The Pig Comes to Dinner

by Joseph Caldwell

  The Pig

  Comes to Dinner

  ALSO BY JOSEPH CALDWELL

  FICTION

  The Pig Did It

  Bread for the Baker’s Child

  The Uncle From Rome

  Under the Dog Star

  The Deer at the River

  In Such Dark Places

  THEATER

  The King and the Queen of Glory

  The Downtown Holy Lady

  Cockeyed Kite

  Clay for the Statues of Saints

  The Bridge

  The Pig

  Comes to Dinner

  JOSEPH CALDWELL

  DELPHINIUM BOOKS

  HARRISON, NEW YORK • ENCINO, CALIFORNIA

  To

  Wendy Weil,

  who inspires

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  Acknowledgments

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The reader should assume that the characters in this tale, when speaking among themselves, are speaking Irish, the first language of those living in County Kerry, Ireland, where the action takes place. What is offered here are American equivalents. When someone ignorant of the language is present, the characters resort to English.

  The purpose of reality is to show the way to mystery—which is the ultimate reality.

  —Sister Mary Sarah, SSND

  The Pig

  Comes to Dinner

  1

  Kitty McCloud, hack novelist of global repute, paced the pebbled courtyard of her recently acquired home— one Castle Kissane—on the pretext that she was waiting for her newly acquired husband, Kieran Sweeney, to arrive with his truckload of cows, thereby completing the domestic arrangements that would prove their conjugal claim to be, in the truest sense, a household in the age-old tradition of County Kerry, Ireland.

  Although she had not articulated to herself the real reason for the repeated frantic backing and forthing—first in the direction of Crohan Mountain, which bordered their property in the northwest, then to the castle road on the south—she was, in reality, tormenting her imagination, determined to summon from its fertile depths a possible “correction” she planned to write to George Eliot’s big mess of a novel, The Bloody Mill on the Bloody Floss—the added expletives a measure of Kitty’s consternation. The continuation of her career depended on her highly successful ability to pillage novels from the commonly accepted canon and rescue them from the misguided efforts of their celebrated authors.

  What she hoped for was a rare insight similar to the one she had applied to Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre—in which it is Rochester who throws himself from the attic in despair over Jane’s rejection of a bigamous marriage, after which Jane, with her goodness and kindness, tames the Madwoman, and the two of them create for themselves a life of calm contentment fulfilled by weaving, making pottery, and the practice of animal husbandry.

  So far, none of the possibilities for The Mill provoked her imagination into the state of high excitement and imperative promise without which she could do nothing. For her, only a near-hysterical propulsion would allow her to proceed, and she was, at the moment, grounded in an inertia that refused her every attempt to create even the slightest stir, let alone the volcanic eruption she so desperately craved.

  Whether she should curse Ms. Eliot or her heroine, Maggie Tulliver, for this intransigence was not yet decided. (Never did Ms. McCloud consider that the source of the difficulty might lie within herself. Such a consideration lay well beyond even her considerable powers.) She raised her gaze to the top of the mounded hill that was Crohan Mountain and saw nothing but heather and gorse and a scattering of oblong stones, whitened with age. She turned to the castle road, praying that the truck would soon arrive and provide some surcease from her torment.

  To some degree, her prayer was answered. Indeed, a truck was approaching. But instead of the arrival of the expected cows, as so often happens with prayers the answer came in a form much less welcome. There, moving toward her, was a small truck—what in America would be called a pickup—but it was one identifiable as belonging to her American nephew, Aaron McCloud, and his recent bride, Lolly McKeever, now also a McCloud. In itself, their approach could not be considered a cause for concern. They might be coming to help welcome the cows or to invite themselves to supper, or to commit some lesser intrusion.

  What roused in Kitty no small suspicion that something more complicated might be involved was the presence, in the bed of the truck, of a pig. A pig all too familiar and not at all welcome. Its snout was raised to take in the castle air, its cloven hooves apparently firmly planted in the bed of the truck to counter the bounce and rattle over the uneven road.

  For the first time since Kitty had bought Castle Kissane, she wished it didn’t lack the full complement of a moat and the attendant drawbridge, to say nothing of a portcullis that could be lowered in situations such as the arrival of this particular pig. The castle, to be sure, was not without its charms. It could claim a courtyard in which dogs might take the afternoon sun (should there be a sun). There were stables and sheds in arcades from which the healthy stench of manure could find its way into the great hall, where matters of state and strategies of defense had once been argued into incomprehension. At the top of its turret, reachable by a winding stone staircase at the end of a passageway that led past the conjugal bedroom, one could pace in the open air and participate in the life of the Kerry countryside. One could see the snow-dusted summits of Macgillicuddy’s Reeks; one could count cows and sheep and search the horizon of the Western Sea for ships of friendly or unfriendly intent. One could smell the salt air, even at this distance, or the fragrant scent of gorse and heather, hawthorn and honeysuckle.

  But truth to be told, the castle wasn’t all that much. With its two-story crude stone bulk and its four-story turret, it resembled nothing so much as the architectural progenitor of a design that would find its ultimate statement on the central plains of America: the barn and silo—except that this mighty archetype was built for the ages. And, most to be regretted at the moment, it contained no keep into which Kitty could now withdraw, as had the populous of old, to escape unwanted encroachments.

  Now, in the bed of the approaching truck, an unwanted intrusion was looking for all the world as if it had just won first prize at the fair and was being given a royal progress throughout the county, accepting with easy indifference the obeisance of those privileged enough to line its path.

  So that it wouldn’t seem that Kitty had been simply standing there as if waiting to welcome an unwelcome pig, and to let her nephew and his bride know that they were interrupting her at a task of some import, she gave a quick wave and, as best she could, tried to make it appear that she had been, before their arrival, on the way to the farthest of the courtyard sheds. There, in a great heap, was the refuse left behind by the previous tenants of the castle, who happened to be squatters: the stained mattresses, the broken lamps, the computer parts either obsolete or damaged in moments of exasperation; a broken guitar; shoes, boots, and sandals, most without mates; college texts (one in economics), tattered paperbacks (two of them Kitty’s inimitable triumphs), magazines, and more than several works written in Irish, not only Peig Sayers, the bane of everyone’s schooling, whose Irish writings were force-fed down their gagging throats, but also Sean O’Conaill and Tomás Ó’ Criomhthain; and, crowning the pile, a television set with what appeared to be a kicked-in screen.

  When the truck pulled to a stop, Kitty’s nephew, Aaron, go
t out of its cab. He was wearing khaki pants, a red sweatshirt emblazoned with the word WISCONSIN, and a pair of muddy sneakers. Lolly dismounted from the passenger side. She was wearing a pair of oversized woolen pants, so large indeed that they could easily have belonged to some former lover who had left them behind on one of his more than several visits to the all-too-accommodating Lolly in the days— and nights—gone by.

  Not infrequently did Lolly affect this attire. At times, Kitty considered it a permissibly mocking statement relative to her chosen profession of swineherd. A womanly pig person could surely be allowed to doff her fitted jeans and designer boots and don the obvious castoffs more appropriate to the disgusting chores her calling required.

  In less charitable moments—of which there were a considerable number—Kitty convinced herself that Lolly McKeever, now Lolly McCloud, was indeed flaunting, for all to see, some past lover. That she could continue to indulge in this unseemly display even after her marriage to Kitty’s nephew was surely an invitation to outrage. But Kitty counseled herself to refrain from a direct challenge during which she would have hurled not accusations but known truths that would shame even Lolly, who was, in most circumstances, almost as impervious as Kitty herself to any assault on her self-assured perfections.

  Let her nephew—who, by the idiosyncrasies of Irish procreation, was only two years younger than herself—discover for himself, in the context of his precipitous marriage, the true nature of the hussy he had so ignorantly wed. Kitty would neither do nor say anything that might disturb the presumed bliss her nephew and her best friend Lolly—the slut— were inflicting on each other.

  That Aaron, himself a writer, had failed to see more accurately the truth about his bride, that his perceptions were so faulty, Kitty accepted as the reason he was of a renown so distant from her own. Had he possessed his aunt’s incomparable discernments, surely he, too, could have carried his bride across a castle threshold instead of installing himself in his wife’s house, well within calling distance of the sty that gave their home its defining distinction. Because competition was never a consideration, Kitty felt quite free to praise and encourage him in the exercise of his decidedly inferior gifts.

  As Kitty emerged from these reflections, Aaron went to the truck’s tailgate, lowered it, and encouraged the pig to jump down, which it did with improbable ease. Without so much as a snort of greeting, it bounded down the slope toward the stream that flowed along the foot of Crohan Mountain. As she watched it cavort, Kitty experienced a growing certainty that some unilateral decision regarding the pig had already taken place.

  Aaron and Lolly now stood before Kitty, smiling, signaling that Kitty’s good nature was about to be taxed.

  “We brought you the pig,” Lolly said.

  “Really?” said Kitty.

  “We thought it would be better off here,” Aaron added.

  “How considerate.” Kitty, too, smiled.

  At that moment, like a cavalry reinforcement coming to the rescue at the most needed time, there came around the turn onto the castle road Kieran and the cows.

  The truck pulled up at the far side of the courtyard. Kieran jumped out, slammed the cab door, nodded to Lolly and to Aaron, went to his wife, took her into his arms, and put his mouth against hers—crunching his tawny, welltrimmed beard against her tender cheek, keeping open his blazing blue eyes even when they could see no more than the right side of Kitty’s forehead, a strand of sweet black hair, and the upper curve of her lovely ear.

  Kieran removed his lips, let his beard spring back into place, and reclaimed his arms, all the while, with still blazing eyes, piercing Kitty to the pit of her stomach with the now familiar warning that she prepare herself for further stirrings yet to come. Kitty, in good wifely fashion, seared his eyes with hers, neither of them blinking—a metaphor, perhaps, for the marriage recently contracted. Kieran turned and strode back toward the truck.

  Lolly called to Kieran, “You want some help with the cows?”

  “I think I can manage, but thanks.”

  With an overly casual walk indicating she was trying to make an unnoted departure, Lolly moved toward her own truck. “Maybe we should just go, then,” she said airily.

  With an overstated indifference all her own, Kitty, not without an undercurrent of resolve, said, “I think you might want first to go fetch your pig.”

  Kieran caught the word. He paused in his efforts to move the cows. “Pig? What pig?”

  “Kieran, sweetheart,” said Kitty, “there’s only one pig. And it’s here.”

  “What’s it doing here?”

  “That has yet to be explained.”

  “First, let me get the herd down to the mire.”

  The cows, huddled together, seemed reluctant to accept the invitation to go wallow in the bog. Some raised their massive heads and bellowed, convinced that it was to the slaughter they’d been brought and not to the greener ground awaiting at the bottom of the ramp.

  Kieran, with the agility of a goat, jumped aboard and, with a nudge here and a slap there, began more of a shifting than a movement toward the incline. The cows stepped daintily, their hooves touching lightly on the weathered planks, proving to one and all that they were ladies of considerable refinement, their swaying udders and a single deposit of cow flop notwithstanding.

  Now that the work was mostly done, Sly, Kieran’s border collie, entrusted with disciplining the cows, bounded down the hill, having already left territorial claims at the sheds, the foundation stones of the castle, and the rock wall that hedged the apple orchard west of the roadway. Tail wagging, it happily moved among the cows, nipping shanks, barking, and generally making sure that the time for serenity had come to an end.

  The pig returned from the stream and presented itself to its old acquaintance, Kieran Sweeney, snout raised as if it detected on the man’s person some hidden delectable that would now be surrendered.

  “Faugh a Ballagh!” “Get out of the way!” Kieran, who was returning to the truck to shovel out manure left behind by an indifferent cow, bent down and clapped his hands close to the pig’s ears and repeated the words any Irish pig should understand, “Faugh a Ballagh!” He then jumped up onto the truck, shovel in hand.

  The pig trotted into the castle courtyard, stopping mid- way to lower its head and slowly move its snout over the pebbles like a mine detector searching out buried objects. That it refrained from rooting and turning the entire courtyard upside down allowed Kitty to return her attention to Lolly and her nephew. “Should we assume,” she said, “that your place has been destroyed by our friend here and now it’s our turn?”

  Lolly jerked her head back, aghast. “Not at all!”

  “It’s become quite docile.” Aaron weakened his smile to indicate that he was lying.

  “It’s our present to you. The two of you,” Lolly said, expressing a newly arrived thought. “A gift. Since you’ll be doing some farming now, surely you should have yourselves a pig.”

  “All right, then,” said Kitty. “Now tell me what’s wrong. Why the pig? Why here? Why us?”

  “Well …” said Lolly.

  “Yes. Go on.”

  “Well …” Lolly turned toward her husband and whispered, “You tell her.”

  “No, it’s all right. You’re doing fine.”

  “All right, then.” Lolly looked directly at Kitty, raising her head so that her chin and her nose made a show of being loftily indifferent to how her words were to be received. “We can’t have it in the herd.” She took in a quick breath to strengthen her resolve. “It’s a lesbian.”

  “A lesbian?”

  Lolly took in a longer breath. “It—it keeps—well— performing ‘proprietary acts’ on the females.”

  Before Kitty could respond, Aaron spoke up. “The females don’t seem to mind, but the males, they—well—they get a bit exercised.”

  “Men!” said Kitty, snorting.

  “Then you’ll keep it?” Lolly’s eyes widened in hope, then deepened into
pleading. “I can’t find it in my heart to sell it or, well, you know.”

  “Slaughter it? Is that what you mean?”

  Aaron, no longer finding it necessary to whisper, said in a voice first hoarse, then closer to his normal pitch but with tenorial overtone, “Oh, no. We couldn’t do that.”

  “Especially since you’re here to dump it.”

  “Take it,” Lolly pleaded. “Save it from a fate worse—”

  “For a pig, there’s only one fate.” Kitty drew her index finger across her throat.

  “Oh, don’t say that.” Aaron was horrified.

  “And don’t do that.” Lolly shuddered.

  Kitty, to make manifest the radical changes marriage had wrought in her life, called over to her husband, who had just shoveled the inconvenient flop off the bed of the truck onto the pebbled ground. “Kieran, do we want a pig? It’s a lesbian.”

  “Which pig? That pig?”

  “Yes. That pig.”

  “How can it be a lesbian?”

  “Don’t ask me. Ask God. She’s the one should take full credit.”

  Lolly exchanged pleading for a lesson in etiquette. “It’s a wedding present. You can’t return it.”

  Kieran jumped down and scooped the manure back onto the shovel. “Then we should have had it for the wedding feast. But you’d taken it home with you.” He paused. “Of course we could always use a bit of bacon.”

  “You wouldn’t!” cried Lolly.

  “If he wouldn’t,” said Kitty, “I would.”

  Lolly turned her pitiful gaze toward her husband. “Maybe we could build a separate pen. And maybe put a sow or two in with it from time to time.”

  “Well.” Aaron breathed in and breathed out. “If that’s what you prefer.”

  “It’s not what I prefer. It’s what I’m being forced to do,” Lolly said, as Aaron reached over and put his hand on her shoulder. “Look at it,” she added. “Look at how it wants to be here.”