That'll Do, Pig.
You showed us who you are. Now we'll show you who we are.
Well now, pull up a chair and let me tell you about the time a pig wandered into the People’s Office.
Nobody quite remembers how he got in.
Some say he squealed his way in through the front door, hollerin’ about how he was the biggest, bestest pig to ever walk on two hooves. Others say he snuck in through a side entrance while the night janitor was lookin’ the other way. However it happened, one morning there he was:
A big, orange-haired pig in a shiny blue suit and a too-long red tie, grinnin’ like he’d just found the world’s last truffle.
Now the People’s Office was a fine old room. The furniture was solid oak, polished by a hundred years of hands trying to do right by folks. The curtains were thick and heavy, sewn by people who believed in rainy days and long memories. The walls were lined with portraits of old troublemakers who’d managed, more often than not, to leave things a little better than they found ’em.
The pig trotted in, took one look around, and said, “Mine.”
Didn’t say “please.” Didn’t say “thank you.” Just “Mine.”
First thing he did was hop up on the nicest leather chair in the whole building—the one folk used when they had to talk about things like war and famine and factory closings. That chair had seen tears and arguments and long silences that felt heavier than stone.
Pig scrambled up on it, turned in a circle like a dog, and—before anyone could stop him—squatted down and let loose.
I’m not talking about a little accident, neither. I mean he crapped all over that chair like he was signing his name.
“Now it smells like success in here,” he snorted, pleased as punch.
The staff stood there horrified, clutching their clipboards and coffee cups. A couple of ’em started to mop, but the pig barked, “Leave it! Folks oughta smell what winning looks like!”
Then he went to work.
He gnawed on the arms of the chairs, chewed the stuffing right out, spat it on the floor and called it “redecorating.” He rooted through the desk drawers, flinging papers everywhere.
“These rules?” he grunted. “Ugly. Boring. Who needs ’em?”
He shoved half the papers into his mouth, chewing loudly. Some of those pages were protections that’d taken entire generations to write. To the pig, they just tasted like dry old paper.
When he got bored of that, he turned to the walls.
Now, the walls of the People’s Office were somethin’ special. They were load-bearing, in more ways than one. They held up the roof, sure—but they also held the stories that kept the whole place from fallin’ in on itself: stories about checks and balances, about nobody being bigger than the law, about ordinary folks getting at least half a chance.
The pig squinted at the walls, wrinkled his snout, and said, “Too constricting.”
He backed up… and started eating the drywall.
Chunk by chunk, he bit into the walls. Plaster dust flew everywhere. He chomped right through insulation, through wires, through old foundations that were never meant to see daylight again.
Every time someone piped up—“Sir, that’s load-bearing” or “Sir, that’s the fire code”—he’d snort and say, “Relax! I’m a genius at buildings. I know walls.”
Bits of portrait frames fell down. A couple of old heroes wound up face-down in the rubble.
Pig didn’t notice. Or if he did, he liked it.
Then he caught sight of the curtains.
They were tall as hope and heavy as regret, those curtains. They’d been pulled open for big announcements and drawn shut for moments of mourning. They’d seen crowds cheer outside the windows and crowds protest, too. They’d watched time roll past like a slow parade.
The pig waddled over to them, licked his lips and said, “Now those look tasty.”
Before anyone could blink, he had them in his teeth. He tugged and ripped and chewed, yanking the curtains down off their rods. Daylight blasted in, harsh and unforgiving, showing every stain he’d already left behind.
“Look!” he said with his mouth full. “Transparency!”
He munched on the velvet like it was cotton candy at a county fair.
Meanwhile, out in the hallway, folks were arguing.
“We can’t just let him do this,” some said.
“He’s the pig the people picked,” others answered. “He says he’s fixin’ things. Maybe this is what fixin’ looks like now.”
Some were just tired. They shrugged and shuffled past, eyes on their phones, telling themselves the mess in that room wasn’t their problem. After all, the door was still technically closed.
Well. Mostly closed. It didn’t hang quite right anymore, what with the walls being half-eaten and the hinges groaning.
Inside, the pig had moved on to the carpet.
He dug his hooves in and rooted around, tearing up old fibers, exposing bare floor. Down underneath he found things that’d been swept there for decades—wars nobody apologized for, promises broken so long ago no one remembered making them, debts marked “later” in fading ink.
“Wow,” the pig said. “So much forgotten stuff. I’m gonna drag all of this out and wave it around. Folks’ll love it.”
And for a while, some did. They clapped when he waved other people’s shame around like trophies. They cheered when he called the old messes “not my fault” but still used ’em as excuses to do whatever he pleased.
But you can only tear up a house so long before the rafters start complaining.
Out beyond the office, storms were gathering. Other countries stared, worried; the neighbors down the street started double-checking their emergency kits. The building itself began to creak in ways that made the older staff jump.
Finally, when the smell got too strong and the dust too thick and the shouting from inside too loud to ignore, a tall, gaunt figure in a tattered blue coat and a star-spangled top hat pushed his way through the crowd.
He looked like he’d just gone twelve rounds with history and lost at least half of ’em. His beard was grayer than folks remembered. His sleeves were torn. There was a smear of something on his lapel that might have been blood or ink or the remnants of one more compromise.
But his eyes were clear. Tired—but clear.
Uncle Sam put his hand on the ruined door, took a long breath, and stepped inside.
He took in the whole scene in one slow glance: the busted chair, the chewed walls, the bare windows, the shredded curtains, the carpet turned into a battlefield of old sins and fresh manure.
And there in the middle of it all stood the pig, chest puffed out, orange hair greased back, smilin’ like a man who’d just sold you your own house at twice the price.
“Well, look at this,” Uncle Sam said softly. “You’ve been busy.”
“Look how different it all is!” the pig beamed. “No one’s ever done a number on this place like I have. They’re sayin’ it’s the most incredible mess in history. You should be grateful.”
Uncle Sam just stared at him for a long moment.
“You done?” he asked.
The pig blinked. “What?”
“You done?” Uncle Sam repeated. “You had your fun? You took your bites? You rolled in it, smeared it on the furniture, tracked it down the hallways? You shouted and strutted and called it greatness?”
The pig shifted his weight. For the first time he looked a little unsure.
“I mean,” he said, “I could do more.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt that,” Uncle Sam said. “But this house belongs to more than just one hungry pig.”
He stepped closer, his boots squelching slightly in the mess. He didn’t flinch.
With a weary gentleness, he placed one old, bony hand on the pig’s back. Not shoving. Just guiding.
“That door right there,” he said, nodding toward the crooked frame, “still leads outside. Out there, you can holler all you like. Build yourself a barn. Paint your name on the roof. Folks will come see you if they want to. That’s their business.”
Inside the office, the wind whistled through the holes where the walls used to be.
“But in here,” Uncle Sam said, “we’ve gotta fix what you broke. We’ve got curtains to re-sew and walls to rebuild and chairs to clean or throw away. We’ve got a whole lot of people expecting this room to mean something again.”
The pig opened his mouth to argue, but Uncle Sam just shook his head.
“No sense fussin’,” he said. “You showed us what you are. Now we remember what we are.”
He nudged the pig, slow but firm, toward the doorway.
The pig huffed and grumbled and tried, once or twice, to spin back around, but Uncle Sam’s hand was steady. The crowd outside parted as the pair appeared: one ragged old symbol of a country, one overfed animal that had mistaken the People’s Office for his own personal sty.
At the threshold, Uncle Sam gave the pig a final pat between the shoulder blades.
“That’ll do, pig,” he said, voice low but carrying. “That’ll do.”
And with that, the orange-haired pig found himself on the other side of the door, blinking in the sunlight, still convinced he’d done nothin’ wrong, still tellin’ anyone who’d listen that the house had never looked better.
Back inside, the People’s Office was a disaster.
But it was their disaster again.
Folks rolled up their sleeves. Some grabbed mops. Some picked up hammers. Some quietly rehung the portraits that hadn’t broken, while others sketched plans for stronger walls and sturdier locks and clearer rules about what to do next time a pig comes knockin’ with dreams of redecorating.
Because if there’s one thing that old house knows by now, it’s this:
You can’t always stop a pig from gettin’ in.
But you sure as hell don’t have to let him stay.