When Tamminetta was no more than a piglet, her mother was slaughtered. As she was growing up, Tammy's only memory was the warning her mother had given her: If you gorge yourself on the slops as the other pigs do, you will be punished, for once you are full-grown and fat, the man with the pitchfork will kill you and have you cooked. Don't eat with the other pigs. If you eat instead sparingly of the left-over scrapings, you will not be fat enough for the farmer, and you will be set free. I was weak and ate, and I am to be punished for it. But if you are strong you shall win your way to freedom and escape the flames of the cook-fire.

And so each day when the man with the pitchfork came out into the pigpen carrying the slops, young Tammy turned her tail to him. The other pigs went running for the food, so when the good man saw the small pig standing alone a perplexed expression crossed his benevolent features. But though he called her, she stood apart and would not touch the slops until the other pigs had finished, and little enough indeed remained when her friends left the trough.

The other pigs, at first concerned, soon grew annoyed. They numbered twenty-two, and all of them were Tammy's seniors. One by one, each of them prevailed upon Tammy to eat like a sensible pig, all to no avail. They could be heard talking about her among themselves. "Who does she think she is, young upstart? Too good to eat with the rest of us though it starve her. An embarrassment to our pen she is." And, "When she doesn't eat she annoys and worries our Benefactor, the Good Man with the Pitchfork, who feeds and protects us. Something should be done about her." But despite all their talk, nothing ever came of it. She continued to refuse to eat and they continued to be annoyed, but this was as far as it went.

It couldn't have been easy for Tammy to continue to hold out. Sometimes a wistful expression was seen on her face, not so much when the man with the pitchfork arrived with breakfast -- though at times then, too -- but mostly when another pig snubbed or chastised her. Her look of quiet determination would break for an instant, letting her hurt and loneliness show through. But she never let her defenses down for more than a moment; she'd quickly realign her features, resuming her usual expressionless stare. And though she never looked happy, she never once indulged in tears of self-pity. She simply took what came to her, and whatever feelings she had never manifested themselves on her face.

Every morning, when the farmer entered the pen, he'd look hopefully at Tammy, and sometimes he'd go to her and try to feed her from his hand. But however he tried, he never managed to tempt the now scrawny and unhealthy-looking pig. The old sows in the pen took it upon themselves as their duty to persuade her to eat. They approached her as a group, but they soon gave up talking to her, for the look in her eyes said that she saw only cool forests and heard not a word of their sermonizing.

Deep inside, Tammy yearned for the companionship of her pen-mates, but she could not have it and remain true to herself. Her mother had taught her, and she truly believed, that to give in to the temptation proffered by the farmer was to be weak. It would be wrong to eat the quantities the farmer tried to make her consume. Her pen-mates were lost, but her conscience would not let her join them. She was alone, but she would be true to the memory of her mother, though it cost her her friends.

Soon came fall and with it butchering season. The farmer remarked to his wife that he'd only catch twenty-two of the pigs, for the last of the mature pigs was too scrawny to butcher. The new piglets he would keep, to carry on the line, and the lone sickly one he would free, for it would cost him money to feed it and time to butcher it and he'd little enough of either.

Though their last days had come, the pigs were quite unsuspecting. They'd been good; if any of them was to be killed it would surely be the recalcitrant loner. They watched the onset of fall, quite blissful in their ignorance of what was to befall them. And if Tammy knew their fate, she surely knew too that it was too late for them; or maybe it was just that it had been so long since she'd spoken to them that she'd forgotten how. In either case, several days before the older pigs were taken from the pen, Tammy was released into the woods beyond the farm. She'd been strong, and she'd won. In fact, she must have been too overjoyed and triumphant for her poor, undernourished heart to sustain the excitement, for she died several days later.

In all the time she'd been ostracized by her friends, her facial muscles must have forgotten how to form a smile, for those who saw her corpse say she looked no more happy than she had back at the farm. Or perhaps it was only that those who looked upon her could not see her expression clearly through the gloom of the forest.