She opens one little beady eye and closes it again. She flicks her tail and grunts, then rolls over so her back is to me. But she’s not fooling me. Her hooves quiver, ready to jump into action and charge the minute I put one foot on the fence. I lift the bucket carefully, not taking my eyes off her. She doesn’t move. I take one step toward the fence, then another. In slow motion, I put one foot on the lower rail. An ear twitches, but I can’t tell if it’s from the breeze or from her piggy senses when she hears the sound of my foot touching the wood. I grab the upper rail and slowly hoist myself up. The bucket is heavy to lift with one hand. I pull the bucket over as quietly as possible, but just as I start to lower it to the other side, Lucy jumps to her feet. I don’t know how she can move so fast for such a big pig. It’s as if her whole loaf of a body just pops up in the air and flips, like a giant piece of toast popping out of a toaster.

She charges.

I scramble with the bucket handle, trying to get it in the metal latch as she cannonballs toward me like a pink tank.

“Ohhhhh, nooooo, youuuuuu, donnnnnnnt,” I mutter, frantically trying to get the handle in the latch. It snaps in place, Lucy body-slams the fence, and I fall backward into the dirt. The food in the bucket spills all over her snout, and she grunts in a satisfied way, shaking her head proudly.

“Dumb pig,” I say.

She twitches her tail and ignores me, scarfing down her breakfast without a care. But I wonder. I wonder what it is about me, about getting this food, that makes her slam her body against the fence every time. Does she like getting the feed all over her face and on the ground? Or does she like this one moment of power she has, when she can show she can do more than wallow in mud and sunbathe and get fat enough so that someday . . . ? Just thinking about her fate makes me feel sorry for her again. Sorry for all the animals out there whose only purpose is to get fat so someone can eat them. I step back up onto the fence and she lifts her head, confused. This is not part of our routine.

“Hey, girl,” I say.

She grunts.

“Why do you like bashing me off the fence, anyway?”

She crams her nose back into the feed bucket and finishes quietly. When she’s done, she looks up at me again. Her tiny dark eyes are surrounded by light-colored lashes, the same color as her pink hair. Her snout still has food on it, and she licks it, not taking her eyes off me.