The Pig Did It (8 page)

“It has to be yours.” Kitty had little patience with contradiction.

“It doesn't have to be. And it isn't.”

“I'm not going to make you pay damages, if that's what you're so afraid of.”

“It's still not my pig.”

“How do you know?”

“Just look at it.” “I'm looking at it.” “Well?”

“It looks like your pig and no one else's.” “What a terrible thing to say.”

“What's wrong with it?” Kitty took a deep breath and held it. Lolly was being warned. Kitty would hear no words against this pig.

“That low-slung belly, it's not meat, it's not fat. It's just there. What have you been feeding it?”

“I gave it nothing I wouldn't eat myself.”

“Poor thing.”

“It's a fine and healthy beast and it doesn't need your criticizing.”

“I wasn't criticizing. I was evaluating.”

“Of course. A pig person like you knows everything.”

“I know my own and my own know me.”

“Then come and let it have a look at you.” Kitty marched toward the pasture. “Come on. We'll see who it recognizes and who it doesn't.”

Lolly was looking not toward the pig but toward the cabbage patch. “What's that big hole for in the garden? Is it a swimming pool on its way or what?”

“What hole?”

“That one there.”

“A strange thing you should ask, Lolly McKeever.”

Lolly shrugged. “Just being neighborly.” With that she turned again toward Aaron. She used a small smile to suppress another laugh. “You're the nephew.”

Aaron nodded, the movement renewing the shivers he had just managed to control. Lolly McKeever leaned toward him, trying, he supposed, to trace the smell now rising in full force from his shirt and pants. “You fell into the sea.” Now the laughter came, greater in its delight than before.

“I—I—I was walking.”

“I see.” Her eyes became even brighter.

“But I—I had to swim.”

“How interesting.” The smile forced the laugh to cease. She searched his face, first his eyes, then his lips, then his forehead, his chin, his ears, looking for a clue to his presentation. After she had given the eyes another try, she settled on his right ear and searched no more. “You look nothing like your aunt.” And then the laughter came again.

“I—I was born in America.” He gave a quick shiver and brought his elbows closer to his sides.

“Ah! Of course.” She looked down at his feet. He moved first one foot, then the other, shuffling them in place as if trying to offer some entertainment, some demonstration of their capabilities. With another burst of laughter, Lolly seemed to approve, even applaud the display, to show her gratitude and pleasure at having been treated to this manifestation of his cunning.

If he hadn't been wet, if he weren't shivering and stuttering, he would never have submitted to this scrutiny, this hurtful gaiety, but his psyche had already subscribed to the helplessness of his body, a kind of solidarity, a mutual sympathy he was unable to sever. He surrendered to his imbecilic state and stood quietly before her, his head tilted slightly to the right, a further abjection confirming his idiocy. She could now laugh her eyes right out of her head. He gave her full permission. He looked directly at her. The laughter had ceased.

She was still looking at his bare feet. She seemed thoughtful, even troubled. Aaron considered wiggling his toes, an added performance, an encore to the shuffling he'd already executed for her amusement, but he decided to continue the silent offering of himself and try not to shiver or to twitch. He would also subject the woman to the process of examination she'd been practicing on him.

She had, to begin with, big ears, but she also had a good-size head and the ears didn't look particularly disproportionate. Just big. Capable. No delicacy, no nonsense. He liked that. Ears like hers could listen to anything and not wince. That an ear could wince was a consideration he'd take up another time. For now, Lolly McKeever's ears were quite capable of either wincing or not wincing. She herself would know which response would be right and proper.

Before he could continue his attentions, he began to shiver again, but not from the cold or the wet. Thoughts of Phila Rambeaux, had just passed through him. And in passing they had taken with them his bones, extracting them through his skin, wet as it was, through his salted clothes. His spine was gone and his pelvis too. He might have been left his skull, but the knee sockets had been emptied and all joints released from their joinings and spirited away. He shivered again, trying to hold his body together. Now he was shaking, trembling in every part that Phila had left behind, mostly in his shoulders and his hands.

Lolly McKeever was no longer studying his feet. She was looking at his shoulders, then at his face, just above his right eye. She was neither laughing nor smiling. “Do you drink?”

Before Aaron could deny or affirm, Kitty called from the pasture. “Come see if it recognizes you or not, why don't you?” After a sad shake of her head, Lolly turned and waded into the grass.

Kitty was standing by as the pig snouted up one patch of grass, then another, grunting its disappointment that it had made yet one more faulty choice, taken one more worthless gamble. “It likes it here,” Lolly said as she came alongside Kitty. Kitty took one step away not to avoid Lolly but to place the two of them more in front of the pig. “Now let it have a look at you,” she said.

The pig shifted, giving the two of them a full view of its hams. To accommodate the move, the women stepped sideways, then began circling the pig from the cliff side of the pasture. Again the pig shifted, again no view was given except its high behind, the skinny legs that ended in what looked like high heels and the corkscrew tail that flicked itself lightly when the turn was completed. The women moved. The pig moved. Again the women moved, this time even closer to the cliff. The pig moved, its adamant hams confronting again the determined women.

More thoughts of Phila Rambeaux passed through Aaron, going in the opposite direction, toward the sea. His bones were returned to him, his joints rejoined, his pelvis and his ribs still aching from the transaction. Now the thoughts were gone. They had deposited the bones in their familiar casing, and they, the bones, must take up again their usual chores. The trembling slowed, then stopped. Aaron moved his jaw and was relieved to discover that he could exercise some control. He might even be able to speak should that requirement ever be made of him again.

Kitty and Lolly, not more than two feet from the edge of the cliff, where the pig had obviously maneuvered them, were appraising the pig's hindquarters, no longer insistent on a full frontal experience. With stiff unsynchronized tilts of the head, a little to the right, a little to the left, like two metronomes—each determined to impose its own beat—the women regarded what they saw with thoughtful interest and skeptical appraisal. Kitty, looking intently at the pig's behind, spoke first. “See? It knows you.”

“The hams look like saddlebags. They're too lean.”

“Too lean for what?”

“Too lean for it to be my pig.”

“You're just being fussy.”

“I would hope so.”

“Poor darling, look at it. You've made it so ashamed it won't even show its face.”

Aaron looked at the pig. It stood motionless except for an intermittent twitching of the ears and a single wiggle of the tail. Its snout seemed to be straining toward Aaron, as if the scent he was giving off was a smell it couldn't quite identify. Again the ears twitched, an encouragement for the women to continue their assessment.

Lolly McKeever turned away and looked out over the water. A breeze lifted her hair lightly, then let it fall back onto her shoulder. She put her hands in the back pockets of her jeans, straining her shirt against her breasts. This could not possibly be for Aaron's benefit. Of that he was sure. Lolly had already dismissed him, and he could think of nothing that might qualify him for reevaluation. The bold presentation of her straining breasts was, he decided, an offering to the sea, a promise to the storm tossed and the shipwrecked that there waited on shore a worthy welcome and an abundant blessing.

Kitty observed Lolly a moment. She pursed her lips and lidded her eyes. “Then you're not taking the pig,” she said.

“I take only what's my own.”

“Then I'm to keep it.”

“For all of me, yes, keep it.”

“And I'm to become a swineherd like yourself?”

“If that high you aspire, I can't stop you. And now I have to get back. I'm needed.”

“You're going?”

“I'm going.” She leaned closer to Kitty. “And is that really your nephew?” She whispered the words.

“Any reason he shouldn't be?”

“Oh, no. No, no. No, no, no.” She looked again at Aaron. He shifted from one foot to the other. “Somehow it seems right after all.”

The women walked almost warily around the pig, heading toward Lolly's truck. Aaron called out, “Aren't you going to ask her about—you know—what's-his-name. Tovey? Declan Tovey.” The women stopped. Neither moved. “I mean,”—Aaron continued—“well, you know what I mean.”

Lolly turned toward Kitty. “What
does
he mean?”

“He means Declan,” Kitty said. “Have you seen him lately? Declan?”

Her voice was airy, a pretense of nonchalance, a sure sign to Lolly that she was mocking the true gravity of her question.

“Declan Tovey? No. Why would
I
see him?” She started again toward the truck.

“No reason. Except I—I came across him just this morning.”

Lolly stopped. “Oh?” She hesitated, then asked, “And how is he these fine days?”

“As well as can be expected.”

“Oh? Well, if you see him again, say hello.”

“Say hello yourself, why don't you?”

“I will. If I see him.”

“You'll see him.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

“You'll see him now. And you can thank my lovely nephew for making it so easy for you.”

“Oh?” Lolly raised her head and gazed loftily around, deliberately assuming a blank look. “Strange. I don't see him.”

“He's there. In the house. Waiting.”

“Oh?”

“Come in, then, and be welcome.”

“Another time.” She turned again toward Aaron. She seemed about to say something, but after another glance up and down, from his feet to his forehead, words failed her and she made again for the truck.

“Watch you don't fall in the hole,” Kitty called. “Since it was you dug it to begin with.”

“I?”

“You. If your name is Lolly McKeever, the name of the one who did it to him.”

“Did? Did what?”

“Did what was done to him. You.”

“I? I?”

“You. Slut.”

Lolly drew herself up, the breasts again assuming the prominence displayed for the benefit of all the ships at sea. “I? ‘Slut,' you say?”

“Come then and see. I've no patience left.”

“I'm needed.” Head held not quite as high as before, Lolly turned with some difficulty back toward the truck but seemed reluctant to take a step in its direction.

“He's here.”

“And done in?”

“Done.”

Aaron looked down at the ground, then decided he'd look out past the cliff. The pig was swinging its body around, no longer needing to keep its face from view. It raised its snout, twitched its ears, and gave yet one more wiggle of its tail. Then it stood there, blinking at the horizon.

As the women tramped toward the kitchen door, Kitty called out to Aaron, “I'm showing her Declan Tovey, if you want to be there to see it.”

Lolly McKeever stood on the far side of the bed and looked down at the skeleton that lay stretched out before her. After a pleased guffaw, she slapped her hands onto her chest. “For the sake of Jesus and Mary too!” Then she laughed and put one hand on the shoulder of the skeleton's coat and let it rest there. Kitty had placed herself at the foot of the bed and was holding on to the rail of the wooden footboard. Aaron stepped just inside the door, then moved a little to the side. He liked the way Lolly's hair had fallen forward when she'd bowed her head.

“So here's where Declan Tovey's gone to,” Lolly said.

“And you didn't even give him a sheet for a shroud,” said Kitty. Lolly looked at Kitty. Kitty looked at Lolly. Lolly shook her head, then took her hand from the skeletal shoulder and touched the top of the cap. “It was you did this thing, and now we know it.”

“I?” said Kitty. “Never.”

“If never, then never is now. And the reasons are known to all.”

“Oh?”

“Declan Tovey was the last of the good stout men, and we all lived to see it. Forget that he was no taller than you see him now; forget that the raven hair was a plume of glory and that the eyes were the eyes of the warrior saint, blazing with a holy light. Forget that his hands could hold your whole face as if it were a chalice and he was about to take a saving drink. Forget that he might lie yourself down to be sacrificed, all writhing around to receive the blessed martyrdom.”

Again Aaron's instinct was to interrupt, but the woman was too far gone in soliloquy and had best be left alone. “Forget all that and remember,” Lolly continued. “Remember the day he saved the four sons of Maggie Kerwin and the two sons of Sally Fitzgibbon, with their boat going down in the storm sent from the north. Alone in his skiff the man went, hollering. Lost in the waves and found and lost again, with the mountains falling right on top of him. Remember the seething water hissing at his valor, raging that he should defy them all—the waves, the rocks, and all the nibbling fishes below. This was the day he dived down and brought up the four sons of Maggie Kerwin and the two sons of Sally Fitzgibbon, and only him still able to holler. And remember the rescue of Hanrahan's goat with the barn burning, and Kate's cat plucked from the high branches of the oak, and his clothes ripped open for all the world to see. Forget that his words were made of the night air and that he had the gift of transport like none other before him or since, that his closed eyes and open mouth were the surrender of all this world, and that soon enough he'd close his mouth and open his eyes, and all the world was gone away for good. Remember what's there to remember, and forget what's there to be forgot.”