Tom joined Jim at the window, the two of them regarding with awe what was obviously the found knucklebone of Declan Tovey. Tom tried to take it from Jim’s hand, but Jim pulled it out of reach, waited for Tom to lower his arm, then held the bone up to the light once more. “A relic,” Jim whispered. “A holy relic. Some martyred priest. The blessings I’ll get.”
“It’s a fish bone,” Tom said.
“Because you didn’t find it.”
“It’s still a fish bone.”
“You have no faith.”
“I have no faith in fish bones, if that’s what you mean.”
The screen door slammed. Sweeney burst into the room, the flung door slamming Kitty against the wall. “The pig,” he gasped. “The pig is in the grave!”
For want of a more original response, both Lolly and Aaron stiffened, and possibly Kitty too, still stuck as she was between the door and the wall. Sweeney seemed to have immediately realized the error of his announcement and, scratching his chest, wetting his lips, managed to say, “I mean—” But before be could complete his revision, Jim, gaining heat from Tom’s heresies, dangled the bone in front of his colleague’s face. “We’ll see what Father Colavin has to say. I’m showing it to him and telling him the whole story and then we’ll see …” He stopped and turned slowly to look at Sweeney. Tom, too, turned his head, but even more slowly.
“What pig?” asked Jim.
“And a grave?” asked Tom.
“No, no, nothing. No pig. No grave,” Sweeney answered.
“Didn’t you just say, ‘The pig is in the grave’?”
“Oh. That. Yes. Yes, I did say that.”
Jim closed his fist over the bone as if to protect it from whatever disrespect might come from talk about a pig. “Then I’m asking again, what pig?”
“Yes,” Tom said, unwilling to yield his proprietary rights to the question that had been of his own devising. “What grave?”
Kitty slid out from behind the door, rubbing a shoulder. “His name is Sweeney, You know that. So why do you listen to one word he says? They never know what they’re talking about. A bunch of blatherers if ever there was one, almost always muttering about pigs and graves and sheep and shrouds. And you’re paying him the least attention? You must be as idiot as he.”
“Idiot, am I?” Sweeney drew himself up at least another quarter of an inch.
“If you’re a Sweeney, the word applies. And enough of pigs and graves and whatever madness has come over you.”
Sweeney managed to find, somewhere in either his spine or his neck, enough slack to raise his height yet one more quarter inch. “These men know better than to listen to slander. In their profession they know that only the truth is of interest. The facts, no more. And they also know, as does the entire civilized population, that to be a Sweeney is also to be a poet. And if you can’t recognize poetry when you hear it, you don’t belong to the land where you were born. It was a poem I was reciting. ‘The pig is in the grave.’ Have you never heard of symbolism? Is metaphor an area of ignorance? Listen then, will you? ‘The pig is in the grave.’ Can you hear it now? Have you or have you not an ear for cadence?” He shifted his proud gaze from Kitty to Jim and Tom. “You can hear it, can’t you? You know poetry when it’s visited upon you. ‘The pig is in the grave.’ Ponder, gentlemen. Ponder. And then admit to me and to all gathered here that you are in the presence of a poet.”
Lolly and Aaron allowed themselves to slump slightly. Jim looked for another moment at Sweeney, thinking, then turned back to the light coming in through the window. Again he held up the relic. Tom continued to regard Sweeney, thought requiring for him a bit more time. Then he, too, returned his attentions to the bone. “Superstitious nonsense.”
“Faith,” said Jim. “I’ll take it to Father Colavin.”
“Take it to forensics,” Tom said. “They’ll test it. They’ll tell you the foolishness you’re worshipping.”
Aaron looked at Kitty, Kitty at Sweeney, Sweeney at Lolly and Lolly at Aaron. No one spoke. No one moved.
“Forensics!” Jim spit out the word. “They’ll never touch it with their gloved hands, their carbon dating, and DNA and all. It’s faith tells all we need to know.”
“All we need to know about fish bones. Fish bones and faith.” Kitty relaxed first, then Lolly, then Sweeney, then Aaron. Lolly, at her most casual, said, “Aren’t you supposed to be looking for an escaped prisoner?”
“We are looking, thank you very much,” Jim said. “And we’ll continue looking, if you’ll excuse us. Come, Tom. We’ll go to Father Colavin. And you’ll be begging indulgences from what I hold in my hand before the day is out. And you’ll be given nothing back but your own scorn.”
Their shoes weighted with the full authority of their calling, Jim and Tom stomped out the door, across the hall, through the kitchen, and out into the yard. Aaron could see them pause for only the briefest moment when they saw the pig wallowing down in the hole, allowing, no doubt, some fleeting thought to pass through their minds. As they continued toward the car, Tom alone looked back, his head turning slowly. He faced front abruptly when he bumped into the back fender of their car.
Aaron, Lolly, Kitty and Sweeney watched silently as the car drove away, Declan’s knucklebone no doubt laid out on the dashboard, guarding against all evil in this world and the next.
After the car had driven out of sight, Aaron, Lolly, Kitty and Sweeney turned as one and looked toward the bed where the rest of Declan Tovey lay smothered and crunched beneath the flimsy mattress known heretofore only to priests.
“I think,” said Kitty, “that before we do anything more or say anything more, we all have a bit of a drink.”
9
Finally everything was settled. Aaron felt that the combatants, himself included, succumbed at the last to exhaustion and to the fellow feeling of having shared and survived a somewhat energetic day. Then, too, the Tullamore Dew they were drinking may well have made its contribution to the newly generated amity. Assignments were made. Assignments were accepted. Aaron would enlarge and deepen the grave, Sweeney would make the coffin, and Kitty and Lolly would do the women’s work of preparing the corpse.
Sweeney’s brother would milk his cows, Lolly’s sister would tend her pigs, Kitty’s novel would be given a time of rest, and Aaron’s suffering would be—yet one more time—postponed. And so they set themselves to work.
When Aaron started out to dig a more commodious grave, Sweeney was already, with a crowbar, taking down some of Kitty’s bookshelves, the books themselves candidates for corrections—from Elizabeth Bowen to Virginia Woolf, with, ominously, a new section devoted to Joyce Carol Oates. The oak would make a worthy coffin. To purchase boards in town would inevitably lead to unwanted questions, and Sweeney was a man loath to lie, especially to his friend Diarmid Dunne, from whom he’d have to buy the lumber. Aaron himself had been obliged to hand over a pair of socks, some undershorts, and a clean shirt, so the women could properly prepare the skeleton. (Aaron had feared that his one good suit was about to be appropriated and his last pair of shoes as well, but the fits were wrong—Aaron’s fault, they implied—and the rest of his wardrobe survived intact.)
It was during the fulfillment of these various tasks that Aaron was given some insight as to why the decision regarding immediate burial had been agreed to by each participant from the start. When he helped Sweeney remove the books from the confiscated shelves, the man leaned close to his ear and said, “Before all this is over, she’ll confess. Prepare yourself. I know she’s your aunt, but I know shell let it all come out before the coffin hits the ground.” Aaron had said nothing, simply continuing to remove the complete works of Aphra Behn from the shelf.
As he’d handed the shirt to his aunt upstairs in his room, she had, in tones of sturdy practicality, said, “Don’t get yourself too interested in Lolly McKeever. I’ve consented to all this because it’s the best way to get her to admit what she’s done. Before the poor body is laid to rest, she�
��ll confess.” Again Aaron had said nothing, simply handing over the shirt, the socks and the undershorts.
When he’d handed Lolly the volume from the inherited Encyclopaedia Britannica, number 25 from the 1911 edition, so she would have something to refer to when arranging the bones—the article on skeletons—she’d accepted the book, reached over and lightly touched his arm. “I’m so happy you’re here,” she whispered. “You’ll be a valuable witness when he confesses. And don’t worry. He will. Before the bones are out of the house, he’ll admit to what he’s done. So pay attention.” She then patted his cheek. Aaron had said nothing. He had simply reached up and touched the skin where her fingers had been, however briefly.
One last issue had yet to be resolved. It was customary for the women to wash the corpse before dressing it. There was no actual corpse to wash, but some gesture in that direction was deemed necessary. Kitty thought a simple once over with a feather duster might be enough; Lolly wanted total immersion. It was finally settled: Kitty would wash each bone with a wet cloth. Lolly would dry it with a fresh towel and place it inside the clothes. When Lolly insisted on soap, Kitty, after a moment’s pause, conceded, promising as well to use the expensive and scented soap that was one of the few indulgences she allowed herself.
Aaron went outside before any more contentions could be introduced. As he headed toward the shed to get the spade, he found himself looking around for the pig. It was nowhere to be seen. Not in the garden or in the high grass leading to the cliff or across the road or even in the wallow it had so rudely made of Declan Tovey’s grave. He considered looking down from the cliff to see if the animal had finally gone over the edge. But if that were so, he didn’t want to see it, the pig impaled on a crag or stuck, still struggling in a crevice, or even the fat pink body plumped on the narrow beach like some sea slug washed ashore by the maddened waves.
Now that these images had passed before his inner eye, he had no choice but to go and look. He owed it to the pig. Its fate could not fulfill itself unnoted. The obsequy of a glance, a wince, a shudder, a revulsion seemed the least he could offer. He strode into the resisting grass, the pull of it at his feet as he slowly tore, more than trampled, his way toward the cliff, giving him a sense that he was being given one last chance not to proceed.
The great waves, rising high as if aghast at what they were seeing on the shore, plunged down in pity and in grief at what they were witnessing, sending heavenward the spread spray fanning out over the waters, a last gesture of despair in the face of so much that was calamitous and doomed. Surely this could not be just for the pig—if it was the pig the waves could see. Some other vision—either prophetic or present now—brought these waves to this violence, this need to destroy themselves, this determination to be spared any further sight of what lay along or beyond the shore.
Aaron stopped before he got to the cliff’s edge. It was his aunt’s house the waves could see, the stones gone gray with age, the slate roof blue in the bright air, the windows reflecting back the flaming flares of the lowering sun. It was Declan Tovey’s grave the waves could see, the rock cairn at its head, the wind-bent trees bowing to the east, and the cluster of trucks—Sweeney’s and Lolly’s, along with his aunt’s Acura. And they saw as well the rock wall alongside the road, the bristle and blossom of the blackberries springing out from the rocks themselves. It was Sweeney fashioning the coffin they could see, and his aunt and Lolly washing down the broken muddied bones. And it was Aaron too they saw, dragging himself through the grass toward the top of the cliff, Aaron McCloud, accessory to murder, complicitous in his every act to the death of a fellow human being, guilty in what he was doing, guilty in what he wasn’t doing—he should have, either directly or by some seeming accident, revealed the bones to the gardaí. He should have allowed Jim to rejoin the found bone to its rightful hand and not gone off giving praise and glory. He should, with what exhausted moral and civic sense he might have left, persuaded at least one, if not all three, of his coconspirators to surrender, if not themselves, at least the hapless skeleton to the authorities, who would honor it by tracking down the perpetrator that had laid him low and given his flesh to feed the cabbages of his aunt. The wheels of justice should have been allowed to turn even if they ground to pulp his own aunt, whom he loved, or Lolly, whom he craved, or Sweeney, whom he honored. At worst he was craven; at best he was confused.
Aaron reached the end of the field. Evening had almost come. A few clouds had paused near the horizon to give the sun some chance to make a display of itself before disappearing for the night. Rays of glory were already shooting heavenward, the orange and gold streaking the western sky suggesting in their splendor that heaven, not hell, should be a place of everlasting fire. The grass was turning damp, the air cold. The sea was ominous with warnings of the rampage it had planned once the dark had come, its vengeance on the land and on the living for the distress the daylight had visited upon it, allowing it all the sights it had seen.
The pig came snorting out of the tool shed and ambled toward the ruined garden, favoring this time what had been the beets. Aaron could now, in good if troubled conscience, get the spade and go about his criminal task.
There was water in the grave to a depth of six inches. Aaron could dig down deeper, then decide how to bail out the pig’s wallow and provide Declan with a dry and suitable resting place. As he dug, thoughts of his abandonment of Phila began to surface and recede, then surface again in his consciousness. The pig, interested now in this enlargement of its handiwork, came to watch the digging. Aaron continued his labors, bringing up thick chunks of mud and placing them carefully away from the side of the grave. After a few moments he paused and looked directly at the pig.
“I’ve been unfaithful to Phila,” he said, his voice mournful and resigned. “I try to think of her but something always happens. I want to think of her, but …” He stopped, sighed, and slowly shook his head. The pig blinked. “I never loved her,” Aaron at last confessed. “All I wanted was for her to love me. And when she didn’t, I decided to feel sorry for myself, grieving, tearing my hair, rending my garments, but it wasn’t love.” The pig flicked its ears but didn’t move away.
“It looked like love. It felt like love. Jealousy, yearning, aching, all of it. But it wasn’t love. It was obsession. I was obsessed with her. Not love. Obsession.” The pig both blinked and flicked its ears. “There’s a difference between love and obsession, even if I’m the only one knows it. She had to love me so I wouldn’t have to love her. And when she didn’t, I became a man obsessed. And that’s the truth of it all.”
The patient pig did nothing. Aaron paused a moment, considered resuming his digging, but decided instead to say just a few words more.
“Even Proust didn’t know it. The difference between love and obsession. Proust thought Marcel loved Albertine. He didn’t. Marcel just wanted Albertine to love him—and when she didn’t, he, like me, was a man obsessed. And then, when he was convinced she did love him and even came to live with him, he hadn’t the least idea of what to do with her now that he’d had his way. His obsession had been fulfilled, and there was nowhere to go from there. Obsession, not love.” He stopped, considered this a moment, then, amazed by the realization, he looked past the tool shed, past the pasture, and out toward the sea. In tones both awed and disbelieving, he said, “I know more than Proust. Imagine. Me. More than Proust.”
The pig, as at their first meeting, sent out an arc of urine from behind, as sows will do. Then, when the arc had collapsed, went back to make sure no beets had survived its repeated incursions.
Aaron returned his attention to the matter of the grave and to the water now reaching up to the top of his socks. He peeled them off, wrung them out, and tossed them toward the cairn, where one caught itself on a jagged stone near the top, hanging down like the muddied flag of a defeated leprechaun.
Aaron dug away, bringing up shovelful after shovelful of sludge that he placed far enough from the sides of the grave to prev
ent their return to the bottom of the hole. Not an easy job, but it gave him some sense of solidarity with the old existentialists to know that his labors were futile but that the imperatives of action demanded that he struggle with them as best he could. When a small mudslide slipped back into the grave, far from being discouraged, he accepted it as a further bonding with those masters, long superseded, with their self-dramatized resignation that excused and even glorified their ineptitude. Aaron McCloud was one with them at last—as more mud slipped and slid back into the hole.
Tom and Jim returned when Aaron was ankle deep in mud and shin deep in water. In their journey back to the station, they slowed the car to a stop to observe Aaron’s labors. In the backseat was the presumed malefactor, a youth in his twenties with a high mound of black hair combed back on his head and a goatee suggesting his alliance with the devil.
Both Tom and Jim came and stood by the side of the grave. They simply stood and watched.
“And what would you be digging up?” asked Tom.
“I’m not digging up. I’m digging down.”
“Oh? So the McCloud insolence lives on, does it?”
“Let’s hope so.”
“And what are you digging down to find if I might ask?”
“I’m digging a grave.”
“Oh? A grave is it? And for anybody in particular?”
“For a man who was murdered.”
“A mudhole for a man murdered?”
“That’s what I said.”
“Ah, the McClouds, the McClouds. And who might have murdered the murdered man?”
The Pig Did It Page 16
