The Pig Comes to Dinner

by Joseph Caldwell

  Owning a castle in County Kerry did little to assuage her wrath or lessen her sense of superiority. Losing a castle in County Kerry did much to pitch both wrath and exaltation to an even higher intensity, especially since the past, in the guise of ghosts, had come to dwell not only in her home but, in the case of Taddy, in her heart. And the intrusion of his lordship must be credited with this current instigation to mayhem and to murder.

  Her American adventure, with its attendant enticement to patriotism, was inspired as much by the absence of home as by the provable facts that spilled out of any book devoted to the history of the ravaged land to which she had been born. Long had she yearned for a pretext—here called conversion—for mayhem. Long had she awaited a justification for murder. Now both were there for the taking, a consummation perfidiously to be wished.

  The onion had brought tears to Kitty’s eyes. She ignored them so as not to disrupt her brief on the resident pig’s behalf. Since Kieran had offered no rebuttal to his wife’s first argument, she continued on to the next. “And didn’t it find the gunpowder for us? When the cow put its hoofs right on it, didn’t it screech so you could bring the chest to the light of day, and didn’t it dig that hole in the first place?”

  “I’m not so sure,” Kieran said, almost dicing the tip of his thumb into the mound of cut peppers. “I’m not so sure it did us any favors, thank you very much. Except now we can warn Mr. Shaftoe before he puts fireplaces in the great hall and sends with a single spark the whole household over into County Cavan.”

  “We’ll tell Mr. Shaftoe nothing. He can take his chances the same as we did. Except there’ll be no castle for him to take his chances in.”

  “We are not going to blow up the castle.”

  “I am going to blow up the castle.”

  “You are not going to blow up anything. Nor is anyone else.”

  “Then I’m supposed to hand it over to his Lordship without a fight.”

  “There’s been a fight, and it’s over. It was fought in the courts, and you lost.”

  “I only lost a battle, not the—”

  “Not only is the castle not going to be blown up, but the gunpowder is going to be removed and destroyed.”

  “And let Taddy and Brid hang there and nothing be done about it.”

  “Taddy and Brid are not hanging. Their ghosts are hanging.”

  “Their ghosts are part of them. They’re hanging.”

  “Ghosts have no body. You can’t feel without a body.”

  “They feel.”

  “They don’t.”

  “How do you know?”

  “It’s common sense.”

  “We’re talking about ghosts—and you mention ‘common sense’? God have mercy!” Kitty cried.

  “And what makes you so sure blowing up the joint will do whatever it is they want? Whatever it is they need?”

  “Peter McCloskey told me.”

  “A boy of what—nine?”

  “Seven. But he knows. And he told me.”

  “And you believe what a seven-year-old tells you?”

  “Peter’s different. You know that.”

  “Everybody’s different.”

  “Lord Shaftoe will never live in this castle.”

  “Then blow up Lord Shaftoe, why don’t you?”

  “All right, then, I will. Along with the castle. Both at the same time.”

  “I give up.”

  “Good.”

  “The castle is not—Oh, never mind. And you’re chopping the onions too fine.”

  “I was distracted.”

  Kieran scraped the knife blade along the chopping block, drawing into the bowl the onion and green peppers. Kitty, with the knuckle of her forefinger, wiped the tears from her eyes. Kieran began adding the other ingredients to the mix, following the Bronx recipe; the ground beef, the eggs, a bit of milk, the Dijon mustard. Kitty started chopping the parsley. The tears returned. Again she wiped them away with her knuckle, careful not to slit her eye with the knife still held in her hand. And again the tears came. And her nose began to run. She sniffed. Then she sniffed again.

  “I can’t blow up the castle,” she said.

  Kieran stopped grinding the peppercorns but said nothing.

  “How can I do that? Look around. The stones. The walls. The turret. The gallery. The stair, winding. The battlements where you look out toward the sea—”

  Kieran handed her a paper towel. She blew her nose, then handed the towel back. Kieran let it drop to the floor. “Those who built it,” Kitty said, “How can I—”

  Kieran handed her another paper towel. She wiped her eyes and blew her nose.

  She let the towel drop to the floor. “Stone on stone. Each lifted, one on the other. On someone’s back, held up by someone’s hands. Down to the foundations deep in the—Look at the ceiling. The beams. A giant must have put them there. The labor. The sweat. The weariness, the exhaustion. The pain, the aches, the broken bones. The maimings. And still the stones, one on the other.” She reached over and touched the wall next to the stove. “A man put this here. Who was he? What was his name? Cold in the night. The heat of the day. Rain. Mist. Wet. The hard earth. Stone upon stone—stone upon—”

  Kitty herself ripped a towel away from the roll on the other side of the table. She blew her nose and started toward her eyes, hesitated, then wiped away her tears with the crumpled paper. Again she let it fall to the floor. She sniffed. “The castle was here long before any Shaftoe. And it will stand long after all the Shaftoes in all the history of all the world will have come and gone. Have no fear. Never will any harm come to this place. And Taddy and Brid, they must stay if that’s what’s been decreed. We can pray. And there’s nothing more we can do.”

  She set down the knife and, with both her fists, dug deep into her eyes and rubbed the remaining tears into her flesh, through to the brain if she could. When she’d finished she turned away so her husband wouldn’t see her bloated face. She considered gathering up the crumpled towels but thought the hell with it. She turned back toward Kieran. He was her husband and he had a right to see her red and puffy. “What can I do next? Any more chopping? I’m still in the mood.”

  Kieran pushed the bowl across the table. “Everything’s there. Are your hands clean?”

  Kitty held up her hands. Kieran regarded them for a moment. “Squoosh it all together then. Next you can start on the apples. I have to go for the cows.”

  “We’ll do without the apple brown betty I was going to make for dessert,” Kitty said quietly. “I’ll go with you for the cows.”

  Kieran nodded. He waited a moment. “Brid will miss them after we take them to my brother’s.”

  Kitty considered this, then she, too, nodded. “And Taddy the pig, all eaten up and gone for good.”

  Kieran examined the wall to his right, taking particular care to scrutinize the rough surface of the stone slightly above his own height. “The pig will come with us. We’ll eat another. If Taddy wants, he can come visit from time to time. If it’s allowed.”

  Kitty gave this some thought. “And Brid to see the cows.” Now both gave this their consideration, neither sure exactly what his or her preference might be.

  Two of the three pigs in the isolated pen searched with their snouts for some small morsel that might mitigate their removal from the general herd. The third simply stood. Aaron, Kitty, and Kieran made their observations from the other side of the fence, the better to regard the animals with an eye for their succulence rather than whatever other endearing qualities a pig might possess. Since each resembled an enormous sausage stuffed inside a skin close to bursting, the choice was not easy.

  “I think that one.” Kitty pointed to the one not searching for still more food.

  “What about over there?” Kieran’s election fell upon one of the snufflers that had now raised its head and pinned back its ears.

  Then it was Aaron’s turn. For the sake of consistency, he chose the one remaining, possibly so as not to hurt its
feelings. “Look at that one’s hams” was the best he could do to state his case—a case not supported by any overwhelming bit of evidence: each pig had enviable hams.

  All three continued to observe his or her own preference, ignoring the other animals, thinking only of ways to substantiate a claim they were not yet ready to renounce. To complete the impending stalemate it needed only the intrusion of a mischievous god to toss an overripe apple into the pen addressed to “the tastiest.”

  Lolly came onto the scene, having abandoned her metaphor to offer an opinion. She pushed the sleeves of the black cotton turtleneck above her elbows. (As a writer she now wore black almost exclusively.)

  “Are these the first rejects? Someone has a pretty good eye. Let’s go take a look at what the possibilities still are.”

  “These,” said Kitty, “are the chosen ones. We’re about to make the final selection.”

  “Oh.”

  “They look pretty good to me.” Aaron made slits of his eyes, demonstrating his method of scrutiny.

  “They’re all pigs,” Kitty said. She pointed again at her preference. “Why don’t we just take that one and forget the rest?”

  Lolly, the writer, without reference to the subject at hand, directed the conversation to more crucial matters. “I need your help,” she said to Kitty. “No, not your help. Just your advice. I didn’t want to tell you until I’d finished, but my novel is about this couple—he’s very handsome, she’s a real knockout—and they marry and—can you believe this?—they move into this castle.”

  Kitty stiffened. Kieran relaxed every muscle in his face, the better to lower his head and look directly at Lolly. “And to make it interesting, the castle has ghosts—I guess you can tell where I got that idea from—the way everyone always said the castle there had these ghosts.” She smiled nervously, her cheeks twitching slightly. “Write what you know. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do? Anyway, what has to be done to—and I really like this part—what has to be done to get rid of the ghosts and lift the curse from the castle is to blow it up. How’s that for a surprise bit of plotting?”

  Now Kitty, too, relaxed her face and cast a gaze of determined indifference at her friend. “How can you say you lifted a curse from a castle that no longer exists?”

  “But it does exist. Until it blows up. And when it does, well, the curse is ended. The ghosts will be gone. And they’ll stop terrorizing the neighborhood. And blowing up a castle will make a good ending, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know,” said Kitty. “Sounds a bit far-fetched to me.”

  “You mean blowing up the castle?”

  “I mean the whole thing.”

  “Well, it’s too late now. I’m on page five hundred and eighty-two.”

  “It would seem, then, that you don’t need advice from anyone.”

  “But how do I blow up a castle?”

  “That’s hardly within my competence,” said Kitty.

  “Oh, but I forgot to tell you. You know that part of the story, the same as everyone does: there’s gunpowder already planted in the castle.”

  Kieran spoke, a slight drawl having come into his voice. “Then that’s the way you blow up the castle. With the gunpowder. Simple. End of novel.”

  “But no one is sure there’s really gunpowder. It’s never been found.”

  “Then have someone find it,” said Aaron, his impatience becoming more and more evident. Somehow, since his defection from the art of fiction, his interest in the subject had noticeably diminished. “It’s a ghost story. The ghosts find it.”

  “I thought of that, but—”

  “Well,” said Kitty, “keep thinking. You’ll come up with something that will amaze us all, I’m sure.”

  “You think so?”

  Never had Kitty seen her lifelong friend so undecided. A want of certainty was not one of Lolly’s prominent characteristics, any more than it had ever been one of Kitty’s.

  For her, the art of writing was a simple extension of her inborn trust in herself. Her gifts, her skills, were apparent to her without the need of validation. Those unable to see them and appreciate them were blind—and never once did Kitty feel the least bit of sympathy for their inability to discern selfevident truths. (Her usual impulse was to gouge out the vile jelly of their unseeing eyes.)

  The one consolation Kitty could summon was that Lolly’s lack of self-confidence must be the proof she’d been waiting for, expecting—nay, demanding—that poor Lolly, for all of Kitty’s love for her, for all her good wishes and thoughts on her friend’s behalf, was not a true artist. For Kitty, in the bright lexicon of art, there was no such word as fear. Too many risks had to be taken, too many doubts resolved. And that was yet one more of Kitty’s certainties.

  For now, she must devise ways to console her friend’s disappointment without revealing the soul-felt glee with which she greeted this calamity so deservedly befallen her niece-inlaw. A way must be found to say the obvious without saying it: Aaron must reclaim his computer. Lolly must accept again the fate for which she had been destined from the beginning of time: to be a simple swineherd. It was decreed by forces beyond anyone’s control, and Kitty must help her friend in this acceptance. She—Kitty—would think of ways. Was she or was she not an artist, a creator of startling imagination? How fortunate was Lolly to have so faithful a friend.

  Kitty relaxed. She was prepared to say whatever she felt Lolly needed to hear.

  But her insincerities were postponed when Kieran said, “To find a way to blow up the castle, the woman is digging in her garden—”

  “Not another skeleton!” cried Aaron in great alarm.

  “No, not a skeleton,” said Kitty. “That’s been done to death—so to speak.”

  Kieran ignored the interruption. “The woman is digging, and her spade hits a metal box. Inside—”

  Before Kieran could continue, Lolly said, “Sounds awfully contrived. A bit too ‘convenient,’ wouldn’t you say?”

  “All right then,” Kieran said, “an animal—maybe even a pig—a pig digs it up—”

  “Who would ever believe that?” Lolly sneered.

  “You must make them believe it, by believing it yourself.” Kitty pressed her lips together, parting them only so she could say, “And if you can’t believe it, don’t write it. Do you believe “The Three Little Pigs”? No? Well, I do. Because the writer believed it.”

  “Me? I should believe what I’m writing?”

  “Lolly, either you’re a writer or you’re not a writer.”

  “But I am a writer. I’m on page five hundred and eightytwo.”

  Kieran charged ahead. “The gunpowder is compacted into the flagstones of the castle’s great hall.”

  “Oh, I like that.” Lolly looked off to the side as if to see whether or not she should believe what she’d just said.

  Kitty licked her lips. “Darling,” she said to Kieran, bringing into use a word absent until now from their connubial vocabulary, “I think we should let Lolly write her own novel. After all, she is a writer. And she is on page five hundred and eighty-two. As we all know, any writer worthy of the name can figure things out for herself.”

  “Is that true?” asked Lolly.

  “As true as any word I’ve ever spoken.” (Not for nothing had Kitty been schooled by Jesuits.)

  “I have to do it all myself?” Lolly almost whined the words and drew her head back a little, believing perhaps she could still escape the blow about to fall.

  Kitty felt it was now time to be unctuous. “You’ve heard of the loneliness of the writer. Well, then—” Kitty said no more. She wanted to give herself fully to the absurdity, the sentimentality of what she’d just quoted, the self-pity, the implied dramatization all too evident. If anything, writing was all too crowded, all those characters flinging themselves at her, screaming like pigs, both stuck and unstuck, demanding their deserved portion of the plot Kitty was preparing.

  And then there were all those ideas, all those possibilitie
s, each to be sorted out, some to be given more consideration than others, the competition fierce and unyielding, with Kitty the ultimate arbiter. Sooner or later, an infallibility beyond the aspirations of the most misguided pope was imposed, decisions made, judgments of life and death enforced, and, when all was finished, after all the crowding elements had been treated according to their deserts and the last page completed, then the true loneliness would come again. Her close and faithful companion, her book, would leave her. The one colleague who had gone with her everywhere, available for colloquy at any time of day or night— gone. And until she would invite into her imagination yet another clamoring mob, she would be subjected to the bereavements that justly mourned the loss of a true and most intimate friend who had given her the intensified life available only to a writer. Agonizing the writing might have been, despairing, sickening, and conducive to complaint, but lonely? Never. Never. Never.

  “Well,” said Lolly, “it does get rather lonesome. It’s not like always having the pigs about.”

  “Ah,” said Kitty. “The sacrifice!”

  “You can say that again.”

  Kieran, to put the conversation back on track, said, “The gunpowder is in the flagstones. All you have to do is set it off.”

  “But how do I do that? And I mean, who sets it off? And how?”

  “Kieran,” Kitty said, smiling the smile of one whose patience is nearing its end, “aren’t we here to pick up the pig?”

  “Right!” Aaron thrust out his arm and pointed first to one pig, then another, no longer sure of his original choice. Lolly, however—Lolly the writer—was not yet prepared to let the priorities of the day reassert themselves. It was too soon for her to abandon her writer’s prerogative of monopolizing an entire event and directing it toward whichever subject might, at the time, suit the writer’s needs. “I know,” she said, her voice gaining assurance. “I’ll have the ghosts set it off. That should be interesting.”