The Pig Goes to Hog Heaven (7 page)

The chosen pig, identified by its crossed eyes—the very pig now being carted back to Castle Kissane—had been granted a reprieve by a mistaken last-minute substitution. Another pig had been sent to the spit in its place. Since the sacrificed animal had a somewhat special history, including its unearthing of a skeleton and the eventual pairing of Kitty as well as Kieran, Lolly and Aaron, the loss prompted a revulsion against the spared beast. (That Kitty had made the mistaken substitution was also a factor.) The living animal was forthwith returned to Lolly and Aaron.

But the pig now being returned was no longer the same pig they had chosen for the feast. At the time, it had been as fat as the overstuffed sausage its lesser parts would one day become. Its temperament had been exuberant but agreeable, with no suggestion of rebellion. Now it had become a malcontent, forever outraged by some unknowable deprivation (unless, of course, its discontent derived from having been denied the honor of being spitted and roasted to a crisp succulence and devoured pitilessly by the ravening guests).

That this could be a legitimate complaint, no one would deny, but so excessive was the pig's distress that all sympathy was withheld. The animal must now either calm down or be hauled off to the slaughterhouse, fattened or not fattened. Or, worse, sold to what was known as “intensive,” a fate Lolly would never allow for any Irish pig. Her animals were the beneficiary of her insistence that she would be a swineherd if she so chose, even if she were the last independent pig person in all of Ireland. She was determined not to relinquish her calling. In her family, swine-herding reached back to the days of Queen Maeve herself. Never would any pig of hers be confined to an overcrowded area, there to be mechanically fed, with no human hand to give it a slap, no befouled boot to give it a kick. Better the butcher than “intensive.”

But before Lolly could say the words aloud—which would make them irrevocable, since she was never known to change her mind—her American husband had made a proposal of his own. They would return the animal to Kitty and Kieran. They were the ones responsible for its current plight. It was at Castle Kissane that the tragic exchange had taken place. It seemed only fair that they should be made to deal with the consequences of their error. Let them suffer the loss of sleep, let them hear the constant cries, let them try what consolations they might. If they didn't want to fatten it, well, that would be their decision, not Lolly's or Aaron's. There would be nothing to trouble their conscience.

When the truck reached the castle, Aaron saw Kitty weeding the vegetable patch near the courtyard. As the truck came to a halt, his aunt dusted her hands against her faded jeans and, seeing Aaron in the back of the truck with the pig, called out, “Which one has come to stay? The man or the pig?”

Lolly got out of the cab. “Take your choice.”

“The one's too skinny. I'll take the fatter one, even if it's a bit skinnier than I remembered it.”

Aaron, an American by birth and not yet accustomed to Irish ways, all but sighed at this display of what he had come to accept as Kerry wit. He removed the tailgate and shoved the ramp into place. He then made the mistake of giving the pig an obligatory slap. The full force of its earlier lament was given new voice. The stubborn refusal to cooperate returned with added resolve. It rooted itself to the bed of the truck, daring one and all to infringe upon its right to be intractable.

Aaron walked down the ramp, went to his aunt, and mouthed his hello. She in turn mouthed hers, then called out to Lolly loud enough to best the noise of the pig's complaints, “Is this what you're leaving us? I'll take the skinny one after all.”

Aaron walked over to pretend—his recently acquired expertise—an interest in the garden, thereby distancing himself from the pig. Because he was in Ireland and not America, he allowed himself to engage in some specious reasoning: A pig was woman's work. Not only was it a tradition that the women of the house looked after the animals, but it was a known fact that women had an instinctive sense when it came to understanding nurture. Lolly had known how to get the pig onto the truck. Aaron, therefore, felt it was perfectly permissible that she dip down into her instincts and retrieve the one unfailing gesture that would bring a docile and amiable sow from the bed of their truck onto the castle grounds. It was no concern of his.

Lolly, unable to abbreviate the witty exchange, yelled back to Kitty, “They're both skinny. The pig came back to us fat, but it hasn't eaten since. With all the ructions it's been raising, we'd take it to the butcher in a minute, but we can't until it's put on a bit more bacon. If you and Kieran would just make it more eligible, we'd be obliged.”

At a fair remove from the courtyard chaos, Aaron walked around the periphery of the garden, the fresh greens promising vegetables he couldn't identify. It was into cabbages that the dead Declan had been deposited. Aaron couldn't help wondering what might lie beneath the soil he was stepping on now. The castle had a dungeon. Was it into this ground that its occupants had been released? The fact that he and Lolly had put a ring through the delivered pig's snout would at least prevent it from unearthing yet another heap of bones, thereby repeating the havoc Declan Tovey had brought with him from the grave more than a year ago.

As he stood at the far end of the garden near a mound of uprooted weeds, Aaron looked back at his wife, his aunt, and the pig. To his surprise, things seemed somewhat under control. The pig was off the truck and sticking its snout through the rail of the handsomely crafted pen Kieran had built for it during its previous stay. If Aaron interpreted the action rightly, the pig was asking to be put back where it had lived for that brief time before it was the be the star attraction at the castle feast. That it wanted to be penned up was further proof of its derangement. Should they consider having the sow tested for Mad Pig Disease? The animal was now in the custody of Kitty and Kieran. She was their problem.

Now that the pig was quiescent, Aaron made his way back to his waiting wife. He stopped when he saw entering the courtyard a small, rattletrap truck, nearly on the verge of falling apart completely. It was obviously having a fit—one that might prove fatal if the motor wasn't cut off within seconds. The motor was cut. A man got out. Aaron saw his wife take two steps back at the sight of him. His aunt took one step forward. The man hadn't moved away from the truck, suggesting this was not meant to be a prolonged encounter. He had even kept his hand on the door, possibly to expedite a quick getaway should that prove advisable. With the other hand he was holding a book.

The man's pants, coat, and cap replicated almost exactly the clothing worn by the aforementioned unearthed skeleton—before it had been given improved attire more worthy of the laying out, including Aaron's last good shirt. Could this be the man Lolly had seen in Caherciveen and mistaken for Declan Tovey? Aaron snorted with pleased relief. The mystery was solved. It was the similar clothing that had caused the mistaken identity.

Lolly turned and went quickly to the cab of their own truck, opened the door, reached in, and pulled out what he knew to be a fresh ham wrapped in yesterday's
Irish Times
, brought to thank (that is, to bribe) Kitty and Kieran for relieving them of the impossible pig.

“Here's the ham I promised,” she called out, a needless explanation. The man's arrival had obviously unsettled her—which was understandable. Even Aaron, who had never seen Declan Tovey, could agree to a resemblance to what had been described. Wielding the ham in her hand like a primitive club, Lolly continued to explain herself. “I'll put it in your kitch—I mean your scullery.” She ran to the door leading into the great hall, entered, and neglected to close the door behind her.

At first, Aaron thought his first responsibility was to check on his wife. He would explain, patiently, what was happening. He was certain that Lolly would be grateful for the correction of her misidentification. Curiosity, however, got the better of him. Before going to his wife, he would accumulate more information, enough to settle the issue once and for all. This must be a Tovey relation newly come into these parts. Or, more likely, someone from the same gene pool as the departed—a possibility he'd already suggested. Lolly would be uncharacteristically shamed to have thought they were being visited by the risen dead, a spirit too impatient to wait for the final trump.

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.