The Pig Goes to Hog Heaven Read online

  Aaron was out of the truck. “I won’t love it.”

  “That’s all right. It’ll love you, and that should be enough.” She slogged through the muddy bottom and climbed the opposite bank. The swineherd boots she had never relinquished during her novel-writing days were coated with a thick black ooze, suggesting that oil might be lurking not far beneath the sacred soil of Kerry. After stepping into the field, she called out, “Look at the lovely gorse. Come smell it.” She snapped off the prickly sprig and held it up to her nose. “Come,” she said, holding out the flowering shrub. “Rewards await.”

  Determined not to soil, much less wet his loafers, Aaron decided to jump the ditch. It was a successful leap, but the earth on the far side was unappreciative of his athleticism, and no sooner had he landed than the sodden incline sent first his right foot, then his left, down into the muck he had so foolishly tried to avoid. To further punish his refusal to accept the ditch on its own terms, his entire torso was sent down the embankment, the dirt adhering to his shirt, his pants, his hands, and the tip of his nose. When he raised his head, his wife, ignoring his predicament, simply reached down, placed the gorse under his muddied nose, and said, “Smell. Lovely.”

  “Aren’t you going to help me up?”

  “Oh, do you need help? I didn’t need help.” She smiled the smile of the preeminently pleased. “But of course if you need me …” Aaron reached out his hand. “Oh. Filthy. Filthy. Brush it against your pants. You certainly don’t expect me to muddy myself. Hardly a fitting reward for the help I’m about to give. That’s right. Take hold, but don’t pull me down with you. One disgraced member of the family is more than enough.”

  Firmly she took his hand and yanked him, not without agreeable aggression, into the thicket of gorse lining the ditch. “There you are, you stupid lump. Do I get to clean you when we get home? Umm. Delicious.”

  “We should have turned back.”

  “Too late now. We don’t want your mishap to be in vain.”

  “How do we cross that road when we get to it? It’s wet tar.”

  “In your condition, what’s a bit of tar?”

  “They won’t let us.”

  “Who needs to be let?”

  “Everyone does. By the men working there.”

  “Everyone does not include us. Come along.”

  On they walked through the gorse and the heather, the smell of the tar almost overwhelming the scent of the sea. Nor could the growls and grinds of the road-building equipment completely drown, so to speak, the sound of the waves bashing themselves against the cliffs. Wife and husband came to a fence and climbed over. They passed some sheep that baaed at them, expressing their disdain for anyone passing through who failed to offer them a sack or two of feed. They continued on. There was a narrow wooden gate at the next fence, adorned with a sign that warned BEWARE OF THE BULL, meant to intimidate trespassers unfamiliar with a commonly known absurdity. Aaron passed through without hesitation, rubbing the tip of his nose, expecting to wipe away the residue deposited by the ditch. He succeeded in transferring the remaining mud onto his upper lip. He spit. Then spit again.

  When they got to where the McCloud house had been, a convenient bend in the road shielded them from the sight of the workmen. They crossed the road. The tar glued some of the gravel onto the soles of Aaron’s pampered loafers and Lolly’s experienced boots. As they were clambering over a final fieldstone wall, Aaron gallantly offered his stained hand to Lolly, helped her up, then stopped to survey the fields, the stones, the widened road, and the horizon to the west, where the sea became indistinguishable from the sky. To honor her husband’s pause, Lolly, too, paused and took in the world around them.

  Facing the sea, Aaron said quietly, “Is it because you want to see the grave where Declan Tovey was buried and where we were going to bury him back again before the sea came and took him?”

  This was not an idle question. With Lolly, Kitty and Kieran out in the yard, Aaron was, except for the skeleton, alone in the house when the winds had had their way with it, tilting, sliding, sinking the house into the welcoming waves. That Aaron was saved by divine intervention had never been doubted. He had managed to escape the house through a hole a pig had forced in the mesh door that led from the kitchen to the garden, where that very same pig had unearthed the skeleton. Then, as if that weren’t miracle enough, a wayward canoe, first thought to be a shark, had nudged his panicked body, and he was given just enough strength and skill to raise himself over the side, when the waves promptly heaved him toward the shore and onto the beach.

  Lolly, Kitty, and Kieran had watched from the top of the cliff, at first despairing, then disbelieving, then hopeful, then astonished—an astonishment that ultimately advanced to jubilation. With Aaron’s nearly drowned body safely ashore, the heavenly presence lingered long enough to exact from Kitty and Kieran, then from Aaron and Lolly, confessions of true love, all in the presence of the pig, which, on some level of submerged consciousness, seemed to confer on the episode a legitimacy that could never be revoked.

  Now, studying the mountains, the high rounded hills off to her right, searching for some means to avoid answering Aaron’s earlier question, Lolly found herself at a loss. Apparently her quick-wittedness had abandoned her. She could say nothing but an undirected “What?”

  “Never mind,” Aaron answered. “You wouldn’t tell me anyway.”

  “How do you know if you don’t ask?”

  “I did ask. And you gave me the only answer I’m going to get. Which was no answer.”

  A mist had begun to creep over the top of the nearby hill. Lolly, relieved to have a subject other than the one Aaron had introduced, took note of the obvious and said, “Oh, look. A mist is coming down, and we’re going to disappear.”

  “How convenient.”

  “You’re sulking. Why are you sulking?”

  “Because you want to go—for reasons of your own—to look at where Declan Tovey was buried.”

  “Why would I want to do a thing like that?”

  “Simple. Because he was your lover.”

  “He was Kitty’s lover.”

  “And Kitty said you were.”

  “Kitty McCloud, your aunt though she may be, is not a reliable source of information, especially in matters pertaining to her early adventures. What need had I for Declan Tovey? I had my pigs. I had a calling and I gave it all I had—and more. The way I always do with anything important. You should know. You’ve been the beneficiary this past year gone.”

  After a moment’s consideration, Aaron turned to look at his wife. “Is that true? I thought your novel was the most important.”

  “How can writing a novel be important?”

  “It was to me. When I was doing it.”

  “Because you’re a writer. I’m not a writer. Just because I wrote a novel doesn’t make me a writer. Who can’t write a novel if she’s got half a head?”

  “Fewer people than you think.”

  “Nonsense. I was too busy being your wife to do anything else, besides, of course, tending my pigs. But you, more than anyone, should know that. I wrote the novel to try to relax a little, to give myself some time off, to get ready for more of what we do better than anyone in history.”

  “Is that true?”

  “I’ll let you be the judge of that.”

  Aaron waited, then nodded. “All right then. If you say so.”

  “I did say so. Just now.”

  “I heard.”

  The descending mist had shrouded them completely, isolating them entirely from the world around. Aaron reached over and took his wife’s hand. “I’ll help you down.” Lolly let her hand be held and, experienced from a life of climbing up rock walls and down as she was, allowed her husband to lead her safely into the meadow below.

  “There’ll be no grave,” Aaron said. “I’ll tell you that. Or the sea will tell you itself.”

  “We’ll know when we get there. Come.” Lolly led the way.

  There
was no grave. All the earth intended to be paste and cover to Declan Tovey’s bones had been sent on with him, an unneeded recompense for his consignment to a watery end. Lolly and Aaron stared into the fog hovering a few feet past the edge of the cliff, swirling slowly in the updraft from the water below.

  “I’m sorry,” Aaron said. “You probably wanted to see the grave, and it isn’t here any more. I dug it myself, deeper than it had been before, so Declan wouldn’t get himself dug up again.”

  Lolly said nothing. Neither moved. The mist was cooling against their faces. The sea could be heard, its rampage somewhat stilled, but nothing was visible to either of them. The house could still be standing, the garden shed as well, but both would belong, as they so often had, to the rising mists, with no one to know whether they were there or not. They had always belonged to the mists. It was their age-old habit to dissolve into mystery, and this moment was a simple repetition, existence itself becoming doubtful and all proofs and certainties suspended.

  Lolly broke the silence. “I saw him yesterday in Caherciveen when I was buying the bream we had for supper.”

  “Who?”

  “Declan.”

  After he’d held off for a moment, Aaron said, “Lolly, you did not see Declan Tovey in Caherciveen.”

  “All right then. I didn’t. And I didn’t go to Caherciveen, and we didn’t have bream. And we’re not in Ireland. We’re in Mozambique.”

  “You saw someone who looked like Declan Tovey.”

  “No one looks like Declan Tovey.”

  “People always look like other people. The gene pool of the world isn’t as varied as most people think.”

  “Genes don’t give you a scar over your left eye.”

  “Lolly, Declan Tovey’s skeleton was found not ten feet from where we’re standing.”

  “Maybe so. But he still made it to Caherciveen yesterday.”

  “Fully fleshed. Fully clothed.”

  “Yes. Fully fleshed. Fully clothed.”

  Aaron took his handkerchief from his back pocket and, without unfolding it, wiped it across his forehead. He looked to see if there was any mud, or better still, some hint of what he should say next. He put the handkerchief back into his pocket. “This is what happens when you write a book with ghosts in it.”

  “Declan was not in my book.”

  “No. But there were what you said were real ghosts. Not psychically induced apparitions or antic idiots playing games, but real live ghosts.”

  “Then yesterday Declan was a ghost.”

  “If it was Declan yesterday, it was not a ghost. There are no such things as ghosts. The fact is Declan is dead. His remains, such as they were, are out there somewhere in the sea.”

  “Be that as it may, I saw him yesterday. It had to be him.”

  “Lolly, there are no ghosts except in books.”

  “And why have you decided not to believe me no matter what I say?”

  “I want to be helpful.”

  “You think I’ve gone off with my head, don’t you?”

  “I think you wrote a book about ghosts and the involvement was so intense that you’re now living through parts of it yourself.”

  “If I thought that was true—that I’d live my novel—I would have written a book about a woman married to a man who’d believe her when she said something was true and real.”

  “I told you. I’m trying to help.”

  “Then just believe me.”

  “Lolly, you and Kitty washed his bones yourselves!”

  “I know that. I also know he’s come back.”

  “He can’t come back.”

  “Who said so?”

  “Well, for one, Shakespeare said it. Hamlet said it. ‘The undiscover’d country from whose bourn no traveler returns.’ ”

  “Sure. ‘No traveler returns.’ Then what was Hamlet’s father doing, turning up on the ramparts and later in his mother’s bedroom, and him dead as a doornail? Answer me that.”

  “Now is not the time for Shakespearean exegesis.”

  “Of course not. Not after I ask you something you can’t answer.”

  “All right then. Sometimes even Shakespeare was inconsistent. Henslowe was probably screaming for the script. They needed a new play—and fast. All writers are sometimes inconsistent.”

  “But I’m not writing this. I’m living it.”

  “I give up.”

  “Sure, you give up. You know I’m right and you’re wrong. And I don’t mean about Shakespeare. I mean about Declan.”

  “All right, all right. I’m wrong and you’re—” He stopped.

  Lolly waited for him to continue. He didn’t. Instead he stared over Lolly’s shoulder, into the distance, into the fog. His stare held.

  “What?” Lolly asked.

  Again Aaron pulled out his handkerchief, this time crumpling it in his fist. “Nothing.”

  “Oh?” Lolly looked over her shoulder. There, a dark form was making its way toward the edge of the cliff. Lolly sucked in a quick breath, held it, then let it go. In a hoarse voice she whispered, “Declan?” Then she called out the name. “Declan?” Aaron grabbed her by the arm. She called out more forcefully, “Declan?” She started to move away.

  “Don’t go,” Aaron said. “Don’t move.”

  “It’s Declan. I know it is.”

  “You can’t. The cliff is right there.”

  “I have to see him.”

  “You can’t see him.”

  “But I just did. And so did you.”

  “It wasn’t Declan. And I told you. The cliff—”

  “I can prove it to you it’s—”

  “You can’t. All we saw was someone in the fog. It could have been anyone. Anything.”

  “It was Declan.”

  “Lolly, he’s dead.”

  “What difference does that make?”

  Aaron didn’t even try to answer. When Lolly spoke again, her voice was more subdued. “Can we just stand here? Just for a bit? Be with each other? And no one else, just the two of us? Here, where the house was. And now it’s gone.”

  “And the grave.”

  “Yes. And the grave. That’s gone, too.”

  Silently they stood. With his handkerchief Aaron brushed the gathering moisture from Lolly’s brow. “Thanks,” she said.

  “Yeah.” He shoved the handkerchief back into his pocket, then, after a respectful pause, turned and started back the way they’d come. Lolly followed. As they crossed the meadow Aaron said quietly, “You love him, don’t you? The way you called his name.”

  “I love you.”

  “I know. Still, you love him.”

  “He’s dead.”

  Aaron’s response was ready. “What difference does that make?”

  2

  Standing on the rampart of Castle Kissane, Kitty McCloud didn’t know if she was more amused than relieved or more relieved than amused. Perhaps both in equal measure. More often than not she would repair to this place of refuge—with its great sweep of County Kerry, its low mountains and the turbulent sea ranged out before her—to effect some mediation between herself and whichever intransigent novel she might be writing at the moment. Her present unburdened state, however, was in response to an e-mail from her agent in Dublin, one Fiona O’Toole. Kitty had mentioned to Ms. O’Toole her intention of taking on the only canonical writer—Jane Austen—who so far had been spared her authorial “correction.” Charlotte Brontë, Thomas Hardy, George Eliot, even Dickens, among others, had not been so fortunate. Kitty, applying her considerable talents, would rectify the maddening errors made by any number of her admired predecessors, her work free of the ignominy the others so rightly deserved.

  Gathering her forces about her, she had recently decided not so much to “correct” Ms. Austen as to challenge her outright. Kitty was determined to give her attention to Pride and Prejudice (no less) for the simple reason that Jane had too long been allowed to declare her novels—and their characters—fulfilled by providing marriages
that were presumed to be happy. Kitty would now ask the unasked. What if Darcy, having married Elizabeth, were to abandon her for another woman? What would become of Ms. Bennett, a character Kitty herself often found insufferably perfect even with all the highly nuanced imperfections given her by her creator.

  But now, via e-mail, this temptation to hubris on Kitty’s part was exposed as the folly it would have become. The project was canceled, off, over, ended. And just in time. Had Kitty not so diligently ignored the efforts of her contemporaries, she would have been fully aware of the Jane Austen Industrial Complex. As Ms. O’Toole informed her, countless were the scribblings taking advantage of Jane’s popularity. More than many were the authors who had exploited that good woman’s achievements by trying to insinuate themselves into her company. Her ignorance exposed, Kitty was released from the infamy that would have blighted her renown had she honed her axe and given Jane and even Mrs. Darcy their forty whacks.

  Still, she shouldn’t waste time being amused and relieved. She was, after all, a writer, a calling that required for its sustenance despair, desperation, and even fears of inadequacy, this latter being an infrequent affliction visited upon Ms. Kitty McCloud. What she needed now, and quickly, was an inspiration comparable to the one that had inspired her most recent triumph: a correction of The Mill on the Floss.

  In concert with muses of the highest distinction, Kitty had rescued Maggie Tulliver from the absurd fate devised by Ms. George Eliot. Kitty’s gorge had risen to floodtide at her first reading of the novel, when she was an easily displeased teenager. As God was her witness, she would never allow Maggie—the singular child who had run off to join the Gypsies, certain they would make her their queen—to wind up in a dazed state in the company of an unworthy man, then return to her brother, a prissy prick if ever there was one, just in time to drown with him in the storm-roiled waters of the eponymous Floss.