The Pig Comes to Dinner

by Joseph Caldwell

  Quickly, but not too quickly, Kitty and Kieran went back to the field, and gazed, mouths agape, at the ruined bonfire, at the scattered bits of splintered timber still burning among the sundered stones. Slowly they moved to the fire. It took them both quite a while to stomp out all that was left of the blaze, Kieran ruining his boots, Kitty sacrificing a pair of melting sneakers.

  Both Taddy and Brid were watching, with their eyes no longer mournful but wide with what seemed expectation, but worried at the same time that disappointment was possible. To Kieran it seemed a fragile plea, to Kitty a hope tempered by the fear that it was not to be realized.

  “Now,” Kitty whispered as if the stones had ears, “now we can do what has to be done.”

  “We can do nothing of the kind. Don’t even think it.”

  “And we just let them be hanged?”

  “They’ve been hanged.”

  “Yes. And they’ll be hanged again and again and again until—”

  “No! It’s not our castle anymore. Or it soon won’t be. If you want to blow up a castle, go buy yourself another one and I’ll help you send it any direction you say. Up, down, sideways. You name it. But not this one.”

  “But you see them there, now—”

  “Yes, I see them. And I want them gone—” he paused, then said quietly—“even if I don’t want them gone.”

  “What—what does that mean?”

  “I don’t know what it means. I can’t answer. But to be without them—” Kieran stopped.

  Peter McCloskey had come into the field. He came close to the extinguished fire and looked down. Kitty managed to take her eyes off her husband. She looked from Peter to Brid, from Peter to Taddy. Peter bent down and picked up a small remnant of the blasted rock. He turned it over in his hand. “I heard a noise,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind I came to see.” He continued to stare at the fragment, still turning it. As if in response to a sound only he could hear, he raised his head and looked past Taddy and Brid, at the clump of heather not far behind them. Twice he blinked, then turned his attention back to the stone.

  “You see them, don’t you,” said Kitty, her voice again in a whisper.

  “See who?” Peter looked up and stared at the heather.

  “Brid,” said Kitty, “and Taddy. There. Near where you’re looking.”

  “They’re here, then?” He, too, whispered.

  Kieran shuffled his ruined boots against the newly created pebbles beneath his feet. “And you can’t see them?”

  “How can I do that? You’re the only ones.” At that, Taddy raised his hand as if making a pledge or swearing an oath and then was seen no more. Brid stretched out a hand toward Kieran, then she, too, vanished.

  “They’re gone.” Kieran’s voice was low, even sad.

  “But,” said Kitty to Peter, “you didn’t see them?”

  Peter had resumed turning the stone, twisting his wrist as he held it between his thumb and forefinger. “No one sees them, only you. What reason would I have to see them?”

  “What reason do we have?” Kitty still found it difficult to speak above a whisper.

  “You’d have to ask my mother.”

  “I did ask her,” said Kitty. “She had only some foolish theory and said she didn’t really know.”

  “Oh. Well. Maybe she knows now.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Because she told me just a little while ago that she knew now where the gunpowder is. It had come to her just then.”

  Kieran glanced first at this wife, then at the boy. “And where did she say it is?”

  “Where you got the little chunk you just blew up. The flagstones of the great hall.”

  “How did she find that out?”

  “She doesn’t know. Except she mentioned maybe a door opened and there it was. Or maybe the lid lifting from something. And the secret was there. Or else she thought it might have been her great aunt who told her when she was little and she’d forgotten. She said she couldn’t be all that sure. And after she said that, she started to make some muffins, but stopped right there in the middle and—” No longer was he turning the stone.

  “Yes? And then—” Kitty leaned forward, afraid she might not hear what was about to be said.

  “You would have to ask her.”

  “But she told you something. Tell us,” Kieran said, moving the toe of his ruined boot in among the ashes, stirring the blackened wood, the broken stones.

  “I can, but I don’t want to.”

  “Why?” Kitty asked.

  “Because you won’t want to hear it.”

  “But we do!” Kitty was no longer whispering.

  “You think you do. But you don’t.”

  Kieran picked up a stone from among the ashes. It was hot. He let it drop. “Then tell us anyway.”

  “I wish you’d ask my mother.”

  “Please,” said Kitty. “Tell us.”

  Head bowed, Peter said, “My mother told me you see Taddy and Brid—and you’re the only ones—because it was a Katie McCloud and a Kevin Sweeney who were the ones supposed to set off the gunpowder all that long time ago. And Kevin then looked just like Mr. Sweeney now. And Katie then looked like you, Mrs. Sweeney.”

  “McCloud.” Kitty had returned to her whisperings.

  “McCloud,” said Peter. “Brid and Taddy recognized you. They think you’ve finally come to blow up the castle. They don’t have the same sense of time we have, my mother said. They’re dependent on you to do it. They’re waiting.”

  “It’s a Sweeney who—” Kieran brought his right hand up to his chest and from there up further until it disappeared under his beard, possibly to hide the hand but more likely to feel his throat.

  Kitty gave her head a slight shake. “A McCloud never—” she turned away, making the sheds of the courtyard her main concern as if her most pressing task were to reach some decision as to their repairs.

  With the toe of his shoe, Peter separated a chunk of charred wood from a bit of stone. A chickadee had come into a tree in the orchard nearby and was offering its two-note song in a plaintive minor key. Almost immediately, two notes in the distance answered the call, but at a lower pitch. Without looking up, Peter said, “My mother wondered if she’d heard this from her great-grandfather on her mother’s side and only remembered now, or if it’s something she never knew before, but knows it now. Then she said it’s something she never knew before, but a truth given to her whether she wanted it or not.”

  Kitty’s right hand grabbed her left elbow, immobilizing her arm, unable as she was to decide what she was supposed to do with it. “A McCloud would never have allowed someone to hang, much less not do what she’d sworn to do.” Her words were clipped and certain.

  Kieran kept shaking his head. “How could a Sweeney—a Sweeney—betray—or not confess instead of letting two innocent—” He narrowed his eyes in pain and seemed to be directing his questions to some fuchsia growing among the hedge stones along the road leading to the castle. “It can’t be true. It can’t possibly be—” He turned to Peter. “With all respect, your mother’s up to a mischief, telling you things like that.”

  Kitty said nothing, but released her elbow and let her hand slide down her arm where it took firm hold of her wrist.

  “It’s not a mischief.” Peter continued to regard the bit of stone as if more curious about its properties than certain of its meanings. “It’s a truth. And she never asks anyone to believe her or not believe her. And I’m the same. You needn’t believe what I’ve said. Believing or not believing isn’t what makes the truth the truth.” He was still staring down at the fragment but not moving it. “If it would make it any better for you, they didn’t do it on purpose, Katie and Kevin. They were to be married, and they’d gone off to Tralee to let Katie’s uncles and Kevin’s cousins living there and along the way know that they must come to the wedding. And they had to walk both there and back because there was no other way in those days. Katie stayed the nights with
her uncles and aunts and Kevin with his cousins, but each evening they were together with one family or the other for something to eat and a bit to drink as well. And no one but the man from Cork who’d laid the flagstone floor knew they were the ones to finish the job, and his name was not even known to them. But the rumor about the gunpowder was already started, only it was a rumor that proved to be true—with those who started it not even thinking it was the truth they were telling, but said it only to frighten off Lord Shaftoe already on his way. And when they—Katie and Kevin—had come back home, it was already too late. Taddy and Brid had been hanged and nothing to be done. Katie turned on Kevin and Kevin put the blame on Katie and they never married, too guilty even to look at each other ever again. And so the feud began, but no one was told the cause of it, everyone making up a story, even Katie and Kevin. About priests betrayed long, long ago, she saying it was a Sweeney did it; he saying it was a McCloud. It was betrayal that was on their souls, and it was of that that they must speak, a story with a bit of the truth at the heart of it. The betrayal. The guilt. And each giving the fault to the other.”

  Kitty, her mouth already open, had to close it and open it again before she could say, “Your mother—did she say who might have told her this so long ago and now—remembered at last—”

  “Oh, no.” Peter, his eyes still sad from the things he’d said, looked at Kitty. “None of this last part my mother said nor did anyone say it to her. Nor did anyone say it to me. It’s only something I know, standing here, and you said you wanted to hear it.”

  Kieran, too, was looking at the boy. “You made all this up? Just now?”

  “None of it did I make up. How could I think of these things and I only seven?”

  “You’ve heard stories all your life.”

  “This one I never heard. But I know it for a truth, and it doesn’t need to be believed to be true. But now you know why you’re the only ones see Brid. You’re the only ones see Taddy. They show themselves to you because they’ve been waiting for your coming. And they never blamed you because they knew you didn’t do it on purpose. Let them hang, I mean. And now you’re here, and they’re here, too. And there’s no more that I can tell you.”

  Again the chickadees called and answered, again Kieran could look only at the fuchsia bursting from the hedge. Kitty let go of her wrist and brought both hands, folded as if in prayer, up to her lips. Peter held his bit of stone out over the extinguished fire and let it drop. Then, with his shoe, he covered it with ashes.

  11

  At Lolly’s, the pigs swirled around Kitty, Kieran, and Aaron, each determined to squeal the loudest, with no clear winner apparent. Also undecided was whether their voices were raised in protest at being considered for roasting on a spit or if each was begging to be a candidate for the honor. Objectivity was obviously required of those making the choice. Abilities other than vocal range and interpretive passion would determine which would be elevated from among the chorus and given the starring role. It was not an easy task.

  Aaron had, on the evidence, proved himself to be a swineherd of considerable talent. (Kitty preferred to doubt that the same could be said for her lifelong friend’s—Lolly’s— yet-to-be-demonstrated skills as a writer.) All the pigs were grossly fat, and each seemed to be in excellent health, especially when it came to lung power and the ability to riot, stampede, and trample one another while Aaron and Kieran and Kitty waded among them.

  Although the great feast was still some while away, it was advised that the selection be made now since the chosen pig would be taken from the fattened specimens destined for delivery into the slaughterer’s hands within the next few days. Kieran had already built a pen for it near the castle sheds to prevent the resident animal from emptying both troughs and reducing the selected hog to an anorexic state unworthy of being roasted on a spit. It would also limit the devastations inflicted on the castle grounds, since it already had been decided not to replace the snout ring of the current pig, letting the damage become a notable part of his lordship’s inheritance. And it was further decided that it would be unfair to leave one pig unencumbered and not the other. It was bad enough that the chosen beast would be led to the sacrifice and its companion spared—and even more unfair that its snoutings would be confined to a pen and the other given the full range of the countryside for its inflictions. This minimal attempt to balance the already heavily tipped scales of justice was decreed by both Kitty and Kieran, allowing them their conviction that justice would prevail at the castle for the remainder of their stewardship.

  Aaron slapped a few hams, not just to make a show of authority but to see if the favored animal could screech at an even higher pitch than the one already achieved. Lolly had been unable to join them, caught, as she claimed, in the middle of a metaphor. Surely Kitty, as a sister writer, must understand. And Kitty did. She knew only too well a writer’s propensity for self-dramatization, self-absorption, and self-pity.

  Because the general cacophony made discussion impossible, Aaron would point to a particular pig, Kieran at another, and Kitty at still a third. Each pig, in turn, responded by charging toward the periphery of the herd. Finally, after a protracted dumb show involving pointed fingers, head shakes, waved hands, nods—Aaron, Kieran, and Kitty each contributing his or her share to the confusion—three pigs were nominated for further scrutiny, and Aaron, by means both cruel and consoling, isolated them in another, smaller pen at some distance from the twelve-tone chorale still being lustily sent heavenward by their rejected brethren.

  It had not been easy to bring Kitty and Kieran to this present exercise. Throughout the past week two issues had been discussed: one resolved, one not. First, there was the matter of the pig. Would it be the one already in their possession or one selected from Lolly and Aaron’s herd? Kieran continued to prefer the pig he already knew, especially since it had been divested of its snout ring and was wreaking havoc throughout the landscape. (A new ring could be inserted or a proper pigpen devised, but Kitty had argued against both proposals since, according to her, she and her husband would soon leave behind them whatever damage the pig might cause. A durable fence around Kitty’s garden was the one concession she allowed. The rest of the territory was open and available for any depredations the pig might wish to enjoy. Her reasoning had its source in the issue still unresolved: Kitty’s determination to blow up the castle rather than let it fall into the tainted hands of George Noel Gordon Lord Shaftoe.)

  By employing negotiating skills uncommon among those experiencing a two-as-one existence, a decision was reached, as regards the pig. During the exchange, each had had the instinctive wisdom to become cool when the other became heated, heated when the other became cool. Also, two competing methods of logic were brought into play, but each with enough flaws and inconsistencies to allow for eventual compromise.

  Kitty’s first argument had been delivered with some intensity, since its basis was an accusation of ingratitude on Kieran’s part: if it weren’t for the pig and its unearthing of the skeleton of Declan Tovey in the garden of Kitty’s seaclaimed house, she and her husband would never have been lured into the shenanigans that had led to a mutual dismissal of the ancient enmity between the McClouds and the Sweeneys—which, in turn, had allowed the eruption of a long-gathering passion, her for him, him for her, culminating in their marriage.

  To occupy themselves during this exchange in the scullery, Kieran had been dicing homegrown green peppers while Kitty sliced onions for the meatloaf she had asked Kieran to make in place of the tarragon chicken with chili and tomato fondue. It would be from the recipe she had brought back from the Bronx. As they went about their arguments, it was lost on neither of them that each was wielding a well-honed knife.

  Along with the meatloaf, Kitty had also requested mashed potatoes and peas, also homegrown. The apples for apple brown betty—for which she’d also pleaded—were from their orchard, which, to their surprise, had flourished and presented them with a bountiful yield. Each was chosen
by Kitty’s own eye and picked by Kitty’s own hand.

  That his wife wanted an all-American dinner was easily understood by Kieran. It happened from time to time, an exercise in nostalgia on Kitty’s part in tribute to her days at Fordham, when her somewhat intense nationalism was nurtured, if not born, out of simple homesickness for the cliffs and stones of Kerry. Previous to her American sojourn, she had paid little or no attention to her homeland’s history beyond an easy subscription to a sense of victimhood whenever she felt herself in need of some pretext for an unfocused wrath that lurked just beneath the surface of her psyche—a wrath that required an airing from time to time, projected during her childhood toward her brothers or her father, her ungainly body, a recalcitrant fire in the fireplace, her hair, her teachers, and boys. The pride of place, of course, had been awarded to Kieran Sweeney, the devil’s spawn, the earth’s first scourge—and the complete embodiment of all she had ever wanted in a man.

  But like so many Irish exiled to American shores, even temporarily, she quickly assumed an Irish nationalism informed by the past perfidies of the English, always available but, until then, in the Bronx, not really nourished to the point of the justifiable wrath she would take with her, along with her B.A. degree (having majored in moral theology), back to Kerry, where there awaited her all the previous instigations to outrage. One exception was the ungainly body, which had now shaped itself into a perfection even Kitty herself had to admit was quite stunning. There still remained, however, her sense of injustices long since inflicted. That most had been remedied during the intervening years did nothing to suggest that she might exorcise these persisting demons from her well-satisfied psyche. Her scalp still tightened with a determined righteousness. Was she or was she not Caitlin Kitty McCloud?