Bjarne shrugged. 'I hear. From the other students. At the hotel school. This S. O. A. P. is the Search for Our Authentic Primitive. It is perhaps based in a true Norse heritage. The heritage of the dominant, all-conquering male. There is a warrior code, involving this pig. Pigs are well-known hunter-gatherers of the animal kingdom. They are a forest animal, living off of roots and berries. There is a spiritual link to the earth when you eat a pig. This is not merely a pig. This is an emblem for the wild boar. Wild boar is warrior food. The strong, the heroic, the conqueror warrior male is very Finnish. This S. O. A. P. search is a familiar one to us Finns.'
'We Finns,' Meg said, a little testily. 'Norse. Indian. Druid. Whatever. It's hooey. If I catch you joining these bozos, Bjarne, I'll turn you blue myself. With a rolling pin.'
Bjarne grinned. Meg's temper was a matter of legend among the Cornell students who apprenticed in her kitchen.
'Besides, in this weather you'll catch cold and sneeze allover the sauces.'
Bjarne frowned. 'This cold, it is nothing. You should be in Helsinki in November. Besides, Finns don't catch cold. We are quite tough.'
Meg planted her wooden spoon firmly in the middle of Bjarne's chest. 'Wrap the pig. Then deliver it to the park. To the statue of General Hemlock. And forget spying and get back here fast. We've got a lot to do today.'
Quill looked past Meg, Bjarne, and the pig to the mullioned windows. One of the big advantages of the location of the twenty-seven-room Inn she owned with Meg and their partner John Raintree was the sprawling grounds and the room for a good-sized vegetable garden. Quill could see most of this garden from her seat by the fire. The snow was falling faster than ever and the parsnips weren't visible at all. She said aloud, 'It's going to be cold and miserable in those woods. Maybe we should add hot coffee to the delivery. Those S. O. A. P. guys will freeze their blue-painted chests off. Or what about some mulled cider?'
'Nothing but what the woods provide,' said Bjarne. 'They cannot eat or drink food from unauthentic civilizations.'
'Unauthentic?' asked Quill.
'Any culture that's been afflicted by technology.'
Meg snorted. 'Well, this pig's the product of some of the best farm technology around.' She leered like Jack Nicholson after his wife in The Shining. 'It was a happy pig. A clean pig. A pig with buddies. A pig that never even knew the end was coming.'
'Cut it out,' Quill said testily.
'Anyhow, this pig came straight from the Heavenly Hoggs farm yesterday morning. They're not only the best pork producers in central New York, they're the most up-to-date. This pig's never even seen a tree, much less rooted in the mud for grubs. Half the guys in S. O. A. P. know this. So, phooey on this authentic wild man stuff, and phooey on thinking it's a stand-in for a wild boar.'
Bjarne frowned again, then gazed at the pig with a fond expression. 'Perhaps I am wrong about this being a boar. Perhaps it is a representation of a poem,' he said to Meg, his pale blue eyes alight with passion. 'Yes! This pig is an epic poem. An Edda.'
'It's not a poem, it's a pig. Headed for a party in the woods. 'The woods.' ' Meg added, with inspiration if little accuracy, ' 'are lovely dark and deep/and we have promises to keep.' '
Quill smiled. 'What part of the cold and snowy woods does this get delivered to, Meg?'
'Just to the park. Mayor Henry will be there at noon to pick it up.' Meg looked at Bjarne in an abstracted way, as if calculating his market weight. 'I'd almost sell my Aga stove for a chance to see what those guys really do in the woods. Myles has got to know where they meet. He was the sheriff, for goodness sake. I don't suppose you'd want to ask him about it at-never mind. I'll join the women's group and bring it up at the next H. O. W. meeting. We'll find out. Nothing can stop a bunch of women with their minds made up.'
Quill set her feet on the hearth with a thump. 'Why don't you just leave the poor guys alone? If they want to meet in the woods, let them. And let's stay out of this whole village contretemps. We've talked about that before.'
Meg gestured grandly with the wooden spoon. 'Because the village is falling apart. We don't have a Chamber of Commerce anymore. We've got the Search for Our Authentic Primitive instead and their archrivals the Hemlock Organization for Women and goodness knows what else. Now, I don't care that Elmer and those guys bounce bare-naked around the statue of General Hemlock in twenty-degree weather. But I do care that what passes for town government and plain old social intercourse has come to a screeching halt. Not to mention other kinds of intercourse. Most of the members of the rival groups are married to each other, and nobody's speaking to anyone else. Ever since Elmer started S. O. A. P. and Adela Henry started H. O. W. it's been chaos. Total chaos. Look at what happened with the town elections. Howie and Myles are right out on their kiesters. And we've got some weird new guy in charge of the sheriff's office that gives me and anyone who gets a traffic ticket the creeps. It's not just that S. O. A. P. is ridiculous. It's that something is going on in those meetings that's a threat to comfortable community living.'
'I am going now,' Bjarne announced. He picked up the foil-wrapped pig. 'You will come with me, Meg?'
'No,' Meg said. 'Don't go out without your hat and gloves. It's freezing out there!'
'I am not so cold,' Bjarne said stubbornly. 'You just think it's not so manly to protect yourself against the snow. Wear a hat. And if you drop that pig or join that men's group, don't bother coming back!'
She scolded him out the back door, then returned, accompanied by a swirl of cold air. 'Now, where was I?'
'You were giving a Margaret Quilliam lecture, 'The Decline and Fall of Hemlock Falls.' We'd be better off planning the Santini wedding.'
'Let me tell you something about the Santini wedding, I've decided we can't plan it until after it's over.'
'You might have something there,' Quill said.
'So, since we can't plan the Santini wedding, we can plan your love life.' Meg settled on a stool behind the butcher block countertop and tugged at her short dark hair. She was wearing a fleecy green sweatshirt with the emblem of the Cornell medical school, a red bandanna around her forehead, and her favorite fleece-lined jeans. She looked about sixteen. 'How come you've decided to whack Myles around? I thought things were going relatively well. A couple of months ago, you two were talking marriage. Does he even know you're planning on dumping him
