The Pig Comes to Dinner

by Joseph Caldwell

  “Aaron’s with the pig. I’ll go.”

  “I told you. It’s all right. I’ll go.”

  They were at the pickup they’d parked just over the wall on the far side of the field. Kitty had her hand on the door first, but Kieran’s was quickly clamped onto it.

  “Please,” said Kitty, “I’ll only be a minute.”

  Their hands still on the unopened door, Kitty found herself staring into Kieran’s eyes, and Kieran found himself staring into the eyes of Kitty. As they held their gaze, Kitty let her mouth open slightly, and Kieran widened his eyes. For one more moment neither moved, each reading what could be seen in the eyes of the other, each allowing comprehension to make its way through whatever labyrinth that twisted and turned its way between an eye locked upon an eye and a consciousness not readily roused by the information being offered for its consideration. The connection was completed. Each knew what the other had done.

  “Then we should both go,” Kieran said quietly.

  “It would seem so.”

  Kieran opened the door. Kitty ran around to the other side and got in. Her door was slammed before his.

  “How long do you have before—before it happens?” Kieran asked.

  “Until Brid begins to work on the loom. How long do you have?”

  They were on the narrow road, the dust rising behind them. Twice they steered in and out of a ditch to avoid neighbors on their way to the feast. “Until Taddy picks up the harp.”

  Two more neighbors had to flatten themselves against the hedge as the pickup sped by. Both Kieran and Kitty sat in silence, their eyes on the road. A great calm had come over them. Imperceptibly, or so it might seem, the truck began to move not quite so fast. But that could surely not be the case. The clouds of dust rising behind them contradicted the very notion.

  It was Kitty who spoke first. “It would be what he deserves.”

  “And Peter did warn him.”

  “And he’s so bloody arrogant. You never saw him there, the way he strutted around the place, like the lord of the manor.” She paused, then added, “Which, of course, he almost was, damn him to—” She stopped and let a quick exhaltaion complete the sentence.

  After another moment, Kieran said, “We could turn around.”

  Kitty pursed, then unpursed her lips. “Yes, we could do that, couldn’t we?”

  “He is trespassing.”

  “Yes. Trespassing.”

  For whatever reason, they continued on until, up ahead, they saw Brendan Malloy and his cows moving leisurely along the road. It would do no good to honk the horn. There was nowhere for either the cows or Brendan to go. At his age— more than eighty—Brendan could hardly climb over the hedge that bordered the road, and the cows were far less agile than he. The pickup stopped. “Is this a sign we’re allowed to go no farther?” Kieran asked.

  “I don’t believe in signs.”

  Kieran looked at the sky. Kitty, too, was searching just above the western horizon. Without one referring to the other, each got out and began making the climb over the stones and into the pasture to their left.

  “Damn!” Kitty said. “Why can’t we just leave him there?”

  “We’ve got enough ghosts for one lifetime.”

  “Now I suppose we’re going to get there just in time to fly sky high along with him.”

  “How much time do you have?”

  “Brid comes to the loom not long before sunset. When Taddy picks up the harp.”

  They made a quick twist of their heads toward the west. The sun was a fair distance from the horizon but lowering fast. Without looking at his wife, Kieran said, “Don’t talk.”

  They began to run, Kieran pacing himself so that he stayed two feet behind his wife. Whatever might prevail, he had no intention of leaving her behind.

  But then again, if he out-ran her, he might dismantle her device before the fatal moment arrived. Trying to keep the urgency out of his voice, he asked, “How’d you find out how to do it?”

  “The Internet. You?”

  “A catalogue from Texas. Tells you how to blow up a whole town.”

  They ran toward the castle. His lordship’s SUV was at the doors to the great hall. “When we see him, what do we tell him?” Kitty asked.

  “To get out.”

  Kieran’s breath was shortening, but Kitty seemed to be having no difficulty. Kieran explained to himself the difference in stamina by noting that the efforts not to overtake his wife had cost him more energy than an unfettered run would have required. Restraint, as always, exacted the larger toll.

  Now they were nearing the shadow of the castle. Still they kept running. Perhaps Brendan and his cows had acted in their favor. Cutting across the fields at a diagonal from the road, the distance to the castle was geometrically diminished. The main road was at least a quarter kilometer from the castle, thereby guaranteeing that no airborne debris would inconvenience some unsuspecting wayfarer, including Brendan and his cows, when the plotted event would take place.

  Past the hedge and across the courtyard they ran, both panting. Kitty flung back the door to the great hall and stepped over the threshold. Immediately she took a step back, her stiffened body slamming into her husband.

  “What?” Kieran had hardly enough breath to gasp out the word.

  Kitty stepped back into the great hall. “Don’t you see?”

  Kieran looked around the hall, then repeated the one word he seemed capable of speaking. “What?”

  “You don’t see? There?” She was looking upward, at the huge iron ring of the chandelier.

  Kieran tilted his head toward the ceiling. He said nothing.

  There, as before, effected by his lordship’s presence in the castle, were the hanged bodies of Brid and Taddy, limp, their horrified faces—so fair and fine in life—now twisted and distorted by the quick pull of the searing rope, which thrusted their bulging eyes from their heads and their swollen blackened tongues from between their lovely lips.

  “We have to cut them down,” Kitty whispered.

  Kieran shook his head. “They’re ghosts. Even the rope is a ghost.”

  “But”—she touched her husband’s shoulder—“should we just leave? Go back to the feast?”

  Kieran slowly shook his head. “No time. We’d never get clear of the explosion.”

  “How can we leave them like this? With him here along with them? It’s his being here has done this.”

  Kieran turned his head aside, away from the slowly turning bodies. “If he’s responsible, then aren’t we responsible, too?”

  “We didn’t do the hanging. It was his people did it.”

  “And it was our people should be in their place. If he’s still guilty, so are we.” He looked directly at his wife. “We can leave and let it happen—and Shaftoe be killed—or we can—”

  Kitty quickly moved through the door opposite, Kieran following. Along the narrow passageway they went, up the stairs to the gallery, then to the steps that led to the turret, neither able to avoid glancing through the window toward the lowering sun.

  “Maybe as long as Shaftoe’s here,” Kitty said, “they won’t come to the loom or to the harp. Maybe we have until he leaves to do what we have to do.”

  “We can’t be sure. Let’s take not chances. They can be wherever they want to be when they want to be there. Keep moving.”

  They began their climb up the steep rise of the winding stair, Kieran leading. Kitty wanted to reach out and touch her husband to let him know she was near, that should there be some miscalculation that might bring a sudden end to all they were ever to know of each other, she was with him and she wanted no parting. As they passed through Kitty’s room on the first landing, she refused to glance at the emptied desk, the space from which she’d removed the computer and the work she’d been doing. She could surrender her castle but not her manuscript.

  By the time she had reached the next landing, Kieran was kneeling at the stool where the harp lay, reaching under and pulling apart w
hat looked like a clumsy device a boy might have concocted to wake himself to serve at morning mass. The task achieved in seconds, he let his arms fall to his sides, each hand still holding its share of the disconnected circuitry. His panting breaths came more slowly.

  Kitty hurried to the loom and bent down toward the treadle, where she wrestled with a device attached to its side. Quickly she began untwisting the bare wires that connected the apparatus to the wires leading down under the flagstones below. Some confusion, however, set in. She couldn’t tell if she was separating the two wires or winding them more thoroughly together. Or was she doing both at the same time, twisting and untwisting? The two had to be torn apart. She was on her knees, fumbling. She needed more light. Kieran had been lucky. His work was done away from the loom, having the benefit of the slanting rays of the westering sun.

  The wires continued to resist, no matter how hard she tried. She pulled to no avail. She considered trying to bite through with her teeth but knew she might lay bare the wires beneath their insulation, allowing them to connect with, to put it mildly, a devastating effect that would not be confined to the castle alone.

  “You need some help?” Kieran had crouched down next to her and was watching over her shoulder.

  “All I have to do is get the two wires apart.”

  “You don’t seem to be having much luck. Here. Let me.” He reached down, and Kitty, with a resigned snort, surrendered her handiwork to her husband. With very little effort, the two recalcitrant wires were bent to his will and promptly flew apart. He offered the remains to his wife. “You need glasses.”

  “I don’t need glasses.”

  “I know the type. Rather blow up than wear them.”

  “Not true.” Kitty grabbed the device from her husband’s hands. Kieran returned to the harp and retrieved his own implement. He looked at it a moment, then set it down underneath the stool. Taking her cue from her husband, Kitty, after straightening one of the wires, placed her contraption between the loom and the wall.

  “You were doing it to get rid of Brid?” asked Kieran quietly.

  Kitty dropped the wire still held in her hand. “Sometimes I thought it was to give them both peace. How can I forget they died instead of my ancestor? And please, don’t tell me I shouldn’t feel any guilt, that it wasn’t my doing. It was a McCloud’s doing and I am a McCloud and nothing can change that.” After she had run her hand along the breast beam of the loom, her voice low, she said, “Other times it’s to get even with Taddy. Because I’m jealous. His love for Brid.” She paused, then added, “I wanted to kill him. And this was the only way I have to do it.” She took her hand away and scratched her elbow. “And there could be more, but that’s as much as I’m going to say.”

  Kieran sat on the stool and put the harp on his lap. “I want Taddy to be gone and I’d do what I had to do to send him away.” He touched the harp with the tips of his fingers. “But I can’t forget, seeing him hanging now in the great hall—I can’t forget that my forebears were, even if unwittingly, culpable in their deaths. Maybe I have no right to feel this guilt, but what difference does that make? Right or not right, I feel it. The least I, a Sweeney, can do is send them to themselves where they can find rest.” He placed his hand on the harp as if it were to the instrument itself that he was imparting his wish for peace. “Maybe there’s more, but I’ve said enough.”

  A voice, unmistakably Peter’s, was heard shouting outside. “Mr. Shaftoe! Up there! There on the turret! Listen to me! You have to leave! The sun is almost set. You have only minutes. And I can’t stay here to tell you any more. Come down. Come away! You have nothing to do with what they’ve planned. Mr. Shaftoe—please!”

  After a swift wide-eyed glance at each other, both Kitty and Kieran were on the stair leading to the battlement above. The trap door was hoisted by Kitty with no difficulty at all. There, standing near the parapet, was Lord Shaftoe, his tweed jacket removed and his tie thrown next to it. The top button of his shirt had been undone. With the appearance of Kitty and Kieran, he backed against the parapet wall. Kitty leaned out over the battlement. Peter was still looking upward. In the distance was the feasting, faint sounds of the music and laughter reaching her ears.

  “It’s all right, Peter. No danger. For the time being.” Peter stared up at her, then turned and began to run toward the courtyard, toward the entrance to the great hall. Kieran was looking first at his Lordship, then at the clothing he had taken off. Kitty turned around, equally puzzled, letting her eyes trace the same path as her husband’s.

  His lordship stood erect, his arms at his sides, his face blank, as if he’d shed all feeling along with his jacket and his tie. A breeze flapped the open collar at his neck. “I didn’t mean for this to disrupt your festivities. And I apologize. I am also not appareled for receiving company. For that I apologize as well. If you could just leave me here, I promise I’ll be here no more when you return.”

  Kieran shook his head, trying to clear it. “And what are you doing here now?”

  “Since you ask, I assume I’m obliged to answer.” He waited, then went on: “I am going to jump. I’ll be found—or, rather, my remains—will be found at the foot of the tower. To be disposed of in accordance with a letter to be found in my pocket there.” He nodded toward the jacket. “And if you would excuse me, I would like very much to complete the task I’ve set myself.”

  “You—you’re planning to jump?” Kitty, too, shook her head, an attempt, like her husband’s, to rid it of its confusions.

  “Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear. Yes, I am going to jump. But, if you don’t mind, I’d like it to be a private affair.”

  “Why jump?” Kieran brought his forehead lower, an attempt to better focus his eyes.

  “The purpose would seem to be quite obvious.”

  “But why? I mean, you—you must have a reason.” Kitty had to shake her head again.

  “I assure you. Yes, I have a reason. But that, too, if you’ll allow me, is privileged information.”

  Peter popped his head through the opening, then climbed the last few steps onto the parapet. His chest, so skinny and frail, kept heaving up and down as he fought to take in air. “He—he—”

  Kieran put his hand on Peter’s back. He could feel the shoulder blades poking against the lean flesh. “Easy, easy.”

  “He—he”—Peter made no attempt to continue with what he wanted to say—“he—”

  Kitty went to the boy’s side. “You’ll tell us, but give yourself a chance to breathe first. Slowly. Breathe.”

  Peter let out a yell. His lordship had lifted one leg to the top of the battlement wall and was grabbing at the stones, trying to get some hold that would help raise the other leg. Kieran, after one swift stride, circled his lordship’s waist and pulled him down and away from the wall, ripping away two buttons from the front of the man’s shirt. His lordship made no effort to resist. He stood quite still, his head bowed, his arms straight at this sides.

  Peter had picked up one of the popped buttons that had landed at his right foot. Instead of looking down at the button, he gazed off into the distance, toward the sea. “All his life,” Peter said, “away there in Australia, Mr. Shaftoe—or, I guess, Lord Shaftoe—all his life he dreamed of coming to live in the castle his ancestors had held. Word of the castle had been passed down from generation to generation and—”

  “Nonsense! The poor child’s—” Lord Shaftoe had stiffened at the sound of Peter’s words. “Why do you let the boy babble on like this?”

  Peter, as if he hadn’t heard, continued. “—and to reclaim the castle and live here himself was what he wanted more than anything in the whole world. He’d heard about the gunpowder and the ghosts, too. It didn’t matter. All that mattered—”

  “Stop. Make him stop. Please, I …” His lordship then spoke more quietly, even despairingly, as if knowing his plea would never be heard, “I beg you.”

  “Is he telling the truth?” Kitty asked.

  His lord
ship let his own gaze reach out toward the darkening hills to the north. With a simplicity that seemed foreign to his nature, he said, “I am not a criminal by habit. For all my faults—and I’ve been told they are many—forgery, bribery are not among them. But there are times when one feels compelled to—enlarge—the range of one’s natural inclinations.”

  He seemed to have seen something in the distance that held his gaze, unmoving, almost entranced. “This castle was to become my own true home, the home won by my ancestors by means I know too well but have chosen to dismiss. It had been the lordly seat of my family for centuries, no matter what history has to say. All my youthful yearning reached out toward these stones, this turret, these lands around. And the sea besides. The boy spoke the truth. What is gunpowder to me? Or ghosts? Or ancient perfidies? Let it all be on my head. But it is here that I must live. Or not live at all. And if the boy has more to tell, I’ll listen to him now.”

  “No,” said Peter. “I have no more to tell.”

  “Then,” said George Noel Gordon Lord Shaftoe, “by your leave.” He picked up his tweeds, his tie, and the other button Peter had decided not to retrieve. Again erect, he smiled wanly. “And for my crimes, for trespassing beyond the bounds of my nature, I must to prison go. Where I doubt I’ll take upon myself the mystery of things. And now, I wish you good evening.”

  Head high, with only the stately step his words had earned him, he made his measured descent down the winding stair, disappearing little by little until he could be seen no more.

  Peter looked down at his hand. “He forgot his button.” He started toward the stair, but Kieran stopped him. “Let him go. He’ll get himself another.”

  Peter considered this, nodded, then contemplated the button. Kitty looked at Kieran, Kieran at Kitty. Peter obviously had more to say. “And so no one knows if the castle will blow up or not,” he said. He thought this over, then shrugged his shoulders. “I was eating my sandwich and I found myself looking into the eyes of the pig there on the plank. They were open. And so I came here to warn his Lordship. Because at that time, the castle was going to blow up. And he wasn’t meant to get blown up with it. That’s all I knew then. The rest I knew here. About him and all his life. But now I can tell you this. No one knows if the castle will blow up or not. And I want to know, is it all right if I go back and eat some more of the pig?”