As if in answer to his demanding squeals, James heard the sounds of a scuffle outside Barty's room. The confrontation involved loud voices and one rather high-pitched, almost girlish shriek, immediately followed by "Let him go," voiced by a rough, loud, and masculine voice.
A moment later, a burly guy in a football jersey and tight jeans kicked in the door to Barty's room. James squealed in fright as two other huge, muscled goons followed through the splintered door and entered the room.
"Those geeks at the science lab were telling the truth," the biggest of the guys, and the one who had kicked down the door, said as he approached the cage. "Here's Wilbur."
Wilbur! That's the best these musclebound football jocks could come up with when thinking of a name for their pig? James groaned, which sounded more like an oink.
"Let's get our pig and get the hell out of this dump," said a guy with reddish-brown hair and a body of a running back.
James recognized Kyle Wilson, the third member of the trio, as the team's conceited and arrogant quarterback. Blond, green eyes, standing 6’4" and weighing 220 pounds, he took charge after his teammate had taken down the door. "Matt, you and Ollie grab the cage."
"No! Wait a moment!" James reacted with a series of oinks.
"And try not to shake up Wilbur any more than you have to," Kyle said. "Poor little guy looks like he has been traumatized."
With their backs to the quarterback, Matt and Ollie were free to exchange a look as they each grabbed the cage and lifted it off the floor.
"I'm not a pig!" James oinked.
"Don't worry," Kyle said as he opened the front door for his teammates. "We've got you back, Wilbur."
"My name's not Wilbur!" James oinked. "It's James! Put me down!"
A half hour later, Kyle and his buddies transferred James, who had oinked and squealed for the entire trip, from the cage into a pig sty built in a corner of the wooded lot behind the football field house. The square-shaped spartan structure consisted of four fence walls built of boards with a narrow space between each row of boards. A large metal barrel with the lid removed to serve as a door had been drafted into use for the mascot to sleep and stay out of the elements. A large trough was arranged along one of the walls between the gate and the barrel, which was filled with hay and straw on the interior. A large tub held a supply of relatively fresh drinking water. The floor beneath James's cloven hooves consisted of trampled earth and mud.
While the smell might have horrified James, the strong odor helped relax his piggish instincts. Despite having never seen the sty, he immediately felt the surroundings were familiar and hinted that he was home.
"Wait a minute," James objected with a shake of his head. "Home is not a fenced mud wallow!" He retained his usual touch for sarcasm, but he felt alarmed by how easily he slid into Wilbur's habits.
While he was still getting his bearings, he heard a metallic click. He spun around in time to see Kyle fasten the padlock on the gate to the sty. "We won't have someone stealing you again, Wilbur," the football quarterback declared confidently.
He rushed toward the gate, trying yet again to communicate to the football jocks that he had fallen victim to a major misunderstanding. "I'm James Crowder! I'm not a pig! You have to believe me."
Kyle listened to the oinks and interpreted them as Wilbur's way of thanking them for getting him back home.
"Oh, I have something for you," he said.
James waited expectantly. Did the big jock have the medallion? Was their prank about to come to an end with him transformed back into human form, the butt of their joke but none the worse for wear?
Instead, the jock pulled a carrot stick from his pocket and snapped the vegetable into treat-sized morsels.
"You want it, boy?" Kyle asked.
What did he expect him to do? Beg for it, like a dog?
He was hungry, and Kyle kept dangling the carrot pieces without dropping them. He oinked in protest, but he finally lifted his snout and snuffled.
"Good boy," Kyle said and dropped one of the carrot sticks. It bounced off James's snout and fell into the mud but he easily sniffed it out and took it into his mouth. Kyle dropped the other pieces of carrot into the mud and walked away.
"Wait!" James oinked, but when that proved futile, he searched out the pieces of orange carrot and consumed them. The snack did little to whet his appetite.