmers.
“We are becoming a great national enterprise,” Mister McGivver says, “but we are leveraged up to the hilt.”
I ast him what that meant, an he says, “Debt, Gump, debt! We have had to borrow millions to build those ships and buy more land for the hog farm and trucks for the garbage operation. Sometimes at night I worry about goin broke, but we are in too deep now to quit. We are gonna have to expand the methane gas operation to meet expenses, and I’m afraid we’re gonna have to raise our prices.”
I ast him what I could do to help.
“Just keep shoveling shit fast as you can,” he says.
So that’s what I did.
By the end of that fall, I figgered that we has got somewhere between eight hundrit thousan an one million pounds of pig shit down in the mine, an the operation is runnin full steam night an day. We had to double the size of the plant just to keep it goin.
Little Forrest is due to arrive for Christmas, but about two weeks before that they has scheduled the
