The Pigman's Legacy (The Sequel to The Pigman) (2 page)

It was last May, about four months after our Pig-man died, that John and I were riding home platonically as usual after school, and we got so involved in a discussion on the therapeutic value of mourning that we'd gone two bus stops past our regular stop before we remembered to get off. I had been talking about how important it is to cry when somebody dies, and John said you really didn't have to cry
outside
, you could cry
inside
. And I told him that sublimation was just as dangerous as anything else the human mind could do, but I didn't mind having to walk farther than usual because I liked walking alone with John#x2014;even though I didn't know if he really liked walking alone with me. We weren't a romantic item, but ever since the Pig-man's death whenever we walked alone John would hold my hand. You might as well know here that sometimes I could feel electricity flowing through my fingers into his, which wasn't amazing, since we'd both turned sixteen and John still has long brown hair and gigantic eyes that can not only look right through you but grab your heart while they're doing it. Anyway, we were just walking along and after about five minutes John and I noticed something very peculiar. Without realizing it we had started strolling along Howard Avenue, and we were walking right toward Mr. Pignati's old house. Mr. Pignati was our Pigman's real name, and somehow we had always tried to avoid that particular route to get home ever since he had died.

“I don't like what I'm feeling,” I told John.

“What's that?”

“
Anxiety
.”

John held my hand tighter. “We can go back the other way,” he said.

“No, that'll take too long.”

But as soon as I said that, I felt a cold wind sweep between us and I began to shiver. Goose pimples rose up out of my skin like a million tiny icebergs. We started to walk around a bend past all the old villas that once housed the elite of Staten Island, when we heard a
whirring
sound in the air. It was chilling, like a continual shriek coming from the outer reaches of the universe. I even thought John could see the thump of my heart right through my sweater, because he squeezed my hand so hard I thought he was going to cut off the circulation in my fingers. I didn't need anyone to draw me a picture to know that John was a little frightened too, because ever since the Pigman had died his nerves seemed to have been on edge. I think what was happening to us was that we truly expected to see the ghost of our dead friend come swirling toward us.

It wasn't until we had completely rounded the bend that we became certain that the whirring sound was coming right in our direction. Suddenly we saw what it was. A little old nun was sitting on top of a small tractor mower, cutting the grass in front of the Grymes Hill Convent there.

John and I looked at each other in disbelief, and burst into laughter. If I hadn't known better I would've thought John had set this whole thing up just to scare me. We did the best we could to muffle our giggles because we didn't want the nun to think we were laughing at her even though she was a bit of a sight sitting atop that tractor with her habit and the chopped grass undulating in the air behind her. It wasn't until she turned up the convent's driveway that John and I could really compose ourselves. Some psychologists would simply say our laughter was a type of nervous release, but in just a few steps more we were standing right in front of the Pigman's old house, 190 Howard Avenue. The house had changed a great deal since we had last seen it. Its simple wooden frame looked as though some terrible witch had put a curse upon it and sentenced it to sleep for a hundred years. The bushes had grown so wild the house was submerged in a jungle of vines and thorns.

“Look over there, Lorraine.”

I almost wanted to cry. A large limb from the huge maple tree on the side of the house had split in half and was just hanging. The rest of the tree was covered with leaves, but this limb was dead, and no one had ever taken it down. That was what hurt the most#x2014;that it was clear no one cared about this house anymore. It had no doubt been left to rot and just wait for some real-estate speculators and bulldozers who would more than likely come one day and demolish it.

“I feel terrible,” I said. “I feel as if someone's telling us to take all our wonderful memories of the fun we had in this house and bury them with Mr. Pignati.”

“I know,” John said softly.

We just stood there, hypnotized by the house, remembering the past. Then the wind started to blow again. Suddenly I was talking to myself.
What was that? What is that curtain flapping at the window upstairs? What am I seeing? What is that moving? My eyes must be playing tricks on me!
There was a face in a window. Dark, ominous eyes staring out into the street at me#x2014;and I knew they could see my eyes staring back.

I reached my hand to my mouth to muffle a scream, and the face disappeared.

“John! did you see that?” I asked as my blood froze and my mouth dropped open.

three

I didn't see what Lorraine was talking about. In fact the only reason I think she had ghosts on the brain was because of all those psychology books she reads. I tried to tell her that all psychologists are screwballs, which is why they go into that field anyway.

“No, I didn't see anything,” I told Lorraine. But I'm afraid I said it a little too quickly. I suppose the truth of the matter was that I wasn't sure. Maybe there was something, but it was probably a
reflection
from something. It could have been a shadow from the berserk foliage around the old house. But with Lorraine and her built-in radar equipment I sometimes have to listen to her because you can never tell what signals she's picking up on. The month before, Lorraine had the same dream three nights in a row. I mean that's the kind of psychology freak she is. She said in this dream she was walking down the main aisle in the school cafeteria and kept seeing some person with flashlights for ears. Now ordinarily that would just seem very crazy, but the very next week this lady by the name of Dolly Racinski was hired as the cafeteria-floor sweeper. It was sad to see this happy and perky little sixtyish old woman pushing a broom and picking up squashed half-pint milk containers, which all the teenage baboons jump on so they make explosion sounds. But the really weird part was that Dolly Racinski wore giant-sized pom-pom-shaped rhinestone earrings that sparkled exactly as if she was wearing flashlights in her ears. And then whenever she took off the custodial smock, she always had on a green or gold electric-colored dress that was so bright you'd think she was on fire. She pushed that broom and her earrings would swing from left to right#x2014;and we soon learned she never took her earrings off. It was just like that lady I read about once in the
National Enquirer
who was out in the rain and got struck by lightning which melted her left earring to her ear in such a way that she would have to wear it for life unless she wanted to have her ear cut off. It was funny how Lorraine and I thought of her dream the moment we saw Dolly. In fact it was spooky considering the fact that Dolly would one day come to play such an important part in our lives. Of course we're the ones who made her play that part, because even from the first day she came to work we used to say, “Hi, Dolly. How are you feeling today?” She'd push the broom by and say, “Lookin' up! Lookin' up!” And sometimes when other kids would throw pennies and m&m's at her, we'd yell at them. And she would come over to us and say, “You kids are swell. You kids are just
swell
.”

But at the moment Lorraine saw the ghost on Howard Avenue we really didn't think Dolly Racinski or anybody was going to help us. Of course, we are very used to not getting help from the adult world at all, as a general rule.

“It was a ghost,” Lorraine insisted as she rushed down the street fleeing the old house.

“There are no such things as ghosts,” I kept repeating, trotting in order to keep up with her.

“Oh come off it. You saw the eyes. They looked just like Mr. Pignati's.”

“I didn't see any eyes.”

“Yes you did.

“Mr. Pignati must have come back from the other side to give us a message,” she said. “Dead people do things like that. I know about it!”

Lorraine babbled on a mile a minute all the way until we reached her house. She started quoting all these weird cases, like the time some famous poetess died and all her relatives saw this apparition rise up off her body and dance on the ceiling. And she told me it's a well-known fact that many star ghosts from Forest Lawn come out at night and run around that fancy cemetery#x2014;like Jean Harlow and Jeanette MacDonald have been seen prancing around the Hall of the Resurrection they have there. I tried to change the subject three times, but I couldn't stop her from talking about Duke University and all those other places that have experiments that prove the existence of supernatural presences and other spooks.

In front of Lorraine's house a very earthly presence made itself known to us.

“
Get in here
, Lorraine,” her mother brayed from the front door. Now I don't want to be rude or anything, and in fact Lorraine and I decided we're not going to talk about parents a whole lot in this epic at all, but I'd rather be attacked by an alien from outer space than by Mrs. Jensen. I gave Lorraine's hand an extra squeeze and watched her disappear inside her house while Mrs. Jensen lingered a moment longer giving me what looked like the evil eye.

“
Good-bye
, John,” Mrs. Jensen instructed in case I didn't know what to do.

Actually I didn't mind. Lorraine and I lately have begun to really understand our parents, so we don't ridicule them all that much anymore or pin the rap on them for everything that goes wrong. For the most part they leave us alone now that we've mellowed as high-school sophomores. The facts are still about the same though. Lorraine's mother is still a widow and a practical nurse who steals things like Lipton Cup·a·Soup and skinless sardines from houses where she works, and my mother, who is formally known as Mrs. Conlan, is informally known by me as the Old Lady and she's still an antiseptic freak who dashes around the house with a spray can of Lysol and tries occasionally to encase me in vinyl. I think that's about all the hereditary facts you've got to know or be reminded of except for the fact that my father is continuing his performance as a prime candidate for a heart attack working at the New York Coffee Exchange. His conversation is still so stimulating I continue to call him Bore. But there has been some change. All our parents are reading adult self-help books. Lorraine told me her mother's into transactional analysis now. I hope she's printed up her own T-shirt that says I DESERVE LOVE on the front and something like HONK FOR A KISS on the back. My mother, the Old Lady, is reading some book which has to do with her right to say “no” without feeling guilty whenever she gets an urge to run outside and lemon Pledge the sidewalk. And my father is rereading
How to Hate Vodka
, which is a book that shows Russian natives cooking potatoes, with worms and flies falling into the vats. But what I really think is terrific is that our parents understand Lorraine and me much better now that they realize they're just as much in transition as we are. It really takes the heat off us now that our parents, our teachers, and everybody knows that life is
all
adolescence.

And I suppose I might as well take the time now to let you know when Lorraine wrote that we weren't a romantic item, it wasn't because I didn't like Lorraine. She finally lost a few pounds and wears a little mascara on her pretty green eyes so she looks like a young Shirley MacLaine on diet pills. She thinks I didn't notice that her charms were growing, but let me tell you that her charms are growing so big that all the boys in the sophomore class have noticed them. She's not exactly Dolly Parton or Raquel Welch yet, but I'd say she's on her way.

That night at the dinner table the Old Lady said to me, “You're very quiet tonight, John.”

“Yes,” I agreed.

“What's the matter?” Bore wanted to know.

“I'm sorry. Fm tired,” I admitted and simply excused myself from the table.

“I'm worried about you,” the Old Lady said. “You look a little jittery.”

“I'm okay, Mom,” I said. Then I took my plate out to the kitchen. Ever since the Pigman died and I started carrying my own dirty dishes out to the kitchen, I can't tell you how happy that makes my parents. If you ever want to really shock your parents, just start carrying your dirty dishes out to the sink. And if you really want them to freak out, wash your own dishes. They'll go nuts. While I was out there I decided to get a breath of fresh air and have a cigarette. So I took the kitchen garbage bag out with me. I found that saved me a lot of anguish and seemed to bring exceptional ecstasy to the Old Lady and Bore. For some reason they really adore me ejecting the refuse. But I
wasn't
saved the anguish of smoking one of the spinach cigarettes Lorraine had insisted I switch to in the hope that I would give up smoking. What she didn't know was that I had discovered the only cure for the taste of one of her spinach cigarettes was to smoke one of my own normal ones. In fact I usually arranged my pack so half of it was filled with the spinach ones and the other half with plain old Parliament cigarettes. Lorraine just didn't understand that sometimes a cigarette is the only thing that can give me a clear head when I've got to think. And that's what I needed that night. Lorraine
had
made me jittery. What if Mr. Pignati
was
trying to reach us from the grave? I don't really believe in any of that garbage, but my mind is open to anything. I really get a little wacko whenever I'm guilty. Like if I didn't do my homework for Miss Gale's English class, I keep thinking I see Miss Gale all over the place. If I look into the sky it's like Miss Gale is flying over getting ready to drop bird turds on my head. And another thing, our Pigman was one guy who would do something like come back from the grave to let us know he was still thinking about us. And if you think that sounds nuts, you just wait until you love somebody like your mother or father and they croak, and you'll see them popping up all over the place. When my grandmother died I used to see her sitting in her rocking chair for weeks afterward.