The Pig Did It (24 page)
The roaring stopped, distant rumblings and tumblings were heard, a sudden crash of stone on stone, and the water rushed through the screen door. Aaron sprang toward the opening and scraped through just as the water rose to the top of the tear the pig had made. Except it was not the water rising; it was the house descending, sinking, the waves washing through it, over it, welcoming it to its final rest.
Aaron began his upward swim, struggling to the top. He reached the air. A wave, by way of recognition, crested over his head. Again he struggled, again he made it to the air. Before the next wave pounded him down, he saw the shore ahead, the tumbled rocks, great slabs of stone, the torn cliff and the newly created cove where the house had stood. He saw three figures at the cliff's edge, silhouetted against the moon, waving.
Determined not to panic, Aaron stroked the water, pulling himself toward land, but the waves were not willing to surrender so easily, so quickly, the mere mortal who seemed reluctant to accept their favors. One after another they fell on him, less angry now, more conciliatory, as if making a case for their benevolence. Aaron would have none of it. On and on he struggled.
It was the shore, not the sea, that now betrayed him. It kept receding, withdrawing from him, unwilling to accept him whom the sea, with such effort, had come to claim. The cliffs had been brutalized enough. Further resistance would bring only further wounding. Already the rock face had been sheared away, stone torn from stone and thrown one upon another, broken and shattered and soon to be milled to sand. The time for peace had come, a truce declared, the sought-after soul delivered to the fate decreed by the sea itself and obviously endorsed by the gods. It was useless for Aaron to fight, abandoned as he was by the land that had nurtured and sustained him for all his life.
To announce the end, a fish began to nose his thigh, bumping itself against his leg. He would resist, then surrender. Again the fish, huge, poked at him. Aaron thrashed the water with his leg. The fish seemed to withdraw, but probably only to ready itself for the next assault, which would, he was sure, be the final one. Then he felt the fish slide along his side, slipping ahead of him through the water. Now it was bobbing in front of him. His outstretched hand, close to its last failing stroke, hit against it. It was not a fish. There, before his eyes, was the canoe, its previous occupant nowhere to be seen. The canoe rose to the crest of a wave, with Aaron rising too. Now the canoe descended, and Aaron as well. Exhausted, he managed to climb inside. There was no paddle. He lay down in the bow, barely able to breathe, his feet lifted onto the seat. There he lay, the waves under him sending him high, lowering him down only to raise him up again. Perhaps he had drowned and this was the vaunted peace promised to those who surrender at last. But overhead was the moon. Under him was the discomfort of the wooden slats ribbing the canoe. There were his feet, cleansed of the mud brought up out of the grave. Aaron lifted his head, then shifted around to face the shore. It was no longer receding. It was coming nearer, drawing him to itself, all discord at an end, all treacheries reversed. And there, on the edge of the torn cliff, three figures danced.
Closer and closer came the shore. Steadily the canoe rode the waves. Aaron sat upright, waiting to be delivered. Now the three figures were running, sliding, falling, grabbing onto one another, running again down the narrow switchback steps leading to the shore. Shouts, screams, loud and raucous criesâall were caught in the wind and hurled into the tumult of the upper air. A few feet from shore, the wave, by way of a farewell, made a great heave, crashing down on top of him, then flinging his body, heart, mind, and soul out onto the rock-strewn beach, a “good riddance to bad rubbish” if ever there was one.
Now he could hear the shouts coming closer. Words reached his ears. “God and Mary and all the angels.” It was Kitty. Then “And Patrick and Brendan too.” That would be Kieran Sweeney. And then, closer still, Lolly's piteous “And all the saints besides.”
Aaron was almost on his feet when the three flung themselves on him, sending all four into a heap, Aaron on the bottom, half in, half out of the canoe. With repeated prayers and screaming cries, they untangled themselves and managed to haul Aaron further onto the beach and prop him upright. With heaving breath, he tried to speak, but again, as before, the sea had taken from him the gift of speech and had given him instead a mouth that could only wobble open, then shut, then open again.
To celebrate and confirm his survival, Kitty, then Lolly and Sweeney, began to brush him off as if he had risen from the dust and not from the sea. Twice under their ministrations he almost fell but was duly yanked up. As if they had finally managed, with their pattings and brushings, to make him presentable, they stepped away to view their handiwork. Aaron tried to speak but still to no effect, possibly because he had not the least idea what it was he wanted to say.
Lolly, looking at him with a sly and insolent smile, gave him his cue. “Now that you're saved and all, can you, do you think, can you love someone might be a murderer?”
Aaron's mouth ceased its wobble, locked as it was in an open position. He could not move, not even to shiver or to blink or to twitch. It was Sweeney who spoke first, taking into his hand the hand of Kitty. “I can,” he said. “I can love someone might be a murderer.”
Kitty, aghast at first at the touch of a Sweeney hand, soon nodded her head in resignation. “I can,” she said, “murderer as you well may be.” She turned to Aaron. “And Aaron, you? After all, isn't it a chance everyone has to take if ever we're going to love at all?”
Aaron turned to Lolly and blurted out the words given to him at last. “I can! I can! I swear I can!”
At the top of the cliff the joined lovers paused to gaze silently out over the sea still booming and plunging beneath them, the gibbous moon making its destined descent into the far side of the horizon. It was Sweeney who spoke. “It's a great grave you've been given, Declan Tovey, greater by far than the mudhole we were arranging ourselves. Lie now in peace. Your mystery may not be solved, but it is accepted in all its unfathomable glory as God prompts us to do, and we will live with it for the rest of all our days. And for pity's sake, don't go sending your old bones back up floating onto the shore and raising ructions all over again. You've done the deeds you were meant to do. All is fulfilled.”
The wind howled, the sea raged. And the pig came to stand beside them, motionless, snout upraised, meditating perhaps on what had come to pass and contemplating as well what was still to come.
The author offers unending thanks to Yaddo, in Saratoga Springs, New York, and to the Cill Rialaig Project, in County Kerry, Ireland. He is also grateful to the Irish writer Eamon Sweeney for his help and encouragement and to Tara Claire O'Donoghue, Catherine Clarke, Daniel D'Arezzo, Don Ettlinger, Rebecca Stowe, David Barbour, Bruce Hunter, Martha Witt, Linda Porterâwith a special expression of gratitude to Robert Cohan for his help and instructions in Irish dartsâhow to win, how to lose. To my nephew Jim Smith, my thanks for the accomplished transfer of my sloppy typescript to an acceptable computer printout, and to my brother-in-law Tom Smith, for copyediting said printoutâarduous and not particularly thrilling tasks, done with good cheer and uncommon expertise.
A special thanks beyond the power of words to my tenacious agent, Wendy Weil, and her associate, Emily Forland, for their empathic help and unfailing encouragements.
Also to Barbara Lazear Ascher, the editor whose enthusiasm made possible this publication.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Chapters from this work appeared in slightly different form in the fall issues of The Antioch Review and in Ambit magazine (London).
Copyright © 2008, 2009 by Joseph Caldwell
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ISBN: 978-1-4532-0644-7
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