The Pig Did It

by Joseph Caldwell

  Aaron would tolerate no more. He stomped down the slope toward the pig, uttering a high and fearful yell that could have been mistaken for the cry of someone who’d seen a mouse. The pig, unimpressed, stood its ground. Aaron stopped. With the switch he made two quick slashes in the air. The pig blinked but didn’t move. Aaron went to his left. He would charge from the side. But just before he could complete the maneuver, the pig, with a gruff snort, turned and made a dash up the hill. Aaron hesitated only a moment, not for decision but for adjustment to the shock. The pig was not cooperating. Then he sped up the hill, the held switch bending again and again like a divining rod bewildered that its divinations were being repeatedly ignored.

  The pig continued up the hill, gaining speed as it broke into a full gallop. Aaron followed, determined now that the pig would not escape. Just below the summit, the pig veered to the left and started toward the eastern slope that curved around to the other side of the hill. Aaron gained slightly, but he began to worry about how long his breath would hold out. He wasn’t exactly panting, but he could tell that the breaths were becoming shorter and shallower and there was a slight stitch in his right side. Heart attack or appendicitis, either could fell him at any moment, but he no longer cared. He would get the pig.

  For its part the pig was covering ground at a fair clip. To Aaron it seemed that it was deliberately leading him, luring him farther and farther away from the bus, from the road, from his fellow passengers, like Moby-Dick, tempting him into uncharted territory, to a hidden valley beyond the hill. If that were its aim, Aaron would become the pig’s Ahab, his will more steeled than ever in spite of the panting breaths and the ache in his side.

  The pig disappeared around the eastern slope, bounding over the heather, avoiding the rocks. Aaron followed, putting the switch into his left hand so he could hold his side with his right. He rounded the curve. There, higher up toward the summit, stood the pig. It was rooting up the turf with short grunts of repellent satisfaction. Aaron stopped. He stood there panting. The ache in his side had grown to an actual pain. He let the switch fall from his hand. He turned and headed back the way he’d come. He would have no more interest in the pig. He cared not at all that it was being abandoned on the hillside, that it must forage for itself as best it could, denied the amenities of a safe clean pen, the swill-filled trough, the privilege of being counted among the chattel of a woman with a surprised laugh and darting eyes.

  Aaron completed the turn around the side of the hill and began the descent. From this height—he hadn’t realized how high he’d climbed—he could see to the west the parceled pastures that sloped upward, unheeding of the edge of the cliff that dropped off to the sea. The town to the north was gray even in the slanting light of the lowering sun, the houses, stucco and stone, obviously on friendlier terms with the hills than with the cliffs and the sea. On the horizon, a single ship seemed about to drop sideways off the end of the earth. No fishing boats, no curraghs could be seen. The coastal waters had been fished out long before. The hulking rock of Great Blasket Island, more than a mile offshore, rose into a cloud as if hoping to find in its mists the meaning of its hard existence.

  Aaron picked up his pace but still had to brake each step so he wouldn’t slip and slide down the steep incline of the hill. His aunt Kitty would be waiting, and she was not a woman famous for her patience. Fortunately she and Aaron were—through the generational peculiarities of the McClouds—near contemporaries, with Kitty, two years older. As children they had allied themselves to each other more as cousins than as aunt and nephew. Only in a clinch would Kitty bring into play the precedence decreed by her having been sired, in his old age, by Aaron’s grandfather. She was the final fructification crowning more than thirty fertile years that had produced seven children, two clusters of three each, with nine years intervening, and then, at the last, this ultimate flowering who would, to the family’s chagrin, inherit the house, chattel, and pasturage of a doting, dotaged father, a deliberate perversion of primogeniture leaving all not to his eldest son but to his youngest daughter. Encouraged by this perversity, Kitty soon fell into a habit of exasperation, an inability to understand or accept inconvenience. Spoiled, she considered herself to be without blemish and had no patience with anyone who took a different view, not because they were wrong but because they lacked discernment.

  Aaron liked her and always had. It was she who had taught him to be, like herself, a little snot. She had schooled him in the ways of intractability; she had inspired in him a scorn of negotiation or compromise. They got along fine. Still, she would not want to be kept waiting—even for him. Aaron’s apprehensions were not without cause.

  He continued down the hill but stopped when the entire scene, himself included, was put into shadow, but gently, like a whisper. The town darkened, and the sea become still. Only the tops of the clouds, those out over the island, held the light, bright streaks of blazing silver. Eager for the day to end, a cloud had come up from the sea, from beyond the western horizon, claiming the sun for itself, leaving the land and even the sea to do as best they could under its shadow. The world seemed abandoned, forgotten, as if in the moment ages had passed and he was being given a glimpse of the future, the land drained and empty, the sea sullen and indifferent.

  Aaron felt the stirrings of an ancient fear, but before it could take its unshakeable hold, there welled up in him not so much a memory as a repeated experience, a distant moment, alive again not in his mind but in his senses. He was with his great-aunt Molly, Kitty’s mother, an ample and hearty woman with a harsh laugh and a tender touch. They were climbing, through the heather, through the gorse, to a hill high above the town when, without warning, a mist rose up, obliterating the whole earth, separating them from everything known and familiar. He must have whimpered because, after letting out a short quick laugh, the good woman took his face between her two rough hands and said, “Poor child, you’re not Irish at all, are you, not anymore. What has happened is the everyday miracle from which comes all our wisdom. We’ve been taken into a mystery. See? It’s all around us and we know nothing but itself. Everything is mystery—and we accept it to God’s glory. So give up being afraid. And be Irish again, for the moment at least. And wise as well. Learn—and fast—to live with mystery. And to die with it, too. Now let me kiss your foolish forehead”—which she did—“and you’ll be afraid no more. And let me take your hand in mine and we’ll go up the hill, not even expecting to see our way. It is ever so. And then well eat a bit of cake I’ve tucked into my pocket.”

  Aaron felt the kiss again on his forehead. He drew his hand across the place where her lips had touched, then looked down at his feet. The stirring of the childhood fear faded to nothing. And, better still, the pain in his side had receded, his breathing had been restored, the heavings of his shoulders no longer needed to keep him going. The cloud, having had its way, resumed its advance to the east, hoping perhaps to frustrate the moon somewhere over northern France. Light once more shone, the world restored to its vital near-somnolent self. Aaron raised his head. The stones of the town sparked with the minerals and ores that were their secret element. Whitecaps roused the sea, and the grass was given again not only its multiple shades of green but the scents as well of heather, gorse and, if he was not mistaken, nicotine.

  But before Aaron could revel completely in the world’s restoration, he saw that he had come down the wrong side of the hill. There were no pigs, there was no bus, there were no ineffectual herders scampering in the road. The woman with the darting eyes and the surprised laugh was nowhere to be seen. He would have to reverse direction and make his way back to the opposite slope. Just as he was about to make the turn, he found himself staring more intently at the road below. True, he could see no pigs, no bus, no passengers, nor the swineherd with the switch. But the truck was there, still in the ditch, as if taking a snooze before continuing on its journey.

  He looked to the north and saw only two cars and another truck. He looked to the south an
d could see nothing beyond the bend in the road. He ran down the hill; he leaped the wall; he stood in the road. There were pig droppings squashed into the asphalt. An apple core and a banana peel lay on the white stripe that served as a median; there were the skid marks of the truck, there was the truck itself. The woman’s kerchief fluttered in the bramble, struggling to evolve into a bird or a butterfly. Everyone had gone, even the pigs. He had been left behind. The town was not near. His aunt’s house was even farther. She would not wait once he had failed to be on the bus. He would have to hitchhike.

  Aaron’s worry subsided. These were hospitable people, and he was, after all, reasonably respectable in his jacket and gray slacks, even if he wasn’t wearing a tie.

  He started down the road, too pleased with the countryside, the crisp cool air, the deepening shadows just to stand still. After two bends in the road a car came. He held out his thumb. The car slowed, then picked up speed and passed him by. Another car soon followed, but this one not only didn’t slow down, it also honked its horn as it sped by. The next car ignored him completely. He should have waited near the overturned truck. A man in distress would not be left alone in his misfortune. Another car passed. Two teenagers in the front seat and a young girl in the backseat had actually laughed at his plight. He would go back to the truck and make his plea from there.

  He turned and saw the pig. It was less than ten feet behind him. It looked at him, then lowered its head and began snouting the pavement. A lone man would have been given a ride, but not a man with a pig.

  Aaron stamped his foot. The pig continued its sniffings. Aaron repeated the cry he’d made earlier, but, as before, the pig was unimpressed. A car went by, then another right behind it. Aaron rushed at the pig but had to stop so he wouldn’t crash into its lowered head. “Get away! Go! Go away! Suuee! Suuee! Suuee! Go home!”

  The pig lifted its head slightly and stared at Aaron’s shoes, then lowered the snout and rubbed it against a rock in the wall. Aaron stamped his foot again, but got no response. He turned and began again his walk along the side of the road. A car was coming around the bend. He started to raise his arm. He would no longer use his thumb. He would wave his arms, a signal of distress. The car would have to stop. It didn’t. The pig, of course, was still following.

  There was a repetition of the stamping, stomping, and shouting, but to no effect. “Go on up the hill. You wanted to go up the hill, then go up the hill. Go on. No one’s stopping you.” Then, again, the stamping, the stomping, the shouting. He was ignored.

  Aaron continued toward the town. Cars went by, a truck, a pickup, more cars. He made no attempt to ask for help. He never turned around. He knew he was being followed. There was nothing he could do. And so, as the sun descended and the lengthened shadows spread themselves over the land and the sea, over the islands and the pastures high and low, Aaron walked the darkening road, finally entering the town, arriving at the place chosen for the enactment of his sorrow and his grief, in, it would seem, the custody of a pig.

  2

  Aaron looked out the bedroom window. There, in the morning light, was the wide pasture that stretched from the house to the headland, smaller than he remembered—which was to be expected since he himself had, in the intervening years, grown to such a formidable height. It had been mowed for hay, the grass short now but too soft to be considered stubble. To him it still seemed forbidden territory and filled, therefore, with unending allure. For fear that he’d go running right off the cliff, or, while playing, chase a ball over the edge, he’d been warned of its dangers and threatened with punishments too fearful to name if he ventured unaccompanied into its precincts. Aware, in her wisdom, that common sense or a concern for his safety and well-being were insufficient proscriptions, Great-Aunt Molly had invented gaping maws hidden in the ground that could open at the touch of his toe and deliver him to an underworld where there were devices designed solely for the enlightenment of disobedient boys. That they involved saucer-eyed creatures of insatiable appetite was hinted at. There, beneath the field, was the haven to which the driven snakes had retreated at Patrick’s command, and no appeal to the heavenly saint would be heard above the howls of the regretful children now being introduced to the rites and rituals their defiance had earned for them. (When Aunt Molly had presented this information, it had the form and sound of a plea more than a prohibition. He must, for her sake if not for his own, preserve himself from such a fate. It would torment his aunt to know that, at this moment, he was being, as she put it, “processed.” What “processed” meant, she would not say. And, in pity for her, he must never find out.)

  Looking out now at the forbidden field, Aaron wondered if he might be allowed at last to walk its length and look down from the headland height onto the beach and the water below. Or, rather, he wondered if he could allow himself to push through the grass unaccompanied by his great aunt, long dead. With his hand in hers, no harm could come. That is what he had been told and that is what he believed. Nor was his belief without foundation. Many times, wide eyed but thrilled, he’d been escorted through the pasture grass, alert to any rumblings beneath his feet, then allowed to sit on the edge of the cliff, his bare feet dangling down, Aunt Molly at his side, sitting too, her shoes and stockings off, both of them wiggling their toes, an insolent offering to the sea, a gesture of scorn directed at the dark forces frustrated by the presence of his aunt and the hold of her hand.

  Once, after an excursion made eventful only by their sharing an apple while sitting on the cliff—his great aunt not hesitating to take bites far larger than his—he informed himself that the dangers were nonexistent, that he was being denied pleasures that were his for the taking, that his aunt was unduly frightened on his behalf and he must, casually and perhaps humming a small tune, stroll through the high grass, up to his chest, look out to sea for at least the count of three, then swagger back unharmed and uncaptured, to the vegetable patch he was supposed to be weeding. His aunt would be grateful and relieved by the assurances that he would later give her, allowing her to share in the triumph of his survival.

  Not more than four strides had he taken into the forbidden acres when there had been a distinct shudder in the earth beneath his feet. His hummed tune pitched itself into a quick cry of penitence. He twisted his body around and flung himself into the grass that had closed behind him, covering the path he had taken. With another cry he sprang up and, arms held out from his sides as if pleading for the gift of flight, he plunged his way out of the high grass and, stumbling, arms flailing, made his way back to the turnips and parsnips that had been committed to his care. No more would he brave the secret pasture; never again would he experiment in wickedness, nor would he question received truth or doubt imparted mysteries. (That the trembling had come from his own limbs and the low sound from his own bowels failed to occur to him then and did not occur to him now.)

  As Aaron looked out the window, a land-borne breeze caught the turf and began an orderly march—small wave upon small wave of bending grass—to the edge of the cliff, flattening one stretch of green, then another, the pale underside exposed to the morning sun before the grass was returned to an upright stand. Then came another breeze, another wave, one after the other, as if the pasture in its pride were mimicking the sea, intimating that it too had depths and stirrings of its own.

  Today, Aaron decided, he would begin to grieve in earnest. He would walk the lonely beach, mocked by gulls, uncaring, his every step a stately rebuke to the malign forces that had blighted his fate. His was the tragedy of a man who couldn’t have his own way, and he intended to make known his anguish in the solemn solitude that only a stretch of sand, a suspiring sea, and a beetling cliff could provide. He had intended to awaken earlier and make his initial appearance before the sun had fully risen, but his exhausted state combined with the five-hour time difference between home and here had kept him in bed long past the determined hour. And besides, the evening before had not been an easy time for him.

  He’d arr
ived at his aunt’s house well after dark. A ruggedly handsome no-nonsense young man with a tawny well-trimmed beard—his name was Sweeney—who had come into town in a small truck, the equivalent of an American pickup, had agreed to take him and the pig the few miles out of town that Aaron had still to go. Some thought had been given to abandoning the pig in the town, but Aaron figured that by now he had labored too hard and endured too much not to be rewarded—no money, of course, just a simple heartfelt thank-you—from the woman with the surprised laugh and the darting eyes. There would be a quiet warmth to her gratitude, a small smile in recognition of the trouble Aaron had taken to deliver the pig safely to its rightful owner. “The least she can do is give us a ham and a few chops, maybe a bit of bacon when the slaughter’s done,” his aunt had said after he’d explained the pig’s presence at his side. But Aaron wanted nothing but a brief rite of abject thanks from a woman overwhelmed to the point of inarticulation by the selflessness of this man who waved away all promise of reward both in this world and the next. And so the pig, with a minimum of encouragement—the threat of a slap from Sweeney—had clattered up the ramp improvised from a door conveniently discovered in the bed of the truck and was carted off to the house of Kitty McCloud after a brief pause at the bus stop outside Dockery’s, the pub where Aaron’s bags, relieved only of his Walkman and his tapes of Mozart, Bach, and Chopin’s Funeral Sonata, were waiting for him.