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was going to get on a plane, I just knew I couldn’t wait any longer. As I was sleeping one night deep in conversation with my mother, I felt something rooting around my feet. I nearly jumped out of my skin when I saw it was Jerry the pig. He had curlicues made of weeds dangling from his ears and he was carrying an old, tattered, leatherbound book that he held with great reverence. I believe in the screenplay this is called the beginning of Act Two:
    JERRY
    ’Sup?
    ELSIE
    ’Sup, yourself.
    JERRY
    I mean what is up? What is up with you? What is afoot?
    What’s with all the maps and the whispering with Mallory at night?
    ELSIE
    Nothing.
    JERRY
    I’ll tell you what I think is up. I think you’re planning to get outta Dodge.
    ELSIE
    As if.
    JERRY
    Don’t stonewall me, cow. You’re thinking of makin’ a break, skedaddling, blowing this Popsicle stand, makin’ like a banana and splitting, makin’ like a tree and leavin’ on a jet plane, bustin’ a moooo-ve …
    (Here’s the thing about JERRY —he won’t stop saying these obsessive strings of synonymous figures of speech till you stop him, it could literally go on forever. So to maintain my own sanity, I had to stop him.)
    ELSIE
    Okay. So what if you’re right, so what if I am?
    JERRY
    Well, did you ever stop to think of what will happen to the rest of us if you vamoose, if you fly the coop, if you go all goodbye yellow brick road—
    ELSIE
    You’ll be fine.
    JERRY
    No, we won’t. The farmer will come down on us like a ton of bricks, like the hand of God, like—
    ELSIE
    Okay. What’s your point? Why is that my problem?
    JERRY
    My point is, I wanna go too.
    ELSIE
    No. No way.
    JERRY
    You think you’re the only one who knows the lay of the land? You think you’re the only one who knows which way is up, which side your bread is buttered on—
    ELSIE
    Jerry!
    JERRY
    Sorry—that’s like a thing with me, I know. I’ll keep an eye on it, you know, note-to-self it, stick a pin in it, damn, sorry—what I’m sayin’ is I know where the truffles are, woman. They’re gonna eat me just like they’re gonna eat you. It’s a damn holocaust in here.
    (I fell silent. I knew JERRY was right, but I didn’t know what I could do. A cow traveling is bad enough, but a cow and a pig, fugeddaboutit. JERRY kept on, though.)
    JERRY
    And I got skills. I got mad skills. I got skills to pay the bills. Pigs are wicked smart. We are well liked. I can help.
    ELSIE
    Look, Jerry, even if I could take you, the same thing is going to happen to you in India. They’d eat you there as soon as they’d look at you. Apparently pork is quite tasty.
    JERRY
    Low blow, dude. Can you say “hamburger”?
    ELSIE
    I’m sorry. But it’s true. Cows are sacred in India, but pigs are just, well, pigs.
    JERRY
    You got your map there?
    (And I did. I had stolen a map of the world and a couple of Encyclopaedia Britannica volumes from the house to research and figure out all my routes. I knew the family wouldn’t notice their absence, ’cause they now got all their information from their phones. Come to think of it, a phone would be handy, but how could I ever work the touch screen with my big ol’ hooves?)
    JERRY
    Hoof it over.
    Jerry unrolled the map with his mouth, getting pig mucus all over it, which I did not appreciate.
    JERRY
    Looky here.
    He pointed with his flat, circular snout to somewhere in the Middle East, the original place that cows come from, pretty far away from glorious India.
    ELSIE
    So? Iraq?
    JERRY
    No, not Iraq. Here, right over here. Israel, baby.
    ELSIE
    Israel? What’s in Israel?
    JERRY
    It’s nothing in Israel. It’s what they do in Israel, or more precisely what they don’t do.
    ELSIE
    What, Jerry, what do they do or not do in Israel?
    JERRY
    It’s a little thing I like to call “kosher.”
    ELSIE
    What’s kosher?
    JERRY
    It’s an ancient dietary regimen of the Jews. Prohibitions. Commandments. Restricti-on-ays. [ He said it like it was a Spanish word. ]
    ELSIE
    What