The Labor Pains of Hercules Story 4

In a pig's eye

Erytmanthian Boar

Wallowing around the countryside




Eurystheus took the latest completed labor the same way he took the others: job done, no big deal, on with the rest.

“Hello?” Hercules bellowed. “I got three of your goddamn mothers taken care of and all you got to say is `got another one for you’?”

Eurystheus shook his head.

“What? You wanta medal or something? Wasn’t me got myself all toked up and went snake shit. Wasn’t me haulin’ my sorry ass down here all, “I gotta make this up or Dad’s gonna bust my butt!”

Hercules put on his sulky face one more time.

“Hera,” he muttered. “It’s goddamn Hera on my hinny.”

“Yeah. And you got the Heavenly Harridan for one more ride.”

“What?”

“You gotta go after the Erytmanthian boar, and you best be talkin‘ to her about that.”

Shit. One more thing Hercules didn’t need in his damn life. He hauled himself over to Olympus to see what the Divine Drug Dealer had up her ass about the boar. He didn’t go into any preliminaries when he addressed her. Just a straight out,

“So what’s with you and this Erytmanthian boar thing?”

Hera shrugged.

“I’m hearing it’s being a real pain in the ass. The people have been, shall we say, most persuasive in their petitions to have it removed.”

“You mean killed?”

“They mean killed. I want it brought back here alive!”

“Alive. Why? You lookin‘ for a pork roast?”

Hera glowered.

“The sow is one of my familiars!”

“How familiar?” Zeus demanded immediately.

Hera, for once, turned her wrath where it belonged.

“So now you’re jealous? Get over it, cock boy!”

“But a boar?"

Hera glowered some more. Hercules was stupid enough to ask,

“Familiar. Does that, ah, mean you turn into one or you are one? I mean, if you want the boar alive-----”

The supposition did not get any farther. Hercules did not walk so well when he left the audience.


#


The Erytmanthian boar. One more mean assed son of a bitch after his hide and him with no cover. Didn’t that just figure. There was no question that however it worked out Hera was in a win-win situation and he was in a lose-lose. If he did her damn dirty deed the Boil on Olympus’s Butt got her buns buttered by the locals with all manner of grateful sacrifices. If he didn’t he was dead. It was no secrete how much Hera wanted him dead.

As for him, it was work, work, work, and another pile of shit added on when that work was done. Twelve piles of shit all told, with Hera the head shieze shoveler.

Hercules knew the only way to deal with this load was the way he dealt with the other two. He grabbed up his gear, dusted off his shoes, and set off to face his newest crappy assignment.

“Two down,” he kept telling himself. “Two down!”

The first thing he found out about the boar was same old same old. It was a mean assed bastard and everyone was afraid of it. Of course.

The second thing he found out was the Nemean lion thing wasn’t going to work. The damn thing had heard about that, and the hydra.

The third thing he found out was it could run like a son of a bitch.

“Caught your tunic did it?” one of the smart assed villager ladies noted.

“Keep sewing,” Hercules muttered glumly.

“Ohhhh, caught something else did it?”

“Get your hands off my ass. I got other shit on my mind right now!”

“Like?”

What the hell. A screw was a screw and he really wasn’t going to be doing anything in the next hour or so anyway.

“I forgot. Your place or mine?”


#


The fourth thing Hercules found out about the boar was it was either too smart, too big, or too dirty to be trapped. It broke the noose it ran through, yanking it and half of the villagers out of the tree. Nobody was happy about that one, and a lot of the people were mumbling about using the noose on somebody who didn’t rig it right in the first place.

The cage didn’t work either. The boar slipped through the bars as slick as a greased pig. As for the pit, the people who weren’t grumbling about the noose were now grumbling about how to fill that pit and with whom.

“Damn, damn, damn!” Hercules muttered to himself. “Can’t kill it, can’t lure it in, can’t trap it. How in the hell am I supposed to bring the damn thing in?”

He wasn’t supposed to bring it in. He knew that, but he was getting just that fed up with Hera and her bullshit jobs that he wanted to show her a thing or two, and not what Zeus was showing her, for damn sure.

A star finally shone in the muscle man’s brain when he hit that spot.

A familiar. How familiar, and was the boar interested?

It wasn’t.

“Sheeeeeesh!” it bellowed down from the side of the mountain. “Even a pig’s got some standards!”

Hercules thought he’d lost that one. He was about to turn away in frustration when he happened to notice a large white spot spreading higher up on the mountain. Snow. Maybe deep snow. Maybe really deep snow. Hercules set out to see just how deep.


#


It took most of the remaining day, but it was worth it. The snow was hip high on a Titan, and the pig was no Titan. If Hercules could get the thing’s butt moving fast enough it might just plow up into the deep white stuff. Once it was mired in, it would be simple enough to wear it out, get a noose around it, then hoist it up on some poles to take back to Hera.

Getting it to move, though, that was the trick. The damn thing wasn’t afraid of anything. Scaring it was out of the question.

“Scaring it,” Hercules mused. “Maybe not, like, afraid for its life, but maybe something else?”

The boar seemed to be disgusted about the whole Hera idea. A little pressure on that, maybe?

“Hey, Pork Chops!” Hercules yelled at the thing. “Your girl friend’s coming to town!”

“My what?”

“Hera. Rumor has it she’s waited long enough to get familiar with her familiar and she’s coming down to see what the hell’s taking so long.”

”My ass!”

“Don’t think that’s the part she’s looking for. Ah, unless you don’t cooperate, if you know what I mean.”

“God damn! Look, Kid, can you get me outta this? I got a lotta tricks I can show you about scavenging, finding food, you know. Survival stuff.”

“Right now my survival depends on you getting cozy with Hera. Whatever time she’s spending with your ass is time she’s off mine. You go running off in the snow someplace where she can’t get at you---”

Hercules didn’t have to say anything more. The boar was gone before he finished the sentence.

Hera wasn’t even one part of happy when he dragged the hog in to face the hoggess. She gave him the point, though; and that was all he was interested in.

For now.