The Pig Did It (22 page)

Two more bottles of Tullamore Dew—full liters—had been set on the coffee table. Aaron looked at them, then said, “Maybe I should change.”

“For the better?” asked Kitty.

“I'm all wet.”

“We're used to that,” said Lolly.

“I drink,” said Sweeney, “to the man lying there. May God and Mary greet him.” He raised his glass in the direction of the coffin, emptied it in a single gulp, and poured himself another glassful. Aaron went to the table, tipped a little whiskey into a glass and made a minimal gesture toward the coffin.

“Is that all you're having?” asked Kitty.

“Maybe after we're finished.”

“We
are
finished. All but putting him in the cabbage patch, and that shouldn't take more than a minute.”

“Here,” said Sweeney. “Make it a good man's portion.” He added a few inches to what Aaron had already poured.

“And aren't either of you going to sit down?” Kitty reached over and brushed a book from the easy chair onto the floor. “Kieran Sweeney, to honor the dead—since I know you won't take hospitality from this house and from this family—but to honor the dead as you did just now with a sizable helping of my whiskey, maybe you'll accept a chair in the name of Declan Tovey.” She patted the cushion of the easy chair and again brushed the surface even though there was nothing visible that might disturb a man's comfort.

“For Declan Tovey I'll do it.” To fortify himself for the treasonous act of sitting down in a McCloud chair in a McCloud house, Sweeney took a goodly gulp, replenished his glass, and sat down on the edge of the cushion Kitty had prepared for him. He'd brought the bottle with him. Was he now, Aaron asked himself, preparing his confession?

For Aaron, if he wanted to sit, there was only the ladder-back chair next to the foot of the coffin. He went over, sat down, and raised his glass, this time in Sweeney's direction, approving of what the man had done—with less difficulty than one might have expected—in sitting where he was sitting.

Water had splashed and soaked itself up into Aaron's khaki shorts and he did his best to sit still so the cloth wouldn't sting and scratch. Behind the coffin the firelight flickered, sending up sudden shafts of light—shadows too—expanding and retracting, the light and dark dancing on the chimney stones as if trying to taunt Declan and mock him for his inability to dance along. Aaron watched, then looked down into his drink. He took another sip and let the whiskey sear down his throat and spread its warmth across his chest. He coughed slightly, then said, “The wind's come up.” No one answered, nor was there any need for a reply. The wind itself gave the house a good shake, rattling the shutters and sending a sudden flare of firelight to flicker on the peak of Declan's baseball cap. For extra measure it made the sound of a Halloween ghost along the south side of the house and, to punctuate the cry, slammed a shutter against the kitchen window. Still no one said anything.

Aaron looked at his muddy feet and saw that if he wiggled his toes his toenails would catch some glint of firelight playing under the chairs that supported the coffin. Three times he wiggled them and was about to do it again when Lolly said, “Great were his skills and honest his labor. Any work to be done with his hands would be the work of an artist. Thatching was his trade, but wonders of plumbing were well within his understanding.”

Lolly was staring at the chimney wall, catching in her eyes a quick flicker, a light, a shadow. Her glass she had clasped against her right breast, her left hand she held at her throat. “Often didn't we call him in to correct the errors of his licensed inferiors.

The flush toilets of the whole village were given new force at his hands, sufficient in their strength to make sure the contributions would reach the piping that led to the proper station. God greet him.” She lifted her glass and took a swig.

“God and Mary too,” said Kitty.

Aaron realized it was an Irish wake he was attending, that all the day's preparations led to this event. This is why a coffin was needed and a clothed corpse, this is why the bones were washed and the boards selected from among the finest in the house. This is why the Tullamore Dew had been called into service and why they were all sitting there regarding the oaken box out of which peeped the peak of the cap. Declan Tovey was to be eulogized at last; truths about him would now be told. And, at the end, the confession of the murderer. Lolly had made the introductory speech. Now
it
was Kitty's turn.

“It was his way with electricity,” she said, “that was even more astounding. Never did he make the initial installations—that he left to the licensed. But he had an instinct for appearing a month later, knowing repairs would be needed. The need, of course, was not obvious to all. Only Declan could detect it and do the work that brought correction. Few words if any were ever spoken, but we had to give only a few nods of middling understanding and the man would go about his work. What patience, and so solemn too. And when he'd finished, he'd simply call out he'd collect his wage the next time through. And lo and behold, gladly was he paid when the time came round. To no one's wonderment, the electric bills had seen a sudden dip and the extortionate rates brought into line with what a family could afford to pay. How this had been achieved no one knew, and no one asked to know. And when the utility did its investigation as to why certain areas were less needful of their electricity, no discoveries were made. Concluded it was that we backward souls lived mostly in darkness and refused to be civilized by the use of appliances no respectable household would be without. And it was Declan did it. And God and Mary save him.”

“And Brendan and Patrick besides,” added Sweeney—whose turn it was now to speak.

Aaron took another sip and then a decent gulp. The whiskey warmed him and gave him some small comfort in his wet clothes and cold feet.

“And let it not be forgotten,” Sweeney intoned, “that he performed common tasks with uncommon skill. Gutters he could clean and drains he could scrape and any repair you could name would be done before the day itself was done. He could build a chimney that would keep the warm in and the smoke out and put back in business a dry stone wall that could pass for part of an ancient oratory or a chapel for Christian worship. And let the devil take him for all of that.”

“For all of that,” said Lolly.

“For all of that,” said Kitty.

Sweeney poured more Dew into his own glass, then into Kitty's, then into Lolly's. He put the bottle back, then noticed Aaron. He brought the bottle over, all but filled the glass to the brim, then, after a quick glance into the coffin, went back and sat down, this time moving a little farther back on the cushion. He sat erect, looking down into his whiskey, then drew himself up ever more erect. He's going to confess, Aaron thought. The precise moment had come. Of course it was Sweeney. He was jealous of something real or imagined between Declan Tovey and his aunt. Sweeney killed the man. And now it would all come out. Savoring the moment, Aaron swirled the whiskey in his glass, spilling some, but creating a small vortex on the surface. He would drink to Sweeney's health after he'd made his confession.

But it was Lolly who spoke. “Great as was his work, some suspicion was always in attendance. He would appear and disappear, an itinerant if not a born Traveler, a Tinker. He had no known wife to give him respectability, no known children to impose respect for the common codes. He spoke little, an indication in itself that all was not right with him. God gave us speech so we could speak. He had no wit that anyone had ever heard, another proof that he was of a species foreign to these parts. That he never danced or sang could be excused: God gives his gifts at his whim and withholds them at his pleasure. If
it
pleased God that the feet of Declan Tovey be ignorant of rhythm and that his throat be the envy of a crow, that's God's own business and holy is his name. But worse still, he was never heard to laugh, not by anyone who had ever come forward to give testimony. And these are things that must be said.”

Sweeney poured more whiskey, emptying the bottle into his glass, then going for a fresh bottle on the far end of the table. Kitty, meanwhile, had taken up this second phase of the wake where less than flattering subjects were mentioned after the eulogies had been gotten safely out of the way. “Laugh, maybe not. But he could smile. And did. And to that there's been more testimony than the towns around can bear to hear. It wasn't a smile that reached for the ears, just a little lifting at the two corners, with the lips parting to show two rows of gleaming teeth obviously crafted by the devil himself. And at this showing something would happen to the eyes. They would send forth light from a world within, a world of wonders and of puzzling promises. A temptation and a dare, the eyes—they invited one and all to attempt the journey that might take them to the hidden land. No charts were given, no compass offered to point the way. There was only the wonder and the promise and the dare and the light. And what I've said is true, so help me heaven.”

This, thought Aaron, was preamble to confession if ever he'd heard one. She'd loved him, pursued him, lost him, and killed him. Wasn't he taken up from her own garden? From under her own cabbages? This was difficult to believe of one's own kin, and Aaron considered speaking up himself, to tell her to go no further. To keep her trap shut for a change. There was no need for more words to be said out loud.

Sweeney, as if to reward her for her speech, was providing her with more Dew. Aaron must say something before it would be too late.

But the next words came not from Kitty but from Sweeney. “Pilgrims searching for the hidden land,” he said, “and there were more than many—ardent in their efforts, desperate in their supplications, mindless in their offerings, but no one is known to have reached the light lurking behind the eyes of Declan Tovey. No one had made the quest and returned with some trophy proving a destination reached. The roadsides have been strewn with fallen pilgrims, with those supplicants who could go no further and begged only that the light might shine but one more time. And Declan might smile his smile at such a foolish thought, only to give increase to the anguish already felt. His own eyes were blind. None of the wreckage did he see. But that he should, for the common good, be done away with was evident to many. Or at least to me.”

Now it was Aaron who got up and filled the glasses all around. A drink should be at the ready for what Sweeney was about to say. He would now confess. But this, too, Aaron did not want to hear. Sweeney was a good and honorable man. He'd saved Aaron's life. He should, with heaven's intervention, be given to Kitty and Kitty to him. He mustn't speak. But it was too late. Sweeney's mouth was opening.

“I,” said Sweeney, rising to his feet, “I am now going to sing a

song.” And he did, the melody sprightly, the rhythm a happy lilt that invited the beat of a drum or the clap of the hands.

'Tis the best of the doctor's prescriptions

If whiskey and porter are cheap,

For it cures us of all our afflictions

And puts all men's sorrows to sleep.

And the old woman, wheezing and groaning,

A-bed for a year in despair,

When she sups her half pint, stops her moaning,

And kicks the bedclothes in the air.”

Kitty gave an uncharacteristic squeal of delight, and Lolly guffawed outright. Sweeney obliged with a reprise, his voice, to Aaron's surprise, not a fine Irish tenor as would seem fit for a wake, but a good growl of a basso, created to proclaim profundities not quite similar to the one he was expounding now. Before he had finished—

'Tis the best of the doctor's prescriptions

If whiskey and porter are cheap,

For it cures us of all our afflictions

And puts all men's sorrows to sleep.

Kitty got up and, with an approving shriek, began to dance, her arms at her sides, but her legs and feet performing a complexity of movements that easily compensated for—and defeated—any inhibition the rest of the body might try to enforce. Out would go a leg, the feet then driven by this display to an even further frenzy, disciplined but defiant. When the leg shot out a second time, Lolly had no choice but to clap her hands to the beat of the song, then stand up herself and make her own contribution to the sacrilege. Shouts and squeals helped drive them both—Lolly and Kitty—to an even higher pitch of unauthorized abandon. Twice, three times, the coffin was kicked, the peak of Declan's cap shifting from side to side to acknowledge the blows. The firelight flared higher, offering its own giddy tribute to the occasion, the flickering lights and shadows tickling and taunting the corpse, a sudden glare catching one of the rosary beads, a lengthening flame stroking the left cheekbone, a shadow nudging a shoulder, the flames themselves an unfeeling temptress sent to mock the unfleshed bones of the helpless dead.

Into the third reprise Sweeney too took up the dance, clumsy at first, then tapping and stomping and kicking with all the sureness that only a great joy could inspire. The movements of his feet failed to diminish the strength of his voice. It was as if the motion of his legs, like bellows, pumped added air into his lungs, giving an even greater sonority and force to the song.

“But—but you loved this man, this man lying here,” Aaron said. No one heard him. With the dancing, the shouts and squeals rose to near dementia. Again the coffin was kicked. Again Declan rocked a bit and then was still. Even the house seemed to shudder and shake beneath their feet, and the wind outside raised a howl of its own to drive them on to a more complete possession of demonic proportions.

The screams and shrieks, and the wind, too, rose to a new pitch. Then there was a tearing sound, and another shudder shook the house. Additional feet had taken up the dance but in a rhythm of their own. The pig had come clattering into the room. It had torn through the screen door. Its hooves tippity-tapped on the wooden floor, its snout raised, its squeals and screeches a worthy reinforcement of the general madness.