The Pig Did It (17 page)

“Of course he knows. Or what's a heaven for?” His aunt managed to keep her severity.

Aaron coughed. “Can we hurry? I can't last much longer.”

“Listen to him.” Kitty said. “We're doing all the gruesome and he's the one complaining.”

“I can't breathe.”

“Then don't.”

Kitty held the joined corners of the sheet in through the opening. With his free hand, Aaron took hold and backed onto the landing leading to the steps. The rest of the sheet followed, slung low with some sharp, some rounded thrustings poking against the linen.

“Quick. Back farther. There's more of him.”

Aaron had to go two steps down. The body kept coming. Aaron could not remember the man being this tall.

“Okay. That's far enough. That's all there is.” Lolly had taken over the opening and almost reverently set down her end. Aaron took one more step back and set down the corners he held. He intended to open the sheet, but the narrow passage allowed only room for the folded shroud.

Aaron raised his foot to start the climb back up the opening but could see no place to set it down. Declan Tovey took up all the room on the narrow stairs. He put his foot back on his own step and considered what to do, shove the bones to the side or just go ahead and step on them. The anticipated crunch gave him a quick shiver.

There was the sound of a heavy knock, loud enough to carry even into the recesses of the secret tunnel. “Quick,” his aunt whispered. “We have to close the panel.”

“I've come for my friend Declan. Hand him over.” It was Sweeney's voice coming through the kitchen door. Aaron bent down to shove the shroud, but before he had touched the cloth, his aunt hissed the words, “Stay there. We'll be back.” With that the panel was slammed shut. Aaron stared up the steps at the dark where the opening had been.

“No! Wait!” Aaron called, but there was no answer. He aimed the flashlight at the closed panel, searching along its surface for some handle or latch by which it could be opened. There was nothing. Slowly he moved the beam of light along the edges where the wood met the stone, then at the center, then again at the sides. The seal was absolute.

He knew now he was expected to stay where he was. His aunt was using him badly. He was being taken advantage of because of his good nature and his willingness to oblige. This was not acceptable. Sweeney or no Sweeney, he would crunch his way to the top of the steps and pound on the panel. He would not accept this entombment. He would not allow his beloved aunt so easily to maltreat him even in the service of a centuries-old family secret. If Sweeney wanted the bones, let him have them. The whole matter should be turned over to the police, to the
gardaí,
anyway.

As if to confirm the sad fact, Aaron reached down and folded back the sheet, to expose at least the skull, as if to give the poor man a chance to breathe. It was a headless corpse that confronted him, the collar of the tattered shirt completely uninhabited. Aaron parted more of the sheet. He found the cap just above the belt and the head just below. Aaron would not take the time to reconstruct the man entirely, but the least he could do was put the man's head on right. When he lifted the skull, however, he sent a hand clattering down the steps. He froze where he stood. He listened to hear if there was any response from the other side of the panel. He waited. He heard nothing. He had started to straighten up, the skull in his hand, when he heard Kieran Sweeney, distant but distinct, saying “I'm coming in to
get
him. I know he's there.”

“No Sweeney sets a foot inside this house. You know that and I know that.”

“I've come for my friend, and I won't be turned away. Poor man buried all this time in unholy ground. Shame. Shame.”

It was Lolly's voice Aaron heard next. “Let him in, why not? He's raving, and there's no Declan Tovey here that he's referring to. Prove him wrong. When there's nothing to hide, why hide it?”

“He's a Sweeney,” Kitty said.

“And never,” said Sweeney, “would I dirty the soles of my shoes in such a place except to rescue my friend from his murderer.”

“Then come in, Kieran Sweeney, and show me that anyone's been murdered. Come in. Don't keep hanging your fool of a face outside the door. It's open. Come in and welcome, and remind me to have Father Colavin come and bring the holy water when you've gone.”

Aaron heard the slam of the screen door. “It hurts my feet to step inside, but I've done it.” Sweeney spoke in a hoarse whisper. “And may I be forgiven.”

“Just shut up, and don't go bumping into things and crashing everything down onto the floor.”

“Can I be allowed to do my duty in silence?”

“Silence is the preferred speech when a Sweeney's doing the talking.”

Heavy footsteps, booted, deliberate, seemed to come toward Aaron, then recede down the hall and up the stairs.

He put the skull on the step just below the collar, then retrieved the hand. When he slipped it partly into the sleeve, it angled away to the right, looking as if it was thumbing a ride. He straightened it out, but again it slid to the right, drawn downward by the descending steps. Convinced at first that the man himself, that Declan Tovey was doing all in his power to thwart his efforts made in the name of simple respect, Aaron considered letting the body lie in this ludicrous position, stretched out on the landing, with the upper torso two steps down, the head fallen to the third. He saw the detached skull as something of a plea, an appeal that he, Aaron, put the man right, that he separate and rearrange the bones until they formed the suggestion of a man with all his remaining parts, bare and disconnected though they might be, properly placed in relationship to one another, and restored to the dignity and reverence any skeleton surely deserved. As he set about the task, dexterously manipulating the flashlight and the bones, the flashlight and the clothing, he began to wonder why the provident plotter who had brought him to this dank and reeking place, dark and fetid, couldn't have arranged for Lolly McKeever to have been shut up with him. Together they could have rearranged Declan Tovey. Together they could have found amusement in the task at hand. She would know him to be a man of amiable good cheer, a pleasant companion, a man of ready intelligence. He would discover in her a woman of sturdy emotion, with a sly appreciation of his finer qualities, a woman adaptable to adventure without being excessively enthusiastic. She and Aaron would get along quite nicely. They would become acquainted. They would emerge good friends, having arrived in those few moments or more, at a mutual appreciation that might have taken time untold to achieve under less singular circumstances.

Aaron had already reversed the position of Declan Tovey. His shoes were three steps down, and the jacket, shirt and pants were turned around so the man seemed to be lying on the stones, landing, and steps, rather than having fallen backward, unable to arise and to right himself. What remained was to stick each separate bone into place within the clothing, making sure the femur was above the tibia and fibula in the pants leg and the humerus above the ulna and radius in the sleeve. (Not for nothing had the words and the sounds of the words fascinated him in eighth grade. What could be more exciting than to become acquainted with objects named “thoracic vertebrae,” “scapula,” “patella,” and, best of all, “clavicle.” His interest at first suggested that he should become a doctor, but when he realized that it was the sound of the words—the way they shaped themselves in the mouth and on the tongue—he knew he was destined to be a man of words, a writer, that most blessed of men, one accompanied throughout life by the rhythms and resonance, the thrusts and roundings of the world's most glorious achievement: the word.)

Now at Aaron's feet lay the familiar skeleton of Declan Tovey, reconstituted except for the placement of the skull near the closed panel, where it would declare the completion of his task. There were many questions, more than Aaron's intellect had the capacity to contain. But there was only one answer. Of this Aaron could be sure. Declan Tovey had been done in by a jealous hand. Who might have struck the blow or poured the poison was still a mystery, but one that seemed susceptible to resolution by even the most inept corps of police. What stood in the way, implacably, was the resistance in these parts to easy clarifications. Indifference to the simple seemed indigenous, the insistence on complexity congenital, and the reach for widening involvement gleefully encouraged. With each of the accused accusing another, the roster of suspects could lengthen indefinitely. The entire town could be drawn into the affair, each fingering the other, a reign of suspicion, until the entire weave of the communal fabric was reduced to rags and tatters, the maid-pale peace turned blue in the face. Declan Tovey's bones would be dragged from pillow to post, rattling in protest, all jumbled, worn finally to a fine dust it would have taken eon upon eon for nature itself to achieve.

Just as Aaron began bending down to put the hairless skull in place on the step, completing his act of restoration, he heard a click at the top of the closed panel. The timing had been perfect. He had been given the exact number of minutes and seconds he'd needed to fulfill his rite of piety. Now the panel would open, and he could display the fruits of that piety to a surprised aunt and to an admiring Lolly McKeever. He would be given solemn thanks interspersed with questions and wonderments as to how he had done so remarkable a deed. Happy blessings would be bestowed as the bones were returned to the priest's bed, the sheet handled with the utmost care so as to preserve his handiwork and restore some semblance of respect for the desecrated remains.

Aaron stood one step below Declan's shoes, his own head just a bit higher—from the panel's perspective—than the skull. In tribute to the completion of his task, Aaron took in a deep breath.

Instantly, in defense of itself, his epiglottis slammed shut, but not before some of the fetid vapors had rushed into his throat, into his lungs, and, by some uncharted route, into his eyes and forehead. He coughed, choked, and coughed again. Tears flooded his eyes. Something was stinging the inside of his nose. His windpipe refused to open. After three great gasps some air was allowed to pass through his nose, but the coughing and the choking were beyond his control. A banging was heard. The panel swung open. Aaron lurched, stumbling, falling, rising, crawling up the steps. In the scramble Declan was sent clattering down in even greater disarray than he had suffered before. The skull, almost crushed by Aaron's knee, then kicked backward by Aaron's foot, rolled, then bounced from step to step down to what depths Aaron had no inclination to measure. He thrust the upper part of his body through the opening and laid his head on the floor, his chest heaving, his mouth panting, his hands splayed open on the wooden boards, an attempt to secure a hold that would counter any attempt by the vile air to draw him back into its pestilential dank.

No one came to his aid. No surprised voice spoke his name, no helping hand was lowered to calm his panting frame. Through unwiped tears he saw not the sneakered foot of his aunt or the perfectly formed ankle of Lolly McKeever, but two brown-booted feet and the cuffs of a pair of black woolen pants that could only be worn by Kieran Sweeney. Aaron braced his hands on the floorboards and three times raised his upper torso, taking in first the belted girth of Kieran, second the skirt of his aunt and the jeans of Lolly, and third the movement of Kieran past him toward the panel opening.

Aaron used his fourth and final pushup to pull the rest of himself through the panel and drag himself closer to the sneakers of his aunt, who, in turn, moved away toward the spindly table and the crucifix. He considered putting himself at the feet of Lolly

McKeever, but, suspecting that his aunt had been repelled by the tunnel odor that must have seeped from his clothes and into his flesh, he twisted his body around and sat up. Kieran was standing at the opened panel, one hand resting on the wall above the wainscoting. His head was bowed, his face relaxed and passive as if his thoughts were leading him so far from himself that he had become indifferent to whatever expression might take possession of his lips and chin, his eyes and his forehead.

Lolly was leaning against the doorjamb, her arms folded across her chest, her head turning slowly from Kitty to Kieran, from Kieran to Kitty, then back to Kieran again. His aunt, standing stiff and straight near the table, was looking only at Kieran. Her head she held high, her gaze immobile and hard, as if she had come to a long-sought satisfaction and was allowing it time to spread throughout her mind and signal to her blood that a particular fulfillment was at last accomplished. Aaron decided to stay where he was. So he wouldn't seem to be mocking Lolly in the Ping-Pong movements of her head from Kitty to Kieran, he looked only at his aunt. “What's going on?” he asked.

Staring at Sweeney, Kitty, in dry hard tones said, “I watched you and did nothing. When you took the nail from the crucified hand, when I saw that you knew where it was and knew what it could do, I let you condemn yourself. This is why we've hated the Sweeneys for all these years, for all these generations, and known them to be less than dust. We'd forgotten what they'd done, with nothing to remind us except our loathing and our scorn. It was the Sweeneys, then, that discovered the tunnel and knew the ways to open the wall. It was the Sweeneys that betrayed the priests for the king's gold and sent them to be hanged. It's a hangman's hand you have, Kieran Sweeney, and I'll thank you to take it from the holy wall.”

Both Aaron and Lolly had been looking not at Kitty as she spoke but at Kieran who had stood unmoving, the cursed hand still resting above the dark opening in the wainscoting. Without the slightest shift in his stance, Kieran himself now chose to speak. “It was a Sweeney who was the priest and a McCloud his betrayer. Lured here by the promise of safe passage, led down these depths to the waiting English, he was delivered into the hangman's hand. And it was a McCloud did it—for gold or for silver was never said. Small wonder you've forgotten, and who will blame you? The wrath is mine and it's on your head it should be heaped.”