The Pig Did It

by Joseph Caldwell

  Some distance off, two men in a fishing boat waved at him then returned their attention to the other side of the boat. No gulls flew overhead, but a lone crow circled high above, laughing its raucous laugh at Aaron’s plight. The water no longer seemed to be rising, but the sea swells were beginning to crest, to fall, to send their froth rising toward the rock, disappointed that they could not reach the tips of his toes.

  The time had come to meditate on Phila Rambeaux, to sit solitary on this rock, fasten his gaze seaward, and brood on loss and the impossibilities of love. He would recall her face, her gesture when, in his class, she would rub her thigh with the heel of her left hand as if trying to erase something she had written on her green plaid skirt. Or the way she would, with her index finger, place her hair back behind her ear, forgetting that the hair was too short to stay there for more than the second it took her to take her finger away. Or maybe he would opt for the abstract, for a general melancholy that would give his sorrows a more universal cast, his woe identified with the woe of the world. Until now he had been unfaithful to Phila. Almost a full day gone and he’d given her almost no thought at all. No pangs had pierced, no yearnings had struggled to find release, to wander, to search, never to find. The grieving that he owed her had been left unexercised. It was time to make amends.

  He looked at his watch. It would now be a quarter to three. He could mourn at least until the water had receded to knee height. How long that might be he did not know, but he didn’t require that he should. His grief could easily outlast the ebbing tide. It was eternal. He might even wait for the tide to return, then ebb again before leaving off his meditations. Phila, his beloved, deserved no less.

  But then he wouldn’t be at his aunt’s when Lolly McKeever would come for her pig. He had phoned her. She was due at three. She hadn’t sounded particularly eager to make the retrieval nor had she given him thanks for his efforts. His tale of tenacity was cut short before he’d even told her about the top of the hill. The cheerfulness with which she’d responded to the dispersed pigs was apparently reserved for catastrophe and not for rescue. “At three then. And don’t feed it until I’m there.” With that she had hung up, as if Aaron had been some rash intruder calling to solicit funds for some obscure cause. He had hoped to hear her laugh, but she hadn’t laughed at all.

  It then occurred to Aaron that this woman might indeed be, as Kitty had claimed, the jealous killer of the man in the garden. It also occurred to him that Kitty might take the opportunity of Lolly’s visit to confront her with the remains and force a confession. There would be a spirited exchange of words, of accusations, denials, and, possibly, counteraccusations. Kitty was, to Aaron’s mind, as much a candidate for the crime as the woman she’d named. How the scene between the two of them might end Aaron had no notion. But he should be there. He was, after all, a writer. This display of human conflict, of murder and of love, should not pass unseen by the artist’s eye. He owed it to himself and to his readers, to those dependent on him for uncommon insights, to say nothing of high drama and the amusement that only a killing can provide.

  Sleek as a seal, Aaron slithered from the rock into the water. He’d swim the distance to the switchback path, then walk the road back to the house. He was wet anyway and accustomed by now to the cold. Maybe Lolly McKeever would still be there when he’d arrive, and she would see him soaked and dripping, having just risen, like Cuchulain of old, up out of the sea.

  4

  That’s not my pig.”

  Lolly McKeever stood near the shed looking more at the damaged door than at the pig snuffling its way through the pasture grass between the house and the cliff. She swung the dangling hinge open, then shut, loosening the last screw so that the hinge fell clattering onto the hardened ground that surrounded the shed. “Sorry,” she said, then put the tips of her fingers on the door itself as if to complete the damage done by the pig and release the door, letting it, like the hinge, fall at her feet. But the lock held fast and the door swayed only slightly, still secure with one corner dug into the earth, an almost balletic toehold that held it balanced free of all other support except for the sturdy hasp of the padlock that refused to let go.

  “What do you mean, it’s not your pig?” Kitty picked up the hinge, dusted it off, blew the dirt from its surface, then dropped it again, cleansed, onto the ground.

  “It’s not my pig.”

  Kitty gave the hinge a kick. It moved no more than an inch. “Tell her, Aaron,” she said.

  Aaron, shivering in his wet clothes, had been trying not to let his teeth chatter or his body twitch. The sea, to complete the trouble it had caused him, had sent a stiff breeze from off its vasty deeps, making sure that the brine soaking his shirt and pants sustained the near-arctic temperatures they had enjoyed before they had been sponged up out of their native element and been brought so thoughtlessly to this arrogant headland. The sea had not finished with him yet. Now the drying salt began to sting his flesh and shrink his skin and there was as well the stench of dried seaweed and rotting fish. Only a pelting rain could help him now, cleanse and warm him, but the sky was a pitiless and uncharacteristic blue, and the sun seemed more mockingly benign than it had ever been on these primal shores from the beginning of time. He looked at Lolly McKeever and opened his mouth. Lolly, for the first time, looked at him. Her eyes brightened, her mouth opened, and she let out a laugh of pleasure and delight, similar to the laughter excited by the unmanageable pigs the day before. The sight of Aaron was apparently equal in calamity with the ditched truck and the chaos that followed. Aaron, hurt, confused, moved his jaw up and down, his mouth not quite closing, “I—I—I—

  I—” He clamped his lips together, swallowed, then tried again.

  “I—I—I—”

  “There, you see?” Kitty said. “The pig was in your herd. As he said, he chased it up the hill and down, and you’d already gone off and left him. And the pig too. But now it’s here and you can take it home.” Lolly’s laughter stopped. She turned her attention from Aaron to the pig. “It’s not mine.”

  “It has to be yours.” Kitty had little patience with contradiction.

  “It doesn’t have to be. And it isn’t.”

  “I’m not going to make you pay damages, if that’s what you’re so afraid of.”

  “It’s still not my pig.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Just look at it.” “I’m looking at it.” “Well?”

  “It looks like your pig and no one else’s.” “What a terrible thing to say.”

  “What’s wrong with it?” Kitty took a deep breath and held it. Lolly was being warned. Kitty would hear no words against this pig.

  “That low-slung belly, it’s not meat, it’s not fat. It’s just there. What have you been feeding it?”

  “I gave it nothing I wouldn’t eat myself.”

  “Poor thing.”

  “It’s a fine and healthy beast and it doesn’t need your criticizing.”

  “I wasn’t criticizing. I was evaluating.”

  “Of course. A pig person like you knows everything.”

  “I know my own and my own know me.”

  “Then come and let it have a look at you.” Kitty marched toward the pasture. “Come on. We’ll see who it recognizes and who it doesn’t.”

  Lolly was looking not toward the pig but toward the cabbage patch. “What’s that big hole for in the garden? Is it a swimming pool on its way or what?”

  “What hole?”

  “That one there.”

  “A strange thing you should ask, Lolly McKeever.”

  Lolly shrugged. “Just being neighborly.” With that she turned again toward Aaron. She used a small smile to suppress another laugh. “You’re the nephew.”

  Aaron nodded, the movement renewing the shivers he had just managed to control. Lolly McKeever leaned toward him, trying, he supposed, to trace the smell now rising in full force from his shirt and pants. “You fell into the sea.” Now the laughter came, great
er in its delight than before.

  “I—I—I was walking.”

  “I see.” Her eyes became even brighter.

  “But I—I had to swim.”

  “How interesting.” The smile forced the laugh to cease. She searched his face, first his eyes, then his lips, then his forehead, his chin, his ears, looking for a clue to his presentation. After she had given the eyes another try, she settled on his right ear and searched no more. “You look nothing like your aunt.” And then the laughter came again.

  “I—I was born in America.” He gave a quick shiver and brought his elbows closer to his sides.

  “Ah! Of course.” She looked down at his feet. He moved first one foot, then the other, shuffling them in place as if trying to offer some entertainment, some demonstration of their capabilities. With another burst of laughter, Lolly seemed to approve, even applaud the display, to show her gratitude and pleasure at having been treated to this manifestation of his cunning.

  If he hadn’t been wet, if he weren’t shivering and stuttering, he would never have submitted to this scrutiny, this hurtful gaiety, but his psyche had already subscribed to the helplessness of his body, a kind of solidarity, a mutual sympathy he was unable to sever. He surrendered to his imbecilic state and stood quietly before her, his head tilted slightly to the right, a further abjection confirming his idiocy. She could now laugh her eyes right out of her head. He gave her full permission. He looked directly at her. The laughter had ceased.

  She was still looking at his bare feet. She seemed thoughtful, even troubled. Aaron considered wiggling his toes, an added performance, an encore to the shuffling he’d already executed for her amusement, but he decided to continue the silent offering of himself and try not to shiver or to twitch. He would also subject the woman to the process of examination she’d been practicing on him.

  She had, to begin with, big ears, but she also had a good-size head and the ears didn’t look particularly disproportionate. Just big. Capable. No delicacy, no nonsense. He liked that. Ears like hers could listen to anything and not wince. That an ear could wince was a consideration he’d take up another time. For now, Lolly McKeever’s ears were quite capable of either wincing or not wincing. She herself would know which response would be right and proper.

  Before he could continue his attentions, he began to shiver again, but not from the cold or the wet. Thoughts of Phila Rambeaux, had just passed through him. And in passing they had taken with them his bones, extracting them through his skin, wet as it was, through his salted clothes. His spine was gone and his pelvis too. He might have been left his skull, but the knee sockets had been emptied and all joints released from their joinings and spirited away. He shivered again, trying to hold his body together. Now he was shaking, trembling in every part that Phila had left behind, mostly in his shoulders and his hands.

  Lolly McKeever was no longer studying his feet. She was looking at his shoulders, then at his face, just above his right eye. She was neither laughing nor smiling. “Do you drink?”

  Before Aaron could deny or affirm, Kitty called from the pasture. “Come see if it recognizes you or not, why don’t you?” After a sad shake of her head, Lolly turned and waded into the grass.

  Kitty was standing by as the pig snouted up one patch of grass, then another, grunting its disappointment that it had made yet one more faulty choice, taken one more worthless gamble. “It likes it here,” Lolly said as she came alongside Kitty. Kitty took one step away not to avoid Lolly but to place the two of them more in front of the pig. “Now let it have a look at you,” she said.

  The pig shifted, giving the two of them a full view of its hams. To accommodate the move, the women stepped sideways, then began circling the pig from the cliff side of the pasture. Again the pig shifted, again no view was given except its high behind, the skinny legs that ended in what looked like high heels and the corkscrew tail that flicked itself lightly when the turn was completed. The women moved. The pig moved. Again the women moved, this time even closer to the cliff. The pig moved, its adamant hams confronting again the determined women.

  More thoughts of Phila Rambeaux passed through Aaron, going in the opposite direction, toward the sea. His bones were returned to him, his joints rejoined, his pelvis and his ribs still aching from the transaction. Now the thoughts were gone. They had deposited the bones in their familiar casing, and they, the bones, must take up again their usual chores. The trembling slowed, then stopped. Aaron moved his jaw and was relieved to discover that he could exercise some control. He might even be able to speak should that requirement ever be made of him again.

  Kitty and Lolly, not more than two feet from the edge of the cliff, where the pig had obviously maneuvered them, were appraising the pig’s hindquarters, no longer insistent on a full frontal experience. With stiff unsynchronized tilts of the head, a little to the right, a little to the left, like two metronomes—each determined to impose its own beat—the women regarded what they saw with thoughtful interest and skeptical appraisal. Kitty, looking intently at the pig’s behind, spoke first. “See? It knows you.”

  “The hams look like saddlebags. They’re too lean.”

  “Too lean for what?”

  “Too lean for it to be my pig.”

  “You’re just being fussy.”

  “I would hope so.”

  “Poor darling, look at it. You’ve made it so ashamed it won’t even show its face.”

  Aaron looked at the pig. It stood motionless except for an intermittent twitching of the ears and a single wiggle of the tail. Its snout seemed to be straining toward Aaron, as if the scent he was giving off was a smell it couldn’t quite identify. Again the ears twitched, an encouragement for the women to continue their assessment.

  Lolly McKeever turned away and looked out over the water. A breeze lifted her hair lightly, then let it fall back onto her shoulder. She put her hands in the back pockets of her jeans, straining her shirt against her breasts. This could not possibly be for Aaron’s benefit. Of that he was sure. Lolly had already dismissed him, and he could think of nothing that might qualify him for reevaluation. The bold presentation of her straining breasts was, he decided, an offering to the sea, a promise to the storm tossed and the shipwrecked that there waited on shore a worthy welcome and an abundant blessing.

  Kitty observed Lolly a moment. She pursed her lips and lidded her eyes. “Then you’re not taking the pig,” she said.

  “I take only what’s my own.”

  “Then I’m to keep it.”

  “For all of me, yes, keep it.”

  “And I’m to become a swineherd like yourself?”

  “If that high you aspire, I can’t stop you. And now I have to get back. I’m needed.”

  “You’re going?”

  “I’m going.” She leaned closer to Kitty. “And is that really your nephew?” She whispered the words.

  “Any reason he shouldn’t be?”

  “Oh, no. No, no. No, no, no.” She looked again at Aaron. He shifted from one foot to the other. “Somehow it seems right after all.”

  The women walked almost warily around the pig, heading toward Lolly’s truck. Aaron called out, “Aren’t you going to ask her about—you know—what’s-his-name. Tovey? Declan Tovey.” The women stopped. Neither moved. “I mean,”—Aaron continued—“well, you know what I mean.”

  Lolly turned toward Kitty. “What does he mean?”

  “He means Declan,” Kitty said. “Have you seen him lately? Declan?”

  Her voice was airy, a pretense of nonchalance, a sure sign to Lolly that she was mocking the true gravity of her question.

  “Declan Tovey? No. Why would I see him?” She started again toward the truck.

  “No reason. Except I—I came across him just this morning.”

  Lolly stopped. “Oh?” She hesitated, then asked, “And how is he these fine days?”

  “As well as can be expected.”

  “Oh? Well, if you see him again, say hello.”


  “Say hello yourself, why don’t you?”

  “I will. If I see him.”

  “You’ll see him.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  “You’ll see him now. And you can thank my lovely nephew for making it so easy for you.”

  “Oh?” Lolly raised her head and gazed loftily around, deliberately assuming a blank look. “Strange. I don’t see him.”

  “He’s there. In the house. Waiting.”

  “Oh?”

  “Come in, then, and be welcome.”

  “Another time.” She turned again toward Aaron. She seemed about to say something, but after another glance up and down, from his feet to his forehead, words failed her and she made again for the truck.

  “Watch you don’t fall in the hole,” Kitty called. “Since it was you dug it to begin with.”

  “I?”

  “You. If your name is Lolly McKeever, the name of the one who did it to him.”

  “Did? Did what?”

  “Did what was done to him. You.”

  “I? I?”

  “You. Slut.”

  Lolly drew herself up, the breasts again assuming the prominence displayed for the benefit of all the ships at sea. “I? ‘Slut,’ you say?”

  “Come then and see. I’ve no patience left.”

  “I’m needed.” Head held not quite as high as before, Lolly turned with some difficulty back toward the truck but seemed reluctant to take a step in its direction.

  “He’s here.”

  “And done in?”

  “Done.”

  Aaron looked down at the ground, then decided he’d look out past the cliff. The pig was swinging its body around, no longer needing to keep its face from view. It raised its snout, twitched its ears, and gave yet one more wiggle of its tail. Then it stood there, blinking at the horizon.

  As the women tramped toward the kitchen door, Kitty called out to Aaron, “I’m showing her Declan Tovey, if you want to be there to see it.”

  Lolly McKeever stood on the far side of the bed and looked down at the skeleton that lay stretched out before her. After a pleased guffaw, she slapped her hands onto her chest. “For the sake of Jesus and Mary too!” Then she laughed and put one hand on the shoulder of the skeleton’s coat and let it rest there. Kitty had placed herself at the foot of the bed and was holding on to the rail of the wooden footboard. Aaron stepped just inside the door, then moved a little to the side. He liked the way Lolly’s hair had fallen forward when she’d bowed her head.