“It would save all of us all this trouble and—”
“In one breath,” said Kitty, “you say he murdered the man. In the next you say hand him over, give him all the evidence against him. And where’s the consistency in that?”
“Then at least let him see that we know what he’s done; that we’re the ones with the evidence. Let him come in. Let him see.”
“Aaron,” said Kitty sternly. “Don’t interfere with things you know nothing about. We do not, on principle, let a Sweeney do as a Sweeney wishes.” She had moved over to the crucifix on the spindly table. “Now,” she said, “swear now, both of you, swear you never saw what you’re going to see now.”
Aaron stood up straighter. “Swear?”
“Swear. Both of you. Not out loud if you don’t want to, but swear. You never saw what you’re going to see.”
With her fingernails she withdrew the nail from the left hand of the corpus on the cross. The hand stayed in place. She came back to the bed and reached up to where the oval picture had been hanging. Slowly she inserted the nail into the tiny hole where the original nail had been put into the wall. She took her fingers away and banged with her fist on the wall just to the left of the headboard. After listening a moment, she withdrew the nail and inserted it again. Again she listened. Again there seemed to be no response to what she’d done. After another moment she quickly pulled the nail out. “Of course. Wrong hand.”
The slam of the truck door rattled the shuttered window. “Oh,” said Lolly, her tone of voice close to a warning. Kitty had gone back to the crucifix, replaced the nail into the left hand, and withdrawn the nail from the right. This time the hand slipped slightly but stayed stuck to the wooden crossbeam. Kitty went to the wall, looked down at Declan Tovey as if to make sure he was all right, then put the nail into the wall. Immediately there was a click. Kitty banged again on the wall. Nothing. She banged again, lower down. A slow scraping sound was heard. Kitty moved back from the wall.
Aaron recognized the sound. It was the monster’s scaly flesh rubbing against the tunnel walls, the beast coming closer and closer with each repeated scrape. The imagined sound of his childhood had become real, even to the steady increase of the noise as the monster continued its approach. As Aaron watched, a section of the wainscoting to the left of the bed—about three feet by three feet—slowly scraped open. A stench carried on a cold wind flooded the room. It was as if the sea itself had died and been left to rot. Putrid kelp and other seaweed sent their complaints into the room. Aaron felt that the room had sunk down to the depths of the decomposing sea and been left there untouched, unmoved, for years, taking into itself the depth and corruption of the long-buried waves, a chamber preserved for those chosen to know that even the sea would, at the last, molder and turn to rot. The wind stirred the bottom sheet near Declan Tovey’s shoulder and pressed Aaron’s salted clothes again against his flesh, sending their damp into his bones and, along the way, shivering his arms and forcing his legs to twitch.
This was the priests’ tunnel to the beach. From here they had made their escape. The great secret of the house, denied him from his childhood on, had at last been revealed. Aaron resisted covering his nose. Long had he wanted to know what he now knew, long had he yearned to see what he now saw. To resist in any way whatsoever would be a sign of ingratitude, and he would not diminish his sense of wonder with the least display of distress. To prove himself worthy of the revelation, he purposely took in a deep breath, taking into his nose and into his lungs as much as he could of the putrefaction that assailed him now. He felt faint and reached out to steady himself on Declan Tovey’s foot. The leather was gummy at his touch, the flesh of the foot perhaps still stuffed inside, but he kept his hold, so great was his need not to fall in a heap.
Lolly had covered her ears even though the assault had been to the nose. Next she clamped her hands over her mouth, then wrung the hands together in front of her breasts, and finally acknowledged the source of the attack by pinching shut her nostrils and saying, “Pee-yu.”
Waving her hand back and forth in front of the tunnel opening, Kitty seemed more to be fanning a flame than forcing back into the dark the ghastly stink that by now had filled the room. Accepting her attempts as useless, she simply stopped, put her hand to her forehead to test for fever, then said, “We’ll put him in here.” She pulled a flashlight from the cabinet drawer, an old tin one. She held it out to Aaron. “Here.”
Aaron took the flashlight. “You want me to get in there?”
“And move back, but careful, it goes downhill fast, and it smells like slippery. But hurry. Lolly and I will hand him in.”
Aaron poked his head into the hole. The stink slammed into his face. Bent double, he stepped inside. Now the stink possessed him. He would become part of the rot. He beamed the flashlight ahead of him. It caught the slant leading down. He angled the light and saw, or thought he could see, a narrow stairway of rough-hewn stones that made a quick descent, then curved off to the left. As expected, the stones were slippery, but the crude cut, creating peaks and hollows, made a firm hold possible. He went down five steps, then turned, aiming the light back up toward the entry.
“Okay,” he whispered. “Hand him in.”
There was no echo, no reverberations. The dark growths on the steps and the walls absorbed all the sound as if the passageway were lined with felt. This helped him realize that he was being stifled. No air seemed to be coming in through the opening ahead of him, the gases surrounding him made impenetrable—almost solid—by the pollutants that seemed to be feeding on his flesh. “Hurry,” he said, not bothering to whisper. “I can’t breathe.”
“Oh, shut up,” his aunt said. “We’re the ones doing all the work.”
Aaron could hear a discreet rattling.
“Easy now,” Lolly was saying. “We don’t want to make him all a jumble, do we?”
“Keep the sheet stretched,” his aunt said.
“Then don’t come so close. Stay on your side.”
“It’s you bending the sheet.”
“Pull back.”
“Climb over the bed. Just step on the mattress. Go ahead.”
The sound that followed was of a cascade of bones clattering together, falling against one another, some obviously dropping to the floor.
“Now you’ve done it.”
“You didn’t lift your side.”
“Don’t step there. Mind his arm.”
“It’s his leg.”
“Mind his leg.”
“Put it back in his pants, there, above the shoe.”
Aaron tried to see what was happening, but the backside of his aunt had appropriated most of the opening. She was bent down and moving what seemed like her right arm. Swaying lightly, she kept working the arm.
“We can straighten him out when we get him inside.” It was Lolly who spoke. Then she began to giggle. “So intimate, isn’t it? Do you suppose he knows we’re handling him all over the place?”
“Of course he knows. Or what’s a heaven for?” His aunt managed to keep her severity.
Aaron coughed. “Can we hurry? I can’t last much longer.”
“Listen to him.” Kitty said. “We’re doing all the gruesome and he’s the one complaining.”
“I can’t breathe.”
“Then don’t.”
Kitty held the joined corners of the sheet in through the opening. With his free hand, Aaron took hold and backed onto the landing leading to the steps. The rest of the sheet followed, slung low with some sharp, some rounded thrustings poking against the linen.
“Quick. Back farther. There’s more of him.”
Aaron had to go two steps down. The body kept coming. Aaron could not remember the man being this tall.
“Okay. That’s far enough. That’s all there is.” Lolly had taken over the opening and almost reverently set down her end. Aaron took one more step back and set down the corners he held. He intended to open the sheet, but the narrow passage allowed only r
oom for the folded shroud.
Aaron raised his foot to start the climb back up the opening but could see no place to set it down. Declan Tovey took up all the room on the narrow stairs. He put his foot back on his own step and considered what to do, shove the bones to the side or just go ahead and step on them. The anticipated crunch gave him a quick shiver.
There was the sound of a heavy knock, loud enough to carry even into the recesses of the secret tunnel. “Quick,” his aunt whispered. “We have to close the panel.”
“I’ve come for my friend Declan. Hand him over.” It was Sweeney’s voice coming through the kitchen door. Aaron bent down to shove the shroud, but before he had touched the cloth, his aunt hissed the words, “Stay there. We’ll be back.” With that the panel was slammed shut. Aaron stared up the steps at the dark where the opening had been.
“No! Wait!” Aaron called, but there was no answer. He aimed the flashlight at the closed panel, searching along its surface for some handle or latch by which it could be opened. There was nothing. Slowly he moved the beam of light along the edges where the wood met the stone, then at the center, then again at the sides. The seal was absolute.
He knew now he was expected to stay where he was. His aunt was using him badly. He was being taken advantage of because of his good nature and his willingness to oblige. This was not acceptable. Sweeney or no Sweeney, he would crunch his way to the top of the steps and pound on the panel. He would not accept this entombment. He would not allow his beloved aunt so easily to maltreat him even in the service of a centuries-old family secret. If Sweeney wanted the bones, let him have them. The whole matter should be turned over to the police, to the gardaí, anyway.
As if to confirm the sad fact, Aaron reached down and folded back the sheet, to expose at least the skull, as if to give the poor man a chance to breathe. It was a headless corpse that confronted him, the collar of the tattered shirt completely uninhabited. Aaron parted more of the sheet. He found the cap just above the belt and the head just below. Aaron would not take the time to reconstruct the man entirely, but the least he could do was put the man’s head on right. When he lifted the skull, however, he sent a hand clattering down the steps. He froze where he stood. He listened to hear if there was any response from the other side of the panel. He waited. He heard nothing. He had started to straighten up, the skull in his hand, when he heard Kieran Sweeney, distant but distinct, saying “I’m coming in to get him. I know he’s there.”
“No Sweeney sets a foot inside this house. You know that and I know that.”
“I’ve come for my friend, and I won’t be turned away. Poor man buried all this time in unholy ground. Shame. Shame.”
It was Lolly’s voice Aaron heard next. “Let him in, why not? He’s raving, and there’s no Declan Tovey here that he’s referring to. Prove him wrong. When there’s nothing to hide, why hide it?”
“He’s a Sweeney,” Kitty said.
“And never,” said Sweeney, “would I dirty the soles of my shoes in such a place except to rescue my friend from his murderer.”
“Then come in, Kieran Sweeney, and show me that anyone’s been murdered. Come in. Don’t keep hanging your fool of a face outside the door. It’s open. Come in and welcome, and remind me to have Father Colavin come and bring the holy water when you’ve gone.”
Aaron heard the slam of the screen door. “It hurts my feet to step inside, but I’ve done it.” Sweeney spoke in a hoarse whisper. “And may I be forgiven.”
“Just shut up, and don’t go bumping into things and crashing everything down onto the floor.”
“Can I be allowed to do my duty in silence?”
“Silence is the preferred speech when a Sweeney’s doing the talking.”
Heavy footsteps, booted, deliberate, seemed to come toward Aaron, then recede down the hall and up the stairs.
He put the skull on the step just below the collar, then retrieved the hand. When he slipped it partly into the sleeve, it angled away to the right, looking as if it was thumbing a ride. He straightened it out, but again it slid to the right, drawn downward by the descending steps. Convinced at first that the man himself, that Declan Tovey was doing all in his power to thwart his efforts made in the name of simple respect, Aaron considered letting the body lie in this ludicrous position, stretched out on the landing, with the upper torso two steps down, the head fallen to the third. He saw the detached skull as something of a plea, an appeal that he, Aaron, put the man right, that he separate and rearrange the bones until they formed the suggestion of a man with all his remaining parts, bare and disconnected though they might be, properly placed in relationship to one another, and restored to the dignity and reverence any skeleton surely deserved. As he set about the task, dexterously manipulating the flashlight and the bones, the flashlight and the clothing, he began to wonder why the provident plotter who had brought him to this dank and reeking place, dark and fetid, couldn’t have arranged for Lolly McKeever to have been shut up with him. Together they could have rearranged Declan Tovey. Together they could have found amusement in the task at hand. She would know him to be a man of amiable good cheer, a pleasant companion, a man of ready intelligence. He would discover in her a woman of sturdy emotion, with a sly appreciation of his finer qualities, a woman adaptable to adventure without being excessively enthusiastic. She and Aaron would get along quite nicely. They would become acquainted. They would emerge good friends, having arrived in those few moments or more, at a mutual appreciation that might have taken time untold to achieve under less singular circumstances.
Aaron had already reversed the position of Declan Tovey. His shoes were three steps down, and the jacket, shirt and pants were turned around so the man seemed to be lying on the stones, landing, and steps, rather than having fallen backward, unable to arise and to right himself. What remained was to stick each separate bone into place within the clothing, making sure the femur was above the tibia and fibula in the pants leg and the humerus above the ulna and radius in the sleeve. (Not for nothing had the words and the sounds of the words fascinated him in eighth grade. What could be more exciting than to become acquainted with objects named “thoracic vertebrae,” “scapula,” “patella,” and, best of all, “clavicle.” His interest at first suggested that he should become a doctor, but when he realized that it was the sound of the words—the way they shaped themselves in the mouth and on the tongue—he knew he was destined to be a man of words, a writer, that most blessed of men, one accompanied throughout life by the rhythms and resonance, the thrusts and roundings of the world’s most glorious achievement: the word.)
Now at Aaron’s feet lay the familiar skeleton of Declan Tovey, reconstituted except for the placement of the skull near the closed panel, where it would declare the completion of his task. There were many questions, more than Aaron’s intellect had the capacity to contain. But there was only one answer. Of this Aaron could be sure. Declan Tovey had been done in by a jealous hand. Who might have struck the blow or poured the poison was still a mystery, but one that seemed susceptible to resolution by even the most inept corps of police. What stood in the way, implacably, was the resistance in these parts to easy clarifications. Indifference to the simple seemed indigenous, the insistence on complexity congenital, and the reach for widening involvement gleefully encouraged. With each of the accused accusing another, the roster of suspects could lengthen indefinitely. The entire town could be drawn into the affair, each fingering the other, a reign of suspicion, until the entire weave of the communal fabric was reduced to rags and tatters, the maid-pale peace turned blue in the face. Declan Tovey’s bones would be dragged from pillow to post, rattling in protest, all jumbled, worn finally to a fine dust it would have taken eon upon eon for nature itself to achieve.
Just as Aaron began bending down to put the hairless skull in place on the step, completing his act of restoration, he heard a click at the top of the closed panel. The timing had been perfect. He had been given the exact number of minutes and second
s he’d needed to fulfill his rite of piety. Now the panel would open, and he could display the fruits of that piety to a surprised aunt and to an admiring Lolly McKeever. He would be given solemn thanks interspersed with questions and wonderments as to how he had done so remarkable a deed. Happy blessings would be bestowed as the bones were returned to the priest’s bed, the sheet handled with the utmost care so as to preserve his handiwork and restore some semblance of respect for the desecrated remains.
Aaron stood one step below Declan’s shoes, his own head just a bit higher—from the panel’s perspective—than the skull. In tribute to the completion of his task, Aaron took in a deep breath.
Instantly, in defense of itself, his epiglottis slammed shut, but not before some of the fetid vapors had rushed into his throat, into his lungs, and, by some uncharted route, into his eyes and forehead. He coughed, choked, and coughed again. Tears flooded his eyes. Something was stinging the inside of his nose. His windpipe refused to open. After three great gasps some air was allowed to pass through his nose, but the coughing and the choking were beyond his control. A banging was heard. The panel swung open. Aaron lurched, stumbling, falling, rising, crawling up the steps. In the scramble Declan was sent clattering down in even greater disarray than he had suffered before. The skull, almost crushed by Aaron’s knee, then kicked backward by Aaron’s foot, rolled, then bounced from step to step down to what depths Aaron had no inclination to measure. He thrust the upper part of his body through the opening and laid his head on the floor, his chest heaving, his mouth panting, his hands splayed open on the wooden boards, an attempt to secure a hold that would counter any attempt by the vile air to draw him back into its pestilential dank.
No one came to his aid. No surprised voice spoke his name, no helping hand was lowered to calm his panting frame. Through unwiped tears he saw not the sneakered foot of his aunt or the perfectly formed ankle of Lolly McKeever, but two brown-booted feet and the cuffs of a pair of black woolen pants that could only be worn by Kieran Sweeney. Aaron braced his hands on the floorboards and three times raised his upper torso, taking in first the belted girth of Kieran, second the skirt of his aunt and the jeans of Lolly, and third the movement of Kieran past him toward the panel opening.
The Pig Did It Page 13
