The Pig Did It

by Joseph Caldwell

  Aaron obediently put his head back down and stared at the seaweed. A sea spider was coming toward him, making its way from bead to bead, walking more along the side than the top, the long, hair-thin legs barely touching the furred surface as it moved. Aaron had never realized how tiny the body itself was and how extended and delicate were the legs that took the body to wherever it might want to go. When the spider was less than three inches from Aaron’s nose, he lifted his head again and, before he could be urged to do otherwise, he raised his right shoulder and turned to look at his rescuer.

  There, seated on the rock, was Sweeney, naked, his elbows propped on his knees, his head bowed into his hands, his torso heaving slowly up and down as if he were keening, but without a wail or a moan. Water dripped from his hair onto his hands and ran in rivulets between the knuckles and down past his wrists to his knees where they disappeared in the thick red hair that sprang from his shins and calves.

  Aaron, still stiff in the arms and legs and spine, got up and stood watching, wondering what he might say or do. Then he saw the man he’d attempted to rescue standing ten feet off, the paddle of the canoe held like a staff in his right hand, the canoe nosing his leg like a faithful pet. He was looking at Aaron. His lips were jutted forward. His eyes were wide and round and seemed amused by what they saw. Aaron thought the time had come to punch his nose again. He lurched toward the man but stumbled when the numbness in his legs absorbed without effect the signals sent out by the will.

  “This is not one of the better places to take a swim,” the man said. “There are plenty of better beaches, in case you have any trouble like the trouble you’ve had today. You’re a lucky man. And did you know you’re still wearing socks?”

  To rob the man of any further satisfaction, Aaron turned away and went toward Sweeney. Sweeney had lowered his hands from his face and was letting them dangle between his knees, not quite shielding the plump penis and low-hanging testicles that sloped along the curve of the stone where he sat. The heaving breaths had become less labored. He was staring out over the water, his mouth slightly open, his eyes quiet and mournful. His exhaustion had brought him to a repose where neither rage nor exasperations could hide his sorrow.

  Aaron went no closer. He started to turn, back toward the man with the pet canoe, but decided to do as Sweeney was doing, to stare out over the sea.

  Finally Sweeney spoke. “I should never have done it,” he said. “I’ll never be forgiven. Never at all.”

  Aaron said nothing. Sweeney was talking to the sea, not to him. It would be impolite to insinuate himself into the conversation. He’d wait until Sweeney addressed him directly. And there, behold, he saw, well offshore, the canoe, the man paddling his way out into the rising, the falling waves.

  “He’s doing it again!” Aaron must have meant to shout, but it all came out more like a moan. To test his ability to modulate, he repeated “He’s doing it again!” The modulation was there, effected mostly by a gagging in his throat, then a gargling, then a thin line of water emerging from his mouth and running down his chin onto his chest. “Look! There!” he said in a hoarse whisper. “Look!”

  “I’ve betrayed my name,” Sweeney said in reply. “I’ve dishonored my family for all time to come. And may I never be forgiven.”

  Aaron turned to face the mournful man. He was standing, still naked except for the thick reddish hair that covered his chest and the thick orange hair that curled around the base of his dick and the darker hair that furred the skin of his balls. Without acknowledging Aaron’s presence, he continued to stare out toward the rampage before him. Aaron was tempted to ask what he might be talking about, but before be could say anything, Sweeney spoke again. “My name is Kieran Sweeney and your name is Aaron McCloud. And you were meant to drown, and I was meant to watch and see it happen. But I didn’t watch. I saw the waves claiming you for their own, and rightly so. I’ve told you that. But, no, being a McCloud, you hear nothing a Sweeney says. In you go—and the waves waiting, moving their jaws up and down. This was as it was meant to be. And it was meant to be that I would see it and rejoice. But did I rejoice or even smile? No. I, Kieran Sweeney, unstable of mind and with a body beyond all control, went running in, fighting the waves like the heroes we Sweeneys always were and are and will always be. And I reach down and drag you up from where they’ve caught you, from where you belong. And not content to simply laugh in your face and let you go, I pull you out of the depths. And then do I just fling you down and let you die? No. Unstable of mind, I work away and send the water gushing out of you onto the stones. And you’re a McCloud. McCloud, do you hear? A cursed McCloud. And I a good and blessed Sweeney. An enemy in the blood, an enemy in the breath. From all time past and all time to come. And I saved you, so I’m cursed along with you and with you all!”

  Aaron did little during the tirade except blink and let his lower lip fall a bit lower, little by little. But now the lip could go no lower, the jaw could fall no farther. His amazement was complete. He blinked once more, with Sweeney still standing huge before him, the cliffs and the scree rising high behind him, blackened red and darkening rust. It was his aunt whom Sweeney loved, that he already knew. And for Kitty McCloud did Sweeney walk the shore grieving and sorrowing. She was one of the cursed, born on the far side of a boundary that must never be crossed, and he a man too foolish to kick the nonsense aside and say what was in his heart. Aaron decided to speak.

  “Does my aunt know that you’re in love with her?” Sweeney curled the fingers of his right hand into a fist, but made no other move. Slowly he let the fingers uncurl. After they had rested a moment, lightly touching his thighs, he said—without looking at Aaron—“See him out there, getting farther and farther from shore. The paddle will be taken from him again. The water will come into the boat. Lower it will go until there’s no hope for it. And the man will go under. But you—you must go for him. Save him. Do again what you already did. Try to rescue him. Please. Try again. And this time I will watch and keep on watching. Maybe he’ll keep his canoe again and make it to the shore. But you, you must go under and stay where you belong. No one must come for you. No one must save you. Please. I promise by my family’s good and blessed name I’ll make no move. My mind I’ll feed with ancient thoughts, my body I’ll instruct to stand where it stands. You’ll drown—you’ll drown! And I watching! And I’ll be the one saved. See? See there? His paddle’s gone. He’s adrift. Save him. Save him. And save me as well. You can do that, can’t you?” Sweeney had moved closer, his, plea streaming from his eyes, near to taking the form of tears. “I saved you,” he whispered. “Now you must save me.”

  “Why don’t you just tell her you love her?”

  Sweeney drew in a deep breath and sneered. “Of course you won’t save me. You’re a McCloud. A McCloud never saved anyone. I should have known better than to have asked.”

  “Maybe she feels the same way about you.”

  The sneer fell from his face, the jaw went slack, and the mouth opened. Then all was clamped shut again, with a look of loathing and disgust. Aaron waited for Sweeney to spit at him. But Sweeney merely turned and, with heavy tread, began to march more than walk, away to the north.

  “Your clothes,” Aaron called. “You forgot your clothes.” Back Sweeney came. He reached down and gathered his pants and shirt and shoes and socks and undershorts and bundled them against his chest. Without looking at Aaron, he said, “Tell your aunt she had her chance to give proper burial to the dead. I’ll be over before the day is done and take the man away. It’s best she be rid of him. And tell her again her secret’s safe with me. She did what she had to do, and not even Kieran Sweeney will blame her for it. But warn her I’m coming—and Declan Tovey goes with me.” He turned north and began again his determined march. As Aaron watched, he saw a shoe drop from the bundle.

  “Your shoe,” Aaron called.

  Sweeney stopped, stood a moment, then continued on.

  “She loves you!” he yelled.

  Swee
ney went right on, the gulls careering overhead, the waves booming, and the waters hissing along the shore. Aaron considered picking up the shoe—to give it to him later—after all, he did save his life—but Sweeney might come back for it later when there was no one to see his need for it. Aaron turned and started south, toward home.

  Then he realized that he himself was near to naked. He went back, retrieved his clothes and put them on, except the sandals. They were gone. The wind caught the loose shirt, the buttons flown, and flapped it out behind. Just before the shoreline made a curve at the foot of the cliffs, he took one more backward glance. Sweeney’s shoe was still there, and Sweeney was nowhere in sight.

  7

  Kitty and Aaron and Lolly, like relatives around a sickbed, had gathered again in the priest’s room to look down with solemn concern at the outstretched Declan Tovey. Declan, for his part, seemed neither the worse nor the better for having been left alone for almost twenty-four hours, except the grin seemed not quite so insolent, a bit more subdued than Aaron remembered. Like any patient surrounded by those discussing his fate, indifferent to his presence, involved solely in their own determinations, Declan seemed to have retreated into concerns considerably distant from the urgencies and intensities being exchanged not two feet from where he lay.

  Lolly was already at the house when Aaron had returned from his dousing, wet again, cold again, but with the chattering and shivering under considerably more control than on the day before. Aaron had wanted to say something about the previous evening at Dockery’s, starting not with a mention of his championship or even of the Declan surrogate accompanying her, but with a humble apology for his drunken state. Not that he cared one way or the other about his drinking, but it seemed a polite and possible pretext for beginning a review of an evening that had raised more than a few questions as yet unanswered. Who was the man? Why had Lolly not seen him, Aaron? Had she seen him but ignored him? Had she forgotten that they’d met that very afternoon in the presence of the present corpse? Perhaps she couldn’t recognize him if he wasn’t bedraggled, as he was now after his near drowning. All these he considered topics of high import, subjects that easily took precedence over what to do with the skeleton arrayed before them or the resolution of the unsolved matter of his murder. But Lolly, coming through the kitchen door had, at the sight of Aaron, merely said, “You’ve been swimming again. You’ll catch your death.” And had then swept past Kitty at her computer and into the priest’s room, holding up a needle threaded with heavy black thread. Kitty and Aaron had followed. Lolly was already at work sewing the detached button back onto the man’s coat, her hands supple and swift and obviously more competent at a domestic task than Aaron had considered likely.

  “Tell Kieran Sweeney,” she had said, “tell him the button is sewn back and he can give up being critical of the way things are being done.”

  It was at that point that Aaron—all his questions as yet unaddressed—had decided to tell in sequence the more than several amazements visited upon him within the past hour. But he couldn’t quite reconstruct the exact order of things, his near-drowning after his own attempt to save Lolly’s friend, or his determination that Sweeney was the murderer, convicted yesterday by the specifics given in his accusation of Kitty. Or was it Sweeney’s hopeless love for Kitty? Or—and this he had already forgotten—Sweeney’s rescue of him and the man’s despairing regrets that he had saved a McCloud. Unable to untangle the events, he simply blurted out what he considered to be of greatest urgency. “Kieran Sweeney is in love with you.”

  Both women gasped. Lolly was again the first to find a word, “Me?” she cried.

  “No,” Aaron said. “You. Kitty.”

  “Me?!” She put her hand to her throat.

  “You.”

  “Her?” asked Lolly, not disbelieving so much as surprised that she had not, by right, been given the preference.

  “Her,” said Aaron.

  “The man is daft. And a Sweeney besides,” said Kitty. “You’re imagining things again.”

  “No. I’m not. I swear I’m not.”

  “And did he say the words himself?”

  “It was clear enough without the actual words.”

  “I don’t want to hear.” Kitty shivered either to fight off the advances of a man so repellent or, more likely, to stifle the impulse to giggle. “He hates me as much as I hate him. If such is possible.”

  Aaron watched his aunt’s face shed all feeling, the features assuming a noncommittal, bland aspect as if she were posing for a passport photo. She was inviting Aaron to observe her indifference. He dutifully observed, then looked down at the floor.

  “He saved my life,” Aaron said.

  “He didn’t save your life.”

  “He saved my life. I was drowning.”

  “How could you be drowning?”

  “I was trying to save a friend of Lolly’s.”

  Lolly had pulled the button, now sewn onto the jacket, up to her mouth and took the thread between her teeth. She was about to snap it, but not before she’d said, “What friend?”

  “That man. The one you were with in Dockery’s last night. Oily hair. A sort of runt, I thought.”

  “Who was in Dockery’s?”

  “You. With him. The runt.”

  “I? In Dockery’s?”

  “Last night. I was there. I played darts. I won.”

  “Well. Sorry I wasn’t there for the event.”

  “But I saw you.”

  “Not me you saw. And I have no runt friends. Disgusting. Me? With a man like that? Me?”

  “Well, actually, he was, I guess, for some maybe—well, maybe he was really not such a bad-looking guy. And—and just because he’s shorter than I am—”

  Lolly looked at Kitty, the thread not bitten through. “He’s mad, your nephew. He’s seeing things that were never there.”

  “Imagining things, too. Saved by a Sweeney. Have you ever heard the like?”

  “But I was saved. And I did try to—I mean—the man from Dockery’s. I won the dart game. Ask anybody. You were there, but you left. Then I beat him at darts, and he didn’t drown anyway. Don’t ask me how. He was in a canoe. But without a paddle. And Sweeney’s in love with you. And—and …”

  Aaron let his voice trail off, not because he’d finished his protest but because he’d been given a sudden truth: Lolly hadn’t cut her hair. It was long, as long as it had been yesterday. Nor was it as severe as he remembered it being last night. He’d been mistaken. The dim light in Dockery’s had allowed him—encouraged him—to see Lolly. But it hadn’t been Lolly. And she hadn’t been there with the man in the canoe, the man whose nose he’d punched. For whatever reason, he was relieved.

  “Yes, yes, yes,” his aunt was saying. “All right, all right, all right. Nobody’s disagreeing. Are we, Lolly?”

  “No. It’s the truth itself if ever I heard it.”

  “All right, then,” said Aaron, quite content to let the subject drop. “But I’ll tell you something else. It was Sweeney did the murder.”

  Lolly was patting the button down, making sure it was in place on the dead man’s jacket. She stopped. Kitty lowered her hand from her chest where it had gone after clutching her throat. She let it flop onto the bed near Declan’s thighbone.

  “He did it,” said Aaron. “I know it. And I’m telling you now.”

  “And he—Sweeney—he said as much?” Lolly let her hand slip away from the button and rest on the skeleton’s pelvis.

  “No. But I could tell. The way he knew how it was done. The way it happened. He was, of course, accusing you while he was saying it.”

  “Me?” said Lolly.

  “No. You. Kitty.”

  Kitty calmly straightened Declan’s tie. “Of course he’d say a thing like that. Especially since he’s so godawful in love with me.”

  “He even named the murder weapon. A tool in that bag. A—what’s its name?”

  “A leggett.” Again Kitty and Lolly spoke at the sam
e time.

  “Yes. A leggett.” Aaron paused, then asked, “How did you both know that?”

  Kitty shrugged. Lolly extended her pursed lips, puckering them outward, then drew them in again. Neither woman said anything. Now Lolly straightened the tie and Kitty patted the button.

  “Well,” Aaron said. “Believe me or don’t believe me. It’ll all be over soon. Sweeney said he’s coming to take away the—the—he’s coming for Declan Tovey. To take him away. To bury him proper, he said.”

  “He won’t!” said Lolly.

  “He can’t! said Kitty.

  They both began smoothing out the blanket, proving themselves to be competent caregivers, concerned with the welfare of the patient. Lolly brought the blanket up to Declan’s chest. Kitty folded it neatly back.

  “He sounded determined,” Aaron said.

  “Hah!” Lolly managed to get more contempt into one syllable than Aaron had ever thought possible. Kitty’s contribution was limited to a small smile and a sly look in the eyes, narrowing them and bringing the lids down almost halfway. “I can’t wait,” she said.

  Nor did she have to. There was the sound of wheels on the gravel outside, then a growling halt.

  “He’s here,” Aaron said.

  “Oh, my God,” said Lolly.

  Kitty moved away from the bed. “He’ll never so much as see him,” she said.

  “But,” said Lolly, “he’ll come in. Respect he has none of it. Not even for the priest’s room.” She looked down at Declan. She seemed about to throw herself on the corpse, a sacrificial effort to hide and protect it.

  “But why,” asked Aaron, “why can’t you just let him take it—if you’re not going to give it to the gardaí?”

  Lolly put her hand to her throat, scandalized; Kitty shook her head wearily, her preferred gesture of contempt.