The Pig Goes to Hog Heaven

by Joseph Caldwell

  With a step firm and purposeful, Aaron approached. The man had handed Kitty the book. She was staring down at it, then up at the man, then again at the book. She lowered it to her side. She obviously knew the man, and the man knew her—well enough for him to have brought her a book. This implied an intimacy impossible between strangers.

  The man was speaking Irish, as was the custom in western Kerry. Kitty was answering in Irish. Aware that Kerry courtesy required that conversations in the company of those denied acquaintance with the native tongue should be conducted in English, Aaron continued toward the man and his aunt.

  Their talk continued, in Irish. Aaron, not adept at languages—especially one as seemingly difficult as Irish, with its impossible difference between what was put on the printed page and what was pronounced in actual speech, its insistent dismissal of the phonics on which he’d been schooled—could make out little of what was being said, despite his wife’s repeated attempts, during the year since their shared entry into bliss, to teach him the language to which he was a rightful heir, being the son, as he was, of both a Kerry father and a Kerry mother. As far as he could determine from what he thought he could understand, the book had been washed ashore, no doubt from the engulfed McCloud home, but beyond that he could discern nothing. Apparently the man presumed Aaron to have been Kerry-born and Kerry-bred. Aaron expected his aunt to make the required correction, but she was obviously too unsettled by the man’s presence to take her nephew’s needs into account. Indeed, at the moment, she was not speaking with the casual ease consistent with her nature. Far from it. Stammering and giddy laughs punctuated her words. It seemed this Declan Tovey look-alike had had a certain effect on Kitty, and he should make allowances.

  Having waited long enough for common courtesy to assert itself, Aaron held out his hand and said, in English, “I’m Aaron, Kitty’s nephew. Lolly’s husband.” The man gave his head only the slightest turn, his Irish sentence uninterrupted. Not one to waste a gesture, Aaron raised his hand and scratched his forehead.

  What he had failed to achieve—getting the attention of his aunt and the man—was accomplished by the pig. It had stayed at the pen and, between snorts, seemed transfixed by the empty space inside. For a moment, Aaron thought he could understand what the man said next, but his translation immediately informed him that he was mistaken in his assumption. He had thought he’d heard the man say, in Irish, “It wants to get in. To be with the other pig.” Since there was no other pig, it was readily apparent that Aaron’s linguistic ineptitude was persisting despite his best efforts. The pig was staring at nothing. Which meant that, in his incompetence, Aaron was obviously in continuing error and should end his effort at even minimal understanding.

  To further persuade him that any attempt at comprehension was an exercise in futility, he thought the man said the English equivalent of “They can’t be together. Is that the truth of it?” Which made less sense than anything that had gone before.

  His aunt made a few mumbled sounds, then spoke up, too loud at first, then with a more moderated voice, but in words that only increased his exasperation. “No. I … I mean I don’t know. I don’t know if they can be together or not.”

  Whatever she might have actually said, it brought a smile to the man’s face. His teeth were perfect, the smile, even to Aaron, dazzling. After a few more words Aaron didn’t even try to understand, the man started toward the pen.

  With a nervous glance at Aaron, his aunt blurted out a torrent of words that seemed to plead with the man to ignore the pig, the pen, and return to their previous conversation.

  But the man was unheeding. He lifted the latch and opened the gate. The pig, as if relieved of a great anxiety, moved with an almost dainty step into the enclosure. The man shut and latched the gate. Quiet now, the pig looked skyward, trying, it seemed, to discover within or beyond the clouds overhead the source of its apparent newly bestowed serenity. As if still surprised by this change in its temperament, the pig’s crossed eyes searched the pen, hoping to find some hint of what had rought about the transformation. But seeming to find nothing that might explain its wonderment, obviously unable to see the ghost of the pig it had so contentedly known in the days before the fated feasting, it simply stood there, allowing a benediction to descend, no longer requiring that it know from whence it came. All Aaron could do, deprived as he also was of noting the slain pig’s presence, was to snort his perplexity, then make one last attempt at inclusion in the continuing conversation. So he said, in English, “See? I knew here at the castle is where the pig wanted to be. It likes being by itself. We should never have taken it back. It should have stayed here. Look at how happy it is, being here all by itself. Right?”

  The man looked at Aaron as if offended that an imbecile was trying to insinuate himself into a conversation for which he was so obviously unqualified. To lessen the befuddlement brought on by Aaron’s words, he said, “Alone?”

  Kitty, aghast as if the word alone required an immediate change of subject, turned to her nephew and said, “I’ve been rude. Forgive me. Rude. And thoughtless. We’re happy to have the pig here with us. Anything to oblige. Good. Good for it. I mean, good for us, too. That it likes it here.”

  With this, it occurred to Aaron that his own presence was as disconcerting as that of the Tovey look-alike. Had it been Declan Tovey himself, such a response from his aunt might be understandable. Aaron was, after all, married to an object of the departed Mr. Tovey’s affections. But this was not Declan Tovey—which made his aunt’s behavior that much more inexplicable.

  As if sent by the merciful gods to release his wife from whatever had taken hold of her, Kieran was seen coming toward them, lugging the wheeled apparatus for spraying the apple orchard. After a less-than-welcoming intake of breath at the sight of the visitant, he took a quick look at the pig and gave it a resigned shake of his head. Then he, too, saw fit to speak in Irish, as if the pig were a subject unfit for Aaron’s consideration. He said something about the pigs certainly getting along together. Then Aaron had a thought that should have come sooner, even taking into consideration his limited and scrambled sense of the language: Kieran, like Kitty, had so deeply missed the sacrificed animal that had once occupied (to its disadvantage) the latched enclosure with the pig now in undeniable residence that they kept making references to it as if it were still a corporeal presence. Pleased with himself for the insight, he became less dissatisfied with his linguistic disability and more accepting of his exclusion from the conversation, which, no doubt, would continue to assault his questionable sense of adequacy. Kieran, having reduced his show of displeasure with the man to a neutral, almost indifferent stare, put his arm around his wife’s waist and drew her close, as if she were in need of protection. Kitty, in turn, glanced up at him with a sad but grateful smile, expressed more with her eyes than with her lips.

  The man made no move at all, impervious to the discomfort he was causing. Kieran removed a glove and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth either to signal a readiness for combat or, more likely, to give himself more time to think of what he might say.

  He shouldn’t have bothered. The man was speaking again. In Irish. Kieran listened. Aaron heard mention of a Maude McCloskey, a woman who lived a ways up the road and was said to be somewhat peculiar. When the man stopped speaking, Kieran responded, still in Irish—which Aaron may or may not have deciphered. Thatching may have been the subject. The man nodded what proved to be a farewell, turned, and went back to his contraption, his head bowed, seemingly lost in thoughts far from what he had been discussing with Aaron’s unsettled aunt and her unwelcoming husband. What a sad comparison the man made to the departed thatcher Aaron had been told so much about, with his huge pride, his unconquerable daring. Aaron came close to pitying the man, but was prevented from completing the impulse by his lingering resentment at the man’s indifference to Kerry customs and his dismissal of common courtesy.

  The man paused a moment in his advance, looked over at the p
ig, then continued on. Without a backward glance or gesture, he got into the truck, started the motor, made the necessary turn, and headed up the castle road.

  Aaron’s expectation that some explanation—in English—of what he had endured would now be forthcoming was sorely disappointed, because his wife chose exactly that moment to emerge from the castle and summon him to their truck. After hurried farewells and a terse repetition of gratitude for Kitty and Kieran’s having accepted the pig and her hopes for its assured obesity, she then drove them away from the castle, away from the pig, and away from the day’s confusions.

  Aaron used the ride home to try to sort out the unnerving happenings—and the no less unnerving conduct of everyone concerned, especially his aunt. Lolly was of no help. References to a second pig were of no interest. Until, of course, Aaron mentioned his aunt’s agitated conduct, as if she were suffering some temporary derangement in response not only to the man’s presence but to his repeated insistence that a second pig was in the pen. Lolly scoffed. “Of course she’s deranged. Crazy. Crazy about Declan Tovey. I had to get myself away from the two of them with that ham we brought. I didn’t want to see what was surely going to happen. I know she’s your aunt, but you have to face facts. Kieran Sweeney settled for decidedly experienced goods.”

  Aaron almost reminded his wife that this was hardly Declan Tovey. A facsimile perhaps, but they both knew where the actual thatcher was at that very moment. Rather than take up yet again the subject of look-alike versus ghost, he decided—prompted by his wife’s reference to his aunt and her younger life—to revert to his wife’s comment about his aunt’s youthful “experience.” “Strange. Experienced may not have been her exact word, but it comes close. My aunt said pretty much the same about you and Mr. Tovey just before we were married.”

  “Of course she did. My best friend. Accusing me of what she’d done herself. Trying to make sure Sweeney—poor deluded man that he is—would never believe the truth about all her goings-on. Really.” She relieved herself of a sigh.

  “Strange. When I mentioned what you’d said about her and Declan right after we found the skeleton, she said almost the exact same thing. Except it was about you accusing her.”

  “She’s the one telling the terrible lies. I’m the one dealing in fact, not fiction.”

  “Again, her exact same words.” He made no attempt to suppress a smile.

  “You needn’t be so pleased. I am your wife. And if you want it to stay that way—”

  “My aunt making up stories or not making up stories is, at the moment, beside the point. What’s more important is what she was saying to Kieran while that man was still there.”

  “What was she saying, liar that she tends to be?”

  “It was in Irish …”

  “You don’t speak Irish. You try. But it’s better you don’t.”

  “I won’t argue with that. All that nonsense about the pig—well, let it go. But what I also may or may not have picked up is that the man was offering to thatch the roofs of the courtyard sheds. For nothing. Something about Maude McCloskey’s husband maybe coming back, so she’s changed her mind about her own roof. But the next thing I think I understood—if I got any of it right—was Kitty telling Kieran after the guy left, ‘He sees our pig the same as we do.’ Whatever that might mean.”

  “No more about the pig if you don’t mind. Are you ready for the real truth?”

  “Probably not. But go ahead.”

  “That was Declan Tovey. In the flesh I might add.”

  “Oh? And now who’s deranged?”

  “I knew it was Declan the minute he stepped out of his truck.”

  “You mean your Declan was the only thatcher who could drive a truck?”

  “Try not to be quite so smart.”

  “I’m trying to stay sane. Next you’ll be back to telling me it was his ghost.”

  “It wasn’t his ghost. Ghosts don’t smell. At least not like Declan Tovey. I’d know that smell anywhere. It’s like … it’s like …” She stopped, unable to go further.

  His expression gone deliberately blank, Aaron turned and looked at his wife. “Like what?”

  “Like Declan Tovey,” she said quietly.

  Tempted to ask how she had become so familiar with the scent of the man’s flesh, he resisted. He’d resort to the obvious, to the question that now had to be asked. “Then who was that who took my best shirt with him to the bottom of the sea?”

  “I haven’t the slightest. Probably someone Declan murdered and put in with the cabbages. Who knows?”

  “Aren’t you even interested in finding out?”

  “I gave up a long time ago trying to know or even to speculate on the doings of Mr. Tovey. But he must have done something that makes him go looking to see where his handiwork went, haunting around the old place on the cliffs that made us think he was a ghost.”

  “Not ‘us.’ You.”

  “Same thing.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I just did.”

  “Fine. But why would he murder someone?”

  “How can you not know that? He was jealous.”

  “Of who?”

  “Of whom. I was a writer once, don’t forget.”

  “All right. Of whom?”

  “Ask him.”

  “So he’s capable of killing someone because he’s jealous?”

  “Well, I would hope so.”

  After an extended pause, Aaron said, “You don’t think he … well … he’s jealous of … well … of me, do you?”

  “Ask him.”

  “Am I allowed to suspect he might have a reason to be jealous?”

  “You’re allowed to do anything you want. You’re an adult.”

  “Including thinking he might murder me?”

  “Ask him.”

  “The idea doesn’t … well … disturb you?”

  A small smile came to Lolly’s face. “All right, then, I’ll ask him myself. And if he says yes, I’ll do anything I possibly can to persuade him not to. Does that satisfy you?” After a quick giggle, she leaned toward her husband and pecked his cheek.

  Aaron turned to look at his wife. Her smile had broadened and the glint in her eyes intensified as it was refracted from the windshield, making her enviable auburn hair seem even more lustrous. Never had he seen her as beautiful as she was at this present moment. But he was no longer quite so sure he was that pleased that his wife had regained all her mirth.

  Added to his unease that a fully fleshed Declan Tovey had now come among them was the unavoidable revelation that his wife was not, as she had claimed at the skeleton’s wake, the one and only murderer of the then presumed thatcher stretched out in the coffin before her. Instead of being relieved to discover that the most beautiful woman in the world, now seated next to him, was innocent, he was given the realization that this latest truth was merely prologue to yet another: He had not married a possible killer. “Can you love someone might be a murderer?” she had asked him after the remains of the obviously murdered man had been drawn down to the sea and Kitty’s house along with them. It had been Kieran who, taking in his hand the hand of his lifelong foe, one Kitty McCloud, said, “I can” (in consideration of the confession his aunt had offered at the wake), after which Lolly, ever Kitty’s competitor, had been compelled to claim the crime as her own. His aunt had answered Kieran, in tones that defied contradiction, “I can,” knowing that Kieran, not to be outdone, had also confessed.

  Aaron, subsumed in this orgy of admissions, had, without pause, taken Kitty’s hand in his and had ardently proclaimed, “I can!”—surely the most courageous utterance he’d ever made. He could, and did, love a woman who might be a murderer.

  But now, the bravery that had been so nourishing to his self-satisfaction, to say nothing of its considerable contribution to the oddity of his marriage, had been nullified. Should he feel diminished? Should he admit that his marriage was not the brave and generous deed he had so smugly thought it to be? Before he c
ould even articulate the questions to himself, they were set at a remove for consideration at some distant date. The day had already been challenging enough. Surely a postponement was allowed.

  They made the turn toward home, toward the pigs that greeted them with a chorus of shrieks and squeals, a cacophony in which Aaron thought he could detect some strains of derisive Irish laughter.

  5

  Maude McCloskey was the local Hag—or, to put it more respectfully, the village Seer, a woman reputed to have Cassandra-like gifts enabling her to perceive truths and knowledge hidden from the common eye. She was not exactly Kitty’s favorite. Most likely it was envy. Kitty, as a writer, considered herself a truth-teller capable of creating a past, a present, and a future, and she resented that Maude could so effortlessly achieve somewhat comparable results without having recourse to the endless days and nights of hard labor required of Kitty herself.

  Still, a summons from a woman of Maude’s peculiarity could not be ignored. Teatime was the specified hour. What the woman wanted from Kitty would be revealed soon enough, but it was a fairly good guess that it concerned the latest intrusion into Kitty’s already challenged life. Declan had had traffic with the woman—first to thatch her roof, then not to thatch her roof—and it was not impossible that his and Maude’s negotiations had ended with some of Maude’s curiosities left unsatisfied.

  Even though, as far as Kitty could figure out, the woman knew nothing of Declan’s previously presumed demise and his perturbing return, she might have some awareness of his ability to see the castle ghosts. It was Maude, after all, who, without being able to see Brid and Taddy at Kitty’s wedding feast, had identified them by name from the descriptions given. Maude knew of their existence and of Kitty’s privileged relationship to them.